Make it stop

Yesterday I visited a book boxstore out in the burbs. We all know the type: a Starbucks counter, rows and rows of Justin Bieber cds and dvds, lots of candles and calendars, and, in the corner grudgingly given over to books, the department devoted to Medieval Inquisition one one-millionth the size of the section labelled Teen Paranormal Romance.

Actually, I just made up one of the book departments – there was no section devoted to Medieval Inquisition. But you knew that already.

The store is designed so that its large front windows look out onto a parking lot the size of Lake Erie. Relieving the vista somewhat are five wide columns, separating the floor-to-ceiling windows. Inside the store, these columns are adorned with large and very splendid replications of book covers of five American classics, one to a column.

So we have: Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Thoreau’s Walden, Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and…

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

Excuse me? Is it just me, or does anyone sane think that Rand’s vomitus of ill-digested pop Nietzschean schlock qualifies as an American classic? Yes, there are Randians among us and a few have done useful things (like invent Wikipedia), but the majority are boys who never got over having their first woodie. I’m looking at you, Alan Greenspan, and your Tea Party pals. I read Atlas Shrugged as a teen, and while it made me mean and nasty for a couple of weeks as I struggled to unleash my inner Fonzie, eventually I reverted to the non-sociopathic norm.

So why does the corporation that runs the bookstore rank Rand along with Thoreau? Is it to establish a he-said, she-said equivalence, somewhat like pairing Abraham Lincoln with Sarah Palin? Is Rand there to up the female quotient? So Rand is the superior to Dickinson, Ferber, Wharton, Highsmith, Morrison? Is it a sop to screw-you capitalism, a hint that Mockingbird’s takedown of Jim Crow in no way reflects the corporation’s view that the big bad govimint should never step on people’s prejudices, a view most recently on display in the campaign of Ayn’s lunatic namesake, Rand Paul? Or is it a reflection of sales volume? If so, where’s Danielle Steele?

Maybe it’s all about rugged individualism. John Galt = Henry David Thoreau = Atticus Finch = Jay Gatsby = George Milton and Lennie Small… No, that’s not right.

Maybe, just maybe, the people in the corporation who made the selection actually believe that Ayn Rand was a great thinker and a wonderful writer.

If that's the case, they should stick to Teen Paranormal Romance.