On Borders

This is probably going to devolve into an old-man, "You kids don't know how good you've got it" kind of rant. So fair warning.

Susan Orlean has a post up at the New Yorker that matches how I feel about the Borders bankruptcy filing. As she points out, it was fashionable for a long time to bash the big bookstore chains as the Wal-Marts of the literary world.

I was never comfortable with that. I think I've got the poindexter street cred to say that I'm thrilled when any store sells books, and the more the better. I worked in an indie bookstore that was a casualty of the chains — most of my paycheck went right back into the till — but I still remember the joy I felt the first time I walked into the Borders that opened in my hometown.

The indie bookstores I grew up with were gems, and more than willing to order books for me if they didn't include them in their eclectic selections. But very often, I didn't know what I was looking for until I found it. And every time I went out of town, I hit the bookstores, looking for the titles that nobody carried back home.

But in Borders, there were actually more shelves than I had time. The place was huge. Authors I'd only read about were available for purchase right there, out in the open.

This might sound like nostalgia gone mad, but that probably means you never had to stand in a mall's Waldenbooks at the same shelf of paperbacks, vainly trying to stare the title you want into existence.

The bottom line is, I'm never going to argue against more books in the hands of more people, as Orlean puts it. The indie bookstores have been incredibly good to me, pushing my novel into the hands of their loyal customers with evangelical zeal. But so have the employees at Barnes & Noble and Borders. I'm just not a big enough ingrate to complain about anyone finding something to read, no matter where they do it — whether it's Costco or the public library.