January 15, 2007: Is Celebrity The Language of Today?

The tale of the small bookseller being replaced by the mega-giant isn't new. It inspired the movie You've Got Mail, and lots of ink from the old and cranky. But I liked A Princeton Maverick Succumbs to a Cultural Shift. "

Logan Fox can't quite pinpoint the moment when movies and television shows replaced books as the cultural topics people liked to talk about over dinner, at cocktail parties, at work. He does know that at Micawber Books, his 26-year-old independent bookstore here that is to close for good in March, his own employees prefer to come in every morning and gossip about "Survivor" or "that fashion reality show" whose title he can't quite place. "It's not about megastores replacing books. It's about celebrity replacing creativity, and people's attention focused on media idiots. The article makes me sad.