A recent New York Times headline laments the disappearing, “literary man.” For the curious, the article is entitled “Why the Disappearance of the Literary Man Should Worry Everyone”; and, yes, it is behind a paywall. This article has been commented on ad nauseam in a variety of outlets by a variety of commentators. I’ll try not to simply regurgitate what they’ve had to say. I do, however, want to give my opinion on this absolute train-wreck of a headline lacking any modicum of self-awareness. Here’s the thing…the literary man hasn’t disappeared. Nor is he disappearing. He has simply stopped buying the vomit-inducing garbage heap that is a massive chunk of modern literature which would be better served shredded and used to line the cages of laboratory animals—or, simply incinerated on the off chance that a lab chimp learns to read, leaving him to an existence more torturous than being used to test ebola vaccines.

I want to start by pointing out that my interest in what is available at most bookstores began to decline starting around 2011 or so. I will add that, around the same time, I was able to find at least some solace in used bookstores. Manassas, VA, had a particularly excellent one in McKay’s Used Books. (Second & Charles, a BigCorp competitor, was less impressive, despite having taken over the former Borders location in Woodbridge on the other side of the county.) I haven’t had such good experiences since leaving that area around 2016, but later visits impressed on me that nothing had changed much. The best bookstore in town was still a used bookstore.

Continue reading at Screaming Into the Void on Substack…