15 Comments

1. Word Guy:

So I assume they’ll give her book window, stand-up, and front-of-the-store treatment during their celebration of “Banned Books Month.”

Remind me not to let them carry my novel.

Sep 13, 2005 - 12:44 pm 2. chuck:

I think there are some who agitate for liberty only as a means to achieve a more respectable totalitarian end. A look at recommended reads at City Lights indicates a rather conventional political outlook among the staff. I wonder if they have the slightest clue how antique their views appear?

Sep 13, 2005 - 1:26 pm 3. jerry:

This is sort of culmination point of Post-Modernism. POMO lives in a the bizzaro world where fascism is anti-facism and anti-fascism is fascism. (Confusing isn’t it.) The entire POMO project is based on promoting moral equivalence so that people can not distinquish between good and evil so that people can be induced to chose to make the evil choice.

The Belgian Nazi Godfather of POMO, Paul De Man is laughing up his sleave at the way he duped the left into inverting itself into it’s hated political mirror image. Self styled “Progressives” who view themselves as good “Socialists” don’t even know that they have become brown shirts.

Sep 13, 2005 - 1:32 pm 4. TedM:

Jerry,

Paul Berman discusses this phenomenom in Terror and Liberalism.

Why would anyone be surprised. The surprise would be to see it featured at a table with pictures and all.

For a real laugh, read the comments at Cathy’s site which Roger linked to.

Sep 13, 2005 - 1:39 pm 5. Eg:

So when are they changing the name to ‘Crystal Nights Bookstore?’

Jayzuz…so what’s next? In protest of high fuel costs they’ll burn books as an alternative source of light and fuel two, maybe 3, times a week, only the ones they deem as ‘fascist’ of course.

Sep 13, 2005 - 1:40 pm 6. Kevin P:

Roger:

Once again the left, which proclaims that no views should be shut down, that censorship is the worst of sins, that freedom of expression is the one of the most glorious examples of the American experiment, show their true colors by shutting down the expressions of someone they once embraced. Fallaci committed the sin of not following the party line. She had an original thought and the guardians of the official dogma judged that there followers could not handle the written words of Fallaci and reject or agree with them on their own. It is their property and they have the right to accept or reject any book that they wish to. But they betray their own principles by “book banning” a work by a respected writer of the left. When she agreed with them she was kosher. When she thought for herself she was punished by the intellectual gatekeepers. They show contempt for their customers by not letting her voice be heard and judged by the customers themselves. Their paternalistic actions show that they do not trust their customers to think for themselves. I imagine that many of their customers would agree with them. But by “book banning” they commit the sin that they rightously hurl at their ideological opponents. They have the right to do it and I would never try to take their right away. But if a conservative bookstore did the same thing they would hurl accusations of Nazi, KKK and all the other cliche brickbats of the left. They do not have principles, they have dogma. They brook no opposition and will not let someone who they praised in the past write anything that challenges their rigid thinking. Leftist Cardinals in Defense of the faith,Cowards!

Sep 13, 2005 - 1:56 pm 7. Rick Ballard:

Things were so much easier when the Soviet politburo issued directives to the CPUSA for distribution to front organizations. POMO was inculcated through the MSE to provide the proper mindset to receive direction from “trusted sources” within the fronts. The clerk is a “useful idiot” who has become just a regular idiot through lack of proper supervision.

It’s a shame that there is no court where the left can file for reorganization due to intellectual bankruptcy.

Sep 13, 2005 - 1:56 pm 8. chuck:

Folks,

Bear in mind that the clerk was just speaking his own mind: the book won’t be available until Nov 15, and then only in hardcover. I suspect the clerk’s reaction was to the Fallaci name.

Sep 13, 2005 - 2:07 pm 9. Silicon valley Jim:

I wonder if they [the folks at the City Lights bookstore] have the slightest clue how antique their views appear?

Stop wondering; they don’t. San Franciscans know neither what the rest of the world is like nor what the rest of the world thinks of them.

Sep 13, 2005 - 2:38 pm 10. N. O'Brain:

And the reactionaries are who exactly???????

Sep 13, 2005 - 4:47 pm 11. Robert Crawford:

I suspect the clerk’s reaction was to the Fallaci name.

How, exactly, does that make it better?

Sep 13, 2005 - 5:23 pm 12. chuck:

How, exactly, does that make it better?

And who, exactly, said it did? I merely pointed out that the clerk was responding to the Fallaci name.

Sep 13, 2005 - 5:32 pm 13. Captain Hate:

I was there a couple months ago on vacation and was glad to find three editions of “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov, one of which I picked up. Just as interesting as the book is the story of Bulgakov’s life as an excellent playwright and how Stalin took delight in torturing him by making him produce third rate tripe in the Soviet theater.

I wonder what the clerk thinks of that, or if he’s capable of doing anything other than parrot things that he feels rather than understands.

Sep 13, 2005 - 9:12 pm 14. Marty:

At one time I used to be a frequent visitor to City Lights. One might note that they have had no problem offering the books of real fascists, i.e, Ezra Pound. What dolts!

Sep 14, 2005 - 12:42 am 15. markus:

Pathetic. Kerouac would kick Ferlinghetti’s ass about this if he was alive.

Sep 14, 2005 - 12:25 pm

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