So the thing I’m going to write about tonight is whether or not I should be a hypocrite when it comes to buying books on the magic Internets. Except, yeah, I’m not really buying books. I’d be buying two magazines, though both are girthy enough that they could pass for books. But you know what I did when I got online tonight? I looked them both up on Amazon, found them both for less money than I had expected to pay, and was nearly ready to check out when I thought that maybe I should at least call the Barnes & Noble at Clearwater Crossing to see if they were going to carry the one that is a current issue. Then I decided to call the other “nearby” Barnes & Noble stores to see if they were going to carry it. (I would not have had to call around if Borders still existed. River Crossing always carried Granta, and I would have just gone over between sets on Friday night and picked it up, no worries. But no—now I have to make calls, and check the Internet and whatnot.)
And just real quick, so you know what I’m talking about, the two magazines are Granta, issue 117, and The Comics Journal, issue 290. Granta is a quarterly literary journal—117 is the next one—with a different theme for each issue. The theme for issue 117 is Horror, and the issue features a new short story by Stephen King. I came by this information in a Stephen King Newsletter e-mail, but that e-mail also said that Granta 117 is available for sale on October 27th—that’s tomorrow to you and me, kids (or today, depending on when I get this finished and post it)—but the folks I talked to at Barnes & Noble tonight said that the current issue stays on sale until November 13th. Maybe it takes awhile for these things to get across the pond. (Granta is published out of the U.K.)
The Comics Journal stopped putting out a print magazine when they got to issue 300 in November 2009, but apparently came back with an even bigger issue 301 this past August. That’s what I’ve been able to gather from the Internet, anyway. Comics Journal 290 had a lengthy roundtable discussion with a handful of comics professionals and Monte Schulz, son of Charles, wherein they discussed the merits (or lack thereof) of the recently published biography of Charles Schulz, Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography, by David Michaelis. I read this biography and liked it very much, but the Schulz family, Monte in particular, has been very outspoken in their disappointment with it. Monte says that Michaelis cherry-picked his sources in order to support a pre-ordained agenda. Reviews of the biography, including one in the Wall Street Journal by Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, were positive, and I’ve been curious to read this roundtable, but I just never got around to getting online to get a copy of the issue in question. I happened to be thinking about it earlier tonight and realized that the cover prices of the issues would be more than $25, which would qualify for free shipping on Amazon—that’s mostly why I checked Amazon first. As will be made clear if you elect to keep reading, I looked into it further after I had that first inspiration.
I got a definitive “no” from the guy at the Clearwater Crossing Barnes & Noble. He told me about the re-evaluation they did with their magazines earlier this year—it’s all based on sales, he said…go figure, right?—but he also said that it looked like Granta had been dropped earlier than that. The folks at the Carmel and Greenwood Park Mall stores were less certain of themselves, but each eventually managed to conclude that the current issue doesn’t go off sale until November 13th. The Carmel store has that issue—I know because I have been to the store recently and seen the issue on the rack—but the guy at Greenwood said that they had not received any copies of the current issue, despite the fact that they usually carry the magazine.
I’ve been dropping money on literary magazines a little more than usual this year, partly because you need to know what kind of work journals are publishing if you want to submit to them, but also because I just like to read them, and I think that you ought to support the things you enjoy, to the extent that you are able. I don’t buy Granta very often, though, because it’s pretty expensive—cover price is $16.99—but the one or two issues I have bought I have thoroughly enjoyed. I know that the Stephen King story will just wind up being collected into his next book of stories that comes out, but I’ve always enjoyed horror writing in general, and I’m interested in the work of some of the other authors listed in the issue’s contents, including Don DeLillo and Roberto Bolaño. I’ve never read DeLillo, but have heard good things about him, especially a big novel he wrote called Underworld, which is set in New York, among other places. The late Bolaño has a pretty solid cult thing going on right now, mostly, I think, on the strength of his novel 2666, which I read last year and enjoyed very much. There’s also a story by Paul Auster, whose interview with The Believer I read not too long ago (and whose wife, Siri Hustvedt, was featured in a recent issue of Poets & Writers) and really enjoyed—one of the more enjoyable interviews in The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers; and one by Daniel Alarcón, who read a Bolaño story called “Gómez Palacio” for a New Yorker podcast.
And now to procuring copies of both of these magazines. The library actually has a copy of Comics Journal 290, but it’s bound up in their archival magazines, and not available for checkout. I don’t recall exactly how long the Peanuts roundtable is, but it’s very long, and would take far too long to read for me to just sit there at a table in the library and knock it out. I called a few comics shops when I first heard about it, but none of them had back issues of the magazine, so that pretty much leaves just the Internet. I could probably come up with an excuse to go up to Carmel sometime and get a copy of Granta at Barnes & Noble, but it’s an awfully long way to go just for a magazine—and unless it’s a weekend trip, the traffic is bound to be bad
So the first place I looked was Amazon, where I found a used copy of Comics Journal 290 for $0.37, listed in “very good” condition from a third-party seller listed as “bargainbookstores”; but for $0.37, it could just about be falling apart at the seams, and I’d take it. They also had Granta 117 for $10.95, six dollars less than cover. The two together did not qualify for free shipping, but even with shipping at about four bucks for each item, the grand total would be less than if I had bought both at cover price and got the free shipping. The problem, of course, is that buying from an outfit like Amazon is part of the reason that bricks-and-mortar stores like Borders are going away. So I fired up Barnes & Noble to see what I could find there, and I found pretty much the same thing—used copy of Comics Journal 290 (it was even from the same third-party vendor, though here it’s $1.99) and new copy of Granta 117 at $10.95. The shipping was even the same, about four bucks each.
Not a whole lot of difference between the two, except that going with the Barnes & Noble website would at least be supporting a company that operates bricks-and-mortar bookstores. The online model might be cutting into actual sales at those bookstores that they operate, but getting my dollars that way instead of losing them to Amazon would at least help them to be able to continue to operate those bookstores. In the long run, of course, the few dollars that I am going to spend on this transaction are a drop in the bucket for either company, and will make no real difference in the grand scheme of things. Buying online will also push a tiny bit of business to the U.S. Postal Service, because I’m not about to spend any extra money to have it shipped in a day or two by one of those overnight couriers. The post office needs more help than Barnes & Noble, though, so in the end it’s probably a push. I help the post office by buying online, and I maybe help Barnes & Noble a little bit more by going out of my way to pick up the issue of Granta at their actual store in Carmel. (Of course, the sales tax would go to Hamilton County, which I’m not in favor of supporting, but what the hell? It's a buck and change. That won’t buy much in Brainardville.)
And then in the end I wound up not pulling the trigger on either transaction, the Barnes & Noble one or the Amazon one. No help from me for the postal service or the bookstore today. I’ll wind up doing it tomorrow, or making some excuse to go up to Carmel here in a week or two. There’s a new Stephen King book coming out on November 8th, and I’ll have to go by a Barnes & Noble to get that, and that might well be the excuse I need to go up to Carmel to see if they have Granta. I’ll have to go the Internet route at some point to get the issue of Comics Journal 290, and if that’s the only thing I’m going online for, it really won’t matter if I use Amazon or Barnes & Noble—except that in some small way it will matter, even though the fact that it matters won’t matter to anyone but me.
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