Masthead Applications

in

Apply to the West 10th Editorial Board! Applications can be downloaded here. Send applications to west10th.submissions@gmail.com.Available positions are:  Poetry Editor, Assistant Poetry Editor, Prose Editors, Assistant Prose Editors, Head of Community Board, Community Board.Poetry and prose editors/assistant editors will be mainly involved in the reading/vetting of all 2011-2012 submissions. You will read the submissions on your own and then the poetry and prose groups will meet several times to discuss the submissions and arrive at a final group to be published in the magazine. Community board members are involved in the planning and organizing of West 10th events, as well as spreading the word about West 10th across campus. All masthead member are welcome to post on the blog.

Apply NOW the deadline is May 31st! 

more information at the creative writing website.Questions? Email me at lcs331@nyu.edu.

It's Been Such A Long Time

in ,

Hello there West Tenthers!  Forgive my inexcusable absence these past weeks.  In my defense, I am deep in preparations for finals and my summer abroad in Madrid.  Yes, you read that right...I know, I know, I'm excited to.  In the vein of so many great American writers I hope to find some inspiration among all those classy Europeans and...their very old buildings.I'd love to hear about your summer plans--what's crackin with you kids?  Summer reading lists anyone?And before the semester draws to a close I want to clue you guys into yet another exciting event (if you can forgive the shameless self-promotion).  Tomorrow night at 7:00, the NYU Bookstore will feature poetry readings from Deborah Landau, Kevin Prufner, Joni Wallace, and Tom Healy.  Deborah is not only the director of the Creative Writing Program, but also a not-too-shabby poet.  I highly recommend it!  And if you see a pretty fly looking dude in his purple apron scurrying to and fro in the bookstore tomorrow night, stop to say "hey."  Y'all know I love some recognition.

Now the Feminists Have Beef with Jennifer Egan, Too

in

If you remember, chick lit authors and loud Twitter presences Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult were really pissed earlier this year with all the press Jonathan Franzen's Freedom was getting when it came out. They claimed that the book was being pushed to a higher level of greatness than it deserved, all because he was a man and the NYT Book Review was a "Boys Club". Google #FRANZENFREUDE or click the link above for more info-- they may have had a point. So because of this, many women writers were shooting for Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad to be the book of the year instead. And now that Goon Squad has won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, all of the literary feminists of the world should be happy, but instead they're pissed because in an interview with the Wall Street Journal hours after winning the Pulitzer, Egan inadvertently dissed CHICK LIT- NOOOOOOOOOO!Here is the quote that's causing feminist backlash all over the internets:WSJ: Over the past year, there’s been a debate about female and male writers and how they come off in the press. Franzen made clear that “Freedom” was going to be important,while  others say that Allegra Goodman was too quiet about “The Cookbook Collector.” Do you think female writers have to start proclaiming, “OK, my book is going to be the book of the century”?JE: Anyone can say anything, that’s easy. My focus is less on the need for women to trumpet their own achievements than to shoot high and achieve a lot. What I want to see is young, ambitious writers. And there are tons of them. Look at “The Tiger’s Wife.” There was that scandal with the Harvard student who was found to have plagiarized. But she had plagiarized very derivative, banal stuff. This is your big first move? These are your models? I’m not saying you should say you’ve never done anything good, but I don’t go around saying I’ve written the book of the century. My advice for young female writers would be to shoot high and not cower.Jamie Beckman, a columnist at The Frisky, wrote an article shaming Egan for acting as if the problem here was the fact that Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan was not that she plagiarized, but that she borrowed material from chick lit authors, implying that chick lit was "derivative" and "banal". Beckman mentions that Egan is “one of her favorite authors of all time,” but now expresses doubt that she’ll ever recommend Egan’s work to anyone again.Egan has yet to issue a statement apologizing or reiterating her claims.My personal opinion: Whatever girl, you won a f$&#ing Pulitzer. And it wasn't won by writing chick lit, sooooo.

