Yeah, saw this article at Joe’s prompting. An interesting comment from the Ottakar’s HR guy – that the old-style vocational bookseller was not appropriate for the modern world of bookselling. For me, this chimes with a comment made by HarperCollins’ MD, that those in the book trade need to work hard to make it less elitist. The answer. of course, is to invite more people into the elite, not to dumb down the content to a point where it become accessible to the lumpenproletariat. Reading is inherently elitist, but the elite is – or should be – one based on objective quality, not of class. Richard Hoggart, author of “The Uses of Literacy”, has pretty well devoted his life to this end – check out his speech to Glasgow Uni’s Dept of Adult and Continuing Education (available online).
Yeah, saw this article at Joe’s prompting. An interesting comment from the Ottakar’s HR guy – that the old-style vocational bookseller was not appropriate for the modern world of bookselling. For me, this chimes with a comment made by HarperCollins’ MD, that those in the book trade need to work hard to make it less elitist. The answer. of course, is to invite more people into the elite, not to dumb down the content to a point where it become accessible to the lumpenproletariat. Reading is inherently elitist, but the elite is – or should be – one based on objective quality, not of class. Richard Hoggart, author of “The Uses of Literacy”, has pretty well devoted his life to this end – check out his speech to Glasgow Uni’s Dept of Adult and Continuing Education (available online).
GRP - July 5th, 2003 @ 9:26 am