Lately I was in two local Barnes & Noble stores, looking for James Risen's latest, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War. Risen, you'll recall, is the New York Times journalist facing possible imprisonment for refusing to name confidential sources. Pay Any Price has received national notice.
In both B&N stores, staff members had considerable trouble locating Risen's book. Even though a few copies were in stock, the book had been placed in out-of-the way locations, which were not the locations indicated by the in-store database.
At the same time, I couldn't help noticing that both stores prominently displayed quite a lot of right-wing screeds and very few liberal or progressive books in comparison. Mentioning this to friends in two other states, both said they too had observed their local B&N's giving more shelf space to right-wing books, to the detriment of progressive and liberal voices.
Further details below.
In the fiirst B&N, I first looked in likely places, the tabletop displays and "Current Affairs" section. No Pay Any Price. A clerk at the assistance desk looked it up in the database, which indicated it should be in "Current Affairs" AND the table top displays, but he could not find it there either.
A supervisor knew where to find it: UNDER one of the tables, where no customer seemed likely to catch a glimpse of it. There were six copies buried in this location.
In checking the "Current Affairs" section and tabletops, I had noticed casually that there seemed to be a fair number of right-wing books out, but of liberal and progressive authors, only Elizabeth Warren had a book displayed in any way to catch the eye: a copy of her book was face-out at eye level in the "Current Affairs" section.
Some days later, happening to be in another mall in our (highly cosmopolitan) area with another B&N, although I had Risen's book now, I made a point of going into the other store to see if the situation would appear any different.
Again, the book was not in tabletop displays or the "Current Affairs" section. A clerk as the assistance desk looked it up. The computer showed it was supposed to be in "Current Affairs," but the clerk did not find it there either.
Back at the assistance desk, as we talked, I suddenly spotted the book--it stood in line of books displayed BEHIND the desk--where a customer would be unlikely to notice it and absolutely could not pick it up casually. You would have to ask. If I had not already been familiar with the jacket appearance, we might not have found the book at all.
In other words, at both stores you had to be a determined customer, and you had to go beyond just asking and make a real search if you wanted Pay Any Price.
In the second store, I also took time to make note of hardback current affairs books displayed on tables.
"New Arrivals" included Dana Loesch, Hands Off My Gun; Miriam Weaver and Amy Jo Clark, Right For a Reason; Charles Krauthammer, Things That Matter; and Mario Cuomo, All Things Possible.
A second such table had Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost positing that the Iraq debacle may be blamed on poor "generalship."
"Season's Biggest Books" included Glen Beck, Dreamers and Discoverers; George W. Bush, 41: Portrait of My Father; Bill O'Reilly, Killing Patton; and (on a lower tier, well below eye level), Hillary Clinton, Hard Choices.
"Nonfiction Best-Sellers" included the same books by Bush, O'Reilly and Beck.
Meanwhile, meandering through the rest of the store, I discovered a line of nine full bookcases devoted to a certain type of Christian reader. These consisted of seven bookcases labeled "Christian Life," one labeled "Christianity" and one labeled "Christian Fiction," if my notes serve.
This was far more space than devoted to all other religions and, if I recall, more than three times as much space as allotted to "Current Affairs."
Meanwhile, I noticed, the store music consisted of religious Christmas carols already---a full week before Thanksgiving. (The rest of the mall was playing draggy, half disguised versions of secular seasonals.)
Of the friends who told me they'd informally received similar impressions in their own stores, one lives in the nex state, the other half a continent away.
All this seems puzzling in light of B&N leadership. The company's executive chairman (and founder) is listed on its website as Leonard Riggio.
Here is a portion of the company's official bio on Mr. Riggio (at http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/...):
...active in pursuing his interests in social justice and human rights...Long passionate about helping address what he calls the “Unfinished business of the Civil Rights Movement,” he served on the Board of the Children’s Defense Fund, where he organized and funded the 1996 “Stand for Children” March in Washington. Subsequently, together with his wife Louise, he helped build the Freedom School at Haley Farm in Tennessee, whose mission is to cultivate young community leaders. Two buildings now stand as testimony to their generosity and vision: The Langston Hughes Library (Len’s favorite poet,) and The Riggio-Lynch Chapel, jointly named for Len and political activist Bill Lynch. Both were designed by Maya Lin.
Recently, the Riggios created a program called “Project Home Again,” designed to help rebuild the lives of many of the victims of Hurricane Katrina...
Len is also a tireless advocate of public education, literacy and the arts: interests which have spawned multiple efforts created or sponsored by the Riggios. They include the building of Dia:Beacon, one of the largest contemporary art museums in the world; numerous gifts to artists to create public works; the innovative Writing and Democracy Program at The New School, which explores the vital connections between citizenship and the skills of writing and rhetoric, and includes 25 full scholarships; the Brooklyn Tech Foundation, the first and largest private endowment for a public high school; and the “Close the Book on Hate” program for the Anti-Defamation League, which issued millions of booklets designed to help guide parents with children who were either victims of hate, or felt anger or hatred themselves....
This being the case, why would the current-affairs offerings in B&N bookstores look almost like an extension of Fox News?
Any thoughts?
BTW, I would recommend Pay Any Price: a clear and rapid read, due to the quality of prose, although the content is painful. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Cover price $28. I don't buy a lot of hardcover books. This one was worth it.
[Also BTW, pardon if there are formatting problems or if I don't directly reply to comments; I have an old system. I first tried posting this diary from the public library where equipment and software are more up to date, but oddly, on preview it would all go blank, so that was not an option.]