Chomsky subscribers:

How do you acquire information and new knowledge?  If you are like me, it
is through reading books, magazines and the literature of our favorite
critics and authors.  Yet, I feel (no real documentation) that gaining
access to materials outside the mainstream and the controlling Right and
Left seems more and more difficult.

The enclosed article does not speak directly to the "decline of deep
thinking materials," however, if you read between the lines, you will
extrapolate what happens when a the combined impact of a consumption based
economic system couples with classism and blocks the free flow of
intellectual discourse.

Comments?


F. Leon


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A glance at the summer issue of "Harvard Design Magazine":
The design of book "superstores," class, and literature

The "peculiar status" of the bookstore's role in American society is
changing in ways that reflect attitudes about consumerism, literature, and
class, writes Jim Collins, an associate professor of communication and
English at the University of Notre Dame. The owners of small bookstores
are increasingly glamorized, he writes, noting the success of the movie
romances "You've Got Mail" and "Notting Hill." But such bookstores are
losing out to "superstores" run by Borders and Barnes & Noble, and to
Web-based bookstores like Amazon.com, much to the distress of the
literati. Mr. Collins explores the role of class in discussing these
shifts in book sales. One Barnes & Noble advertisement he cites argues
that "clicking from Amazon.com to Barnesandnoble.com is like walking from
a Wal-Mart to a good bookstore." The message Barnes & Noble is trying to
convey is that Amazon is somehow "blue-collar," "trailer-park,"  and that
it "appeals promiscuously to a mass audience," Mr.  Collins writes. While
small, traditional bookstores try to similarly tar Barnes & Noble and
Borders as being crassly commercial, Mr. Collins adds, a close look at the
superstores finds that they are performing a public service -- once
associated with public libraries -- of providing places where people may
linger, read books, and interact with others interested in books. "Rather
remarkably," Mr. Collins writes, "the superstores have cultivated an
atmosphere that allows, if not encourages, their patrons to ignore or
suppress the consumer impulse and to use them as substitutes for the
lending library -- that is, for the not-for-profit cultural institution
that played a critical role in the creation of a literate public and hence
in the social mobility of generations of Americans." The article is not
available online, but information about the magazine may be found at:

<http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/hdm/>


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