Barnes and Know Nothing

This past weekend I ventured out to the local Barnes and Noble in order to spend the gift cards that were burning a whole in my pocket and devote some quality time to journaling.  While wandering around the tables and shelves of books I quickly became annoyed. I searched for titles by Abagail Thomas, Anne Lamott, Sherwood Anderson, and Junto Diaz, but could not locate a single one. When I asked the pale, red-headed clerk behind the reference desk if the store had any copies of Winesburg, Ohio, he informed me he had never heard of the title. Though it is an American classic, it is an obscure title. I dismissed his lack of knowledge for confusion. However, when he informed me that they did not have any copies of the book in the entire store, I nearly fainted. How can a book store have Joan River's autobiography and not have Winesburg, Ohio or Glen Rock Book of the Dead? I was appalled. He told me that he could order them for me. I denied the offer and went in search of other titles.

Matters only worsened the longer I explored. The poetry section was smaller than the Bible section. Not the religion section, but the Bible section. A whole wall is devoted to seventy-five differentiations of one book, and only a shelf is dedicated to an entire genre. Now, I am all for spirituality, faith, and religion, but when I see one copy of Leaves of Grass  for every fifteen copies of the American Patriotic Bible, my feathers get a little ruffled. Other aspects that pissed me off include: the graphic novel section being of equal size to the fiction section, the fact that all the Christian fiction books portrayed an Amish girl, baby, or both on the front cover, and that Mr. Barnes and Mr. Noble consider Kim Kardashian's biography worthy to be displayed in their store. Although these things are a disgrace to the literary world, the most horrendous and hideous crime involved another ignorant sales clerk.

Sitting in a plush chair nestled among the international cookbooks, I overheard a customer and sales clerk discussing books. The gentleman asked the clerk if she knew who wrote The Glass Castle. The woman replied confidently that Alice Walker wrote the memoir. I nearly choked on my gum. When the woman looked the information up on the B&N database, she was unable to find the title. She assured the gentleman that Alice Walker wrote the book and this is when I interfered. From my seat across the store, I shouted that Jeanette Walls wrote The Glass Castle, not Alice Walker. People stared,  but I didn't care. I needed to make the correction before the literary world was further disgraced. Satisfied by my good dead, I returned to my journal. The sales clerk called back and thanked me for the correction in which she replied, "Oh, that is right, Alice Walker writes cookbooks." A small part of me died sitting there listening to the dialogue playing out before me. Had these people ever read anything besides Nora Roberts and Nicholas Sparks? Had they ever handled a book? Did they even know how to read? Feeling extremely discouraged and utterly depressed, I gathered my belongings and drove home, where I spent the remaining portion of my afternoon attempting to write poetry,  and amend the tragedies from the morning.