It bothers me that a local bookstore, part of a large chain, installed a television at their information booth. The screen runs a repeating advertisement for some series of products. When I politely mentioned to the gentleman in attendance whether they’d considered that some might find it offensive to be confronted with a television in a bookstore, he said no, that I was the first to have mentioned it. I said I understood there were much larger forces at work but wanted to go on record saying that I found it a little intrusive, being a person who deeply enjoys bookstores as one of our last citadels of silence and consideration in an ever cluttered, clamoring, and invasive world.
But so it goes.
