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No matter how uneasy a book makes us feel or however it impels people to behave, there may be a collectible value to it that our readers should know about. This is a forum for learning and sharing.
Mark O'Neill makes a good point in this issue's Author Watch column that even a badly written and boring book can have ramifications. Rarely can a country point to a single book and say, "This changed our history." That Mein Kampf helped changed that history for the worse in Germany is sad but it remains a vital part of twentieth century history and cannot be ignored.
More recently, the New York Times ran a story about the cartoonist Art Spiegelman's latest book and that the subject matter was making some Americans uncomfortable. It is an illustrated novel with a political theme similar to his earlier award-winning Maus that depicted the German atrocities using Cats and Mice as characters. Spiegelman's latest cartoon representation is of the events following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Towers. In the Shadow of No Towers is an expression of rage by the artist over what he sees as our country's ineffective attempts at making America safer while using the tragedy to gear up a war machine.
Whereas Maus may make us feel good about being the liberators of the oppressed in WWII Europe, it probably doesn't make Germans feel all that proud. Likewise, In the Shadow of No Towers can make us feel discomfort but, like it or not, that's what literature, creative writing, or art is designed to do. Whether one agrees with the subject matter of any given work does not mean it cannot reflect a condition that needs to change or gives clues about the shaping of the world around us.
As booksellers, it is our job to gauge the value of books and the market's response. And it is the Bookologist's job to help arm you for that job.
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