So I’m in Nowhere Books on Broadway and there on the counter, sitting in a plastic display stand, is a small squarish shaped book with an irresistible peach colored cover.
It grabs my attention, obviously, since it’s the only book on the counter. Written in large letters that occupy the entire front of the book are the words ‘HOW TO RESIST AMAZON AND WHY’. An upside down Amazon smile underlines the word ‘Amazon’. Clever.
I pick up the book and open it at random - ‘Chapter 1, On Amazon and the Book Industry’, with a full size illustration of a clenched fist holding a sheet of paper on the opposite page. I’m curious and read a few sentences - “Right now, as I write this in February 2019, bestseller Where the Crawdads Sing is on sale at Amazon for $9.59. If I were to order that book direct from the publisher for The Raven’s shelves, I’d have to write the publisher a check for $14.04 per copy. Amazon is selling this book for almost $5 less than my cost.” Hmm, inneresting.
He then explains how they manage to do this: “because of the staggering array of profitable revenue streams in their portfolio”. A loss leader in other words. Their motive? To ‘disrupt’ the retail world (including mom and pop bookstores like the one the author owns) and position Amazon as the most attractive option to buy books. Very interesting.
At this point I realize that the author, Danny Caine, has an attitude. That really interests me. What set him off so that he would write this book and choose a soft peach color for the cover and design it to fit on the counter where the book store customers will inevitably come and stand before it? Danny Caine owns a small bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas called The Raven. That’s why.
I open it again at random, ‘Interlude 5, On Partnering with Authors’. He’s telling the story of Bryn Greenwood a local author who partnered with him to promote and sell her book. He’s recalling all the fun they had working together and how that would never have happened at Amazon. Amazon runs a finely tuned, production line machine. You don’t have pizza and a beer with your Amazon representative. You can’t even see that person. If it is a person.
When I finally settle in later at home I open to ‘Interlude 7, On Delights’. It begins with “Here’s just a little of the non-economic, unmeasurable stuff that’s at stake if Amazon’s dominance makes more small businesses go away.” He talks about his experiences interacting with people in his bookstore. The story of Emily who came in to get a book because she had lent hers out and she didn’t want to be without a copy. Emily tells him the story of her friend who recommended a book to her and said it had been passed on from friend to friend and would she like to have it? She looked at the book and realized that it was her book that she had lent out long ago.
This is the point. In a world where we have become more and more separated from each other, enclosed in cars or sheltered within our private homes, we now have become virtual people. We shop online, we order dinner online. Why cook it yourself? Now robots are coming and AI. What are the poor humans supposed to do? That does, indeed, make Amazon look menacing. And Facebook and Apple and Google and all the rest of the high tech industries producing products for us. I dream of a simpler time. Gees we already have a face and we already have an apple. We already have an Amazon. Why are these people rebranding what we’ve already got and then selling it to us. Devious. I agree.
Danny talks about the shop cat, Ngaio. She gets in a lap sitting mood when the weather turns cold and will take up with anybody sitting on the couch. In cat time everything is just right but then the customer has to go and wants to get up but can’t because they’re trapped by this cat purring in their lap. Finally, with a friendly word from Danny, they stand up and the cat flees.
The associations happening in his bookstore are rich and deep and he relates them with the voice of a storyteller. It goes on for 4 1/2 pages. This is also the purpose of bookstores - human association. A bookstore happens in a place, not at a computer address on a hard drive. A bookstore exists with a door and a street and a whole community surrounding it. A community made of people. What’s wrong with that, people?
Then there’s the book my sister sent me. I guess because I talked about heaven and stuff, she wanted to inform me. It’s called ‘Imagine Heaven - Near-Death Experiences, God’s Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You’. I haven’t read this one either but I did open it up at random.
Alright, first of all, I love my sister. She’s great. She puts up with me. What’s left of our immediate family is 3 brothers and 1 sister. I’m one of the brothers, she’s the sister. The other 2 brothers don’t put up with me. Because they don’t think they have to. They’re wrong about that but, anyways, it’s me and Suzanne holding down the fort, any semblance of rational thought or courteous behaviour, any thread of domicility, any sense of a family.
But she also has her own crazy ideas. According to the book, you can fly in heaven. I didn’t read it but I opened it at random to page . . . well I lost it now but apparently flying is a valid mode of transportation in heaven.
In fact, as it turns out, heaven is a blast. Scanning down the chapter titles in the table of contents, I find: A Better Body, You’ll Be Yourself . . . Finally! The Most Beautiful Place Imaginable! and Exhilarating — Not Boring.
Of course the bug in the soup is that none of those ‘near death’ experience people actually died and if they had died they would have disconnected from their brain and all their experiences. That’s where we experience - in our brain. What are you going to experience if you have no brain?
Well they get around that by positing that you get a new body in heaven. ‘A Better Body’ is chapter 4. It’s kind of a Christian reincarnation. The bug in that soup is that nobody has any direct knowledge of it. Just books, rumors, heresay, fables and distorted history of the patriarchs. Oh. Don’t get me started on that.
When you die you don’t have a brain or a body. According to all available evidence. That’s what gets buried. No one knows what happens next or if there even is a ‘next’.
That’s getting pretty cosmic but Mr. Burke is pretty cosmic. ‘Alive in New Dimensions’ is chapter 9. I didn’t read it, just opened it at random.
So what does happen when you die, Rohn? Now that you’ve destroyed this poor guy’s book that you didn’t even read.
Nobody knows. Certainly not John Burke. Can you be ok with that or do you need something to believe?
We go back to where we came from. Where else could we possibly go? Have you ever seen a baby? They just came from that place (if it is a place). How bad can it be. Innocence, a smile that is powerful enough to warm the coldest heart, simplicity, a quality that just can’t be explained; it’s like ‘behold a miracle, this child is here’.
They slowly integrate into this world. It doesn’t happen all at once when they’re born. By the time they’re two they can talk and walk but they have not completely given themselves to the same reality we live in. And the same on the other end, we slowly disintegrate and disengage as we grow older and older. It’s a natural process.
If you think about it, nothing is more natural than death. It happens to everything that is living. It’s a necessary condition in fact. In order to have a life time we have to die, otherwise our life would have no time - it would just go on and on forever (as if you were in heaven) and there would be no significance to anything.
Think about it. What gives gravity and importance to something? Meaning? It’s the context of time. That we’re all going to die and we won’t be here anymore. That’s what gives meaning to everything. And without meaning what’s the point of even being alive?
So that’s my critique and rave on about ‘Imagine Heaven’. Yes I realize it’s entertaining to imagine heaven. We can imagine anything we want. Even hell. Imagining doesn’t make it real though. There’s the fly in that soup.
Music: Guy Gerber & Deniz Kurtel - Here Comes The Rain (Chambord Revision)
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two book reviews / two bookstores