My friend the Crank is a-flutter over the fact that Kindle readers appear to be sopping up Mein Kampf. Apparently part of the point is that since it's Kindle nobody knows what you are reading, so what the hey. But this suggests a curious twist in the tradition of underground flirtational literacy. Used to be that you could pretty easily strike up a conversation based on your neighbor's dust jacket. It was also a neat sorting mechanism: go for the one with Erica Jong''s Fear of Flying, we would have said; give Mary Daly a bye.
Others have lamented that these days you can't lure in anybody because nobody knows what is behind the grey boards. But how about "I see you have a Kindle! So are you enjoying your taste of Hitler?"
Others have lamented that these days you can't lure in anybody because nobody knows what is behind the grey boards. But how about "I see you have a Kindle! So are you enjoying your taste of Hitler?"
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There is an e-book selling on Amazon, I-Tunes books and other places called, in all caps, 'HEIRESS STRANGLED IN MOLTEN CHOCOLATE AT NAZI SEX ORGY!" You can check it out.
The author writess that when he studied journalism out of a textbook in his college newspaper office (they didn't teach journalism there), he read that the most powerful subjects for attracting readership were money, violence, food, sex and Nazis, and thus the title. (At the end of the book, he writes what ought to be the most powerful wish-it-happened news story in history, containing all those elements.)
Perhaps this explains the popularity of Hitler books. But what I want to know is when you last read a book about molten chocolate?
Very crankily (and shamelessly) yours,
The New York Crank.
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