A Million Little Pieces of My Brain
When a woman walked over to me this evening and demanded a copy of James Frey's masterpiece, I thought nothing of it. (Well, almost nothing; given that I think the book's prose style is utter crap and that his heartrending, inspirational tale of survival is, to say the least, heavily exaggerated, I don't quite understand why anyone still wants to read it, but that's just my personal two cents, and I do try not to let that get in the way of my job.) I smiled as cheerfully as I could manage and suggested that she look in the biography section. It's a used bookshop, and we keep no records of what we have in stock, so identifying the section in which the book would be placed if we had it is usually the best I can do for people.
She grunted something that sounded sort of like what a 'thanks' might transmogrify into if kept in a dungeon for a thousand years and regularly massaged with a cheese grater, and walked a few paces away. Then she stopped, turned around, and glared at me. "Why would it be in the biography section?" she demanded.
I blinked, and for the duration of that blink my mind apparently flew away to Happy Unicorn Sparkledust Land, because I foolishly assumed that she was asking me what so heavily fictionalized a book was doing among the factual accounts of the lives of the famous. I opened my mouth to explain that the book was still considered a biography, and shelved as such, but she bulldozed right over my attempted explanation.
Her voice was no longer hostile. Now it was snide, and condescending. She obviously felt that she was talking to the stupidest person in the world. "Wasn't it, you know, an autobiography?"
My brain came abruptly back from Happy Unicorn Sparkledust Land, a glorious paradise wherein customers are polite, and occasionally literate. It was quite, quite reluctant to do so. "Um. Yes, it was," I told her. "We shelve them all together. Biographies and autobiographies. They're, ah... kind of the same thing."
This answer pleased her even less than my first attempt, and she stormed off in high dudgeon to find another bookseller who would give her the sort of answers she wanted, and, in the end, did not, in fact, buy the book, to the surprise of none. I remained at my workstation, beat my head against the desktop a few times, and wept for the future of America.
She grunted something that sounded sort of like what a 'thanks' might transmogrify into if kept in a dungeon for a thousand years and regularly massaged with a cheese grater, and walked a few paces away. Then she stopped, turned around, and glared at me. "Why would it be in the biography section?" she demanded.
I blinked, and for the duration of that blink my mind apparently flew away to Happy Unicorn Sparkledust Land, because I foolishly assumed that she was asking me what so heavily fictionalized a book was doing among the factual accounts of the lives of the famous. I opened my mouth to explain that the book was still considered a biography, and shelved as such, but she bulldozed right over my attempted explanation.
Her voice was no longer hostile. Now it was snide, and condescending. She obviously felt that she was talking to the stupidest person in the world. "Wasn't it, you know, an autobiography?"
My brain came abruptly back from Happy Unicorn Sparkledust Land, a glorious paradise wherein customers are polite, and occasionally literate. It was quite, quite reluctant to do so. "Um. Yes, it was," I told her. "We shelve them all together. Biographies and autobiographies. They're, ah... kind of the same thing."
This answer pleased her even less than my first attempt, and she stormed off in high dudgeon to find another bookseller who would give her the sort of answers she wanted, and, in the end, did not, in fact, buy the book, to the surprise of none. I remained at my workstation, beat my head against the desktop a few times, and wept for the future of America.