Confessions of the Bookstore Clerks: We Hate What You Read
What’s your all time favorite book?
The Journal of Albion Moonlight by Kenneth Patchen.
All time favorite Brooklyn book?
Even when Henry Miller is living in & writing about Paris I feel like I’m reading it through the prism of old world Brooklyn. Maybe Black Spring or The Cosmological Eye. The new young people of Williamsburg should aim to live and make work as free, lusty, spiritual, bawdy and poetic as did he. The rents often make this difficult now. We ought to at least learn how to get invited to as many free dinners.
Worst Brooklyn book?
I never read that book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn but I hate how often it’s title is used as a pun in shitty newspapers. Like “A Bookstore Grows in Brooklyn” or “A Condo Grows in Brooklyn”. I think that one free newspaper that consists of virtually nothing but photos of Marty Markowitz shaking hands with people does this in almost every issue.
To you, what’s the great American novel?
The New York Post. I also think that Infinite Jest may have pressed reset on the definition of the G.A.N.
Are you a writer? If not, do you have a side gig besides the bookstore?
Yes. I write under the nom de plume Hen Win and have multiple great American somethings in a milkcrate beneath my bed.
What books make you immediately crush-out on the buyer?
I fall in and out of love about twenty times a day lately. This morning, however, a young mother came in pushing a stroller and walked out with Anais Nin’s dirty Delta of Venus which I thought was kind of hot.
What’s the bookstore clerk equivalent of spitting in the food of a difficult customer?
Spitting in their book.