On Thu, 22 Oct 1998 13:25:43 -0400 Michael Cohen <mike at cns.bu.edu>
writes:
>By and large I prefer the large Bookstore Chains like
>Borders or Barnes and Noble than the smaller much
>less prevalent small bookstores which used to populate
>suburban and quasi-rural America. However, one result
>I believe of this concentration is that left--wing Magazines
>are far less publicly available than before.
I guess Borders and Barnes & Noble differ from store to store. In my neck of the woods, they're the only places that stock the "left" press. Before I subscribed, I used to pick up NLR at Borders, which carries it regularly. Ditto MR, CAQ, The Nation, In These Times, The Baffler, etc.
I'd love to be moral and shop only at mom 'n' pop bookstores, but often these stores stock less radical fare than their corporate competitors.
Bookstore owners are, by and large, petit-bourgeois types who've thrown in with capital. During the Teamsters strike at UPS, one of the local small bookstore owners was quoted in the paper as saying that unions weren't necessary anymore, the UPS Teamsters were spoiled, and that they had no right to strike (the strike was hurting his business by preventing books from coming in).
In large cities like New York, D.C., San Francisco, you have independent bookstores that are radical in flavor (such as Vertigo Books in Washington, which is my favorite). But out here in the boonies, the chain stores are the only option for someone who wants something published by Verso, SEP, or MR.
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