Advice.

in

Whuddup fools? I know I haven't posted on this blog for god knows how long, and who knows if anyone even reads it, but here's a cool tidbit I found on Steven Elliot's The Rumpus, which is a website ALL OF YOU SHOULD BE READING. Thanks to Elissa Bassist for compiling this list of pointers.***[Some of this is stolen. But I won’t tell you what because I want to impress you.]- First piece of writing advice: “Never take credit”–Stephen Elliott (pictured above)- Your writing should amuse you; if it doesn’t, there’s hardly any point to suffering this much or being this vulnerable or getting that addicted to [fill in the thing to which you got really addicted or hope to get addicted because it’ll give you “material”].- Writing is the opportunity to take the worst things that have happened to you and turn them into the most beautiful.- Do you want someone to tell you that your short story sucks and that you should be intellectually and environmentally safe by recycling it? TOO BAD. No one can tell you this. No one gets to tell you what’s trash/recyclable; you decide.- An MFA program will really help you if you have a high self-esteem problem.- If someone judges you through your writing, that someone is doing a bad job reading.- Write every day. If you can’t do that, do this: set an egg timer for 20 minutes; get a pencil and paper and have them touch; don’t lift your pen or pencil off the paper; write “I cannot write every day” on the piece of paper until you have something else to say; do this every day.- “The moment I stop being a reader is the moment I stop being a writer”–a famous writer said this to me once.- A conversation between two writers: Writer 1 says, “Blah blah blah,” and Writer 2 says, “Shut up and write.”- You can’t dismiss an experience because there have been worse experiences.- “No one who writes good fiction has an Internet connection”–poorly paraphrased advice from Jonathan Franzen.- If anyone has told you you shouldn’t write or that no one would read your writing if he/she had a choice or that you’re unloveable, please email me at elissa.bassist@gmail.com, and I will tell you that any person who craps on your dream is a tampon popsicle.***Write like a mother fucker.MC

Is it all true?

in

Hi everyone.The semester is almost over! I'm sure we're all excited. I have news about a book some of us might have read (and if you have not read it, then perhaps you will recognize the title). The book Three Cups of Tea is under scrutiny because of questions about its accuracy. The non-fiction book talks about Mr. Gary Mortenson's tale of building schools for young girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan after he was saved by people from a small village. Was everything stated in the memoir true? How much of the truth was exaggerated? A CBS news report questions the authenticity of this book because of things like the  dates not correlating. Moreover in an interview, the author added a disclaimer. He claimed the example CBS drew upon was compressed to fit all the events that occurred within a years time frame. The company which published "Three Cups of Tea" did not have a comment on the matter.Some of you might be wondering: "What about the sequel? Is it accurate?" I'm not sure. We will have to wait and see if another report will come out on that book. "Three Cups of Tea" raises questions about the publishing company and about the regulations for memoirs. Are they well regulated? Should the regulations be stronger? What do you think?To read the full article regarding this book follow the link:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/business/media/18mortenson.html?_r=1&ref=books

Crazy On You

in

Hello all, hope you're second semester segues swimmingly.  Can anyone believe that's the year's almost over??? I for one, cannot wait for summer so I can begin tackling my comically long list of BOOKS-I-MUST-READ-RIGHT-NOW.  The process started last night when I walked over to St. Mark's Bookshop and perused their sales.  If anyone is looking for the classic local-indie-bookstore, this is the place to go.  (Shakespeare and Co. is close in terms of atmosphere but is part of a mini-chain, plus not as indebted to village history as St. Marks.)  For one thing, they have an abundant number cool/weird/obscure magazines, a great poetry section, and plenty of signed books from NYC authors scattered throughout.  Last year, for example, I was thisssss close to getting a signed copy of Patti Smith's Just Kids.  Although they don't have much event space, which is unfortunate, they do stay open to midnight--perfect for late-night book runs like the one I made on Monday night. What did I find?  The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides for only seven dollars.  And though it was MY LAST SEVEN DOLLARS, I figured it was worth it.  Food?...ehhhh.  A good book?...now we're talking.  Plus I'm excited to compare it with Sofia Coppola's film version.  (Now don't hate y'all.  Yes I saw the film first, but in my defense, I didn't know it was based on a book til afterwards.)  Time to blast the band Heart and rock some "far out" 70s vests. 

If You've Got Writer's Block:

in

Just a small, encouraging thought I had this evening that could possibly, maybe help with your Sunday night writer's block?Human beings, inherently, are storytellers. Think about it-- we dream. All of us do. Our dreams begin, and end. Things happen in them, and often they mean something. And even when its meaning is foggy, there's something being recorded there. Details from your life are being arranged in some way and it's your brain that's doing it for you. On the low, without you telling it to. Putting ideas in order and leaving an impression for you to remember when you wake up.The way our brain translates information is by literally turning it into a story. If our brains can do this subconsciously, while we're sleeping, you sure as hell should be able to do it when your eyes are still open and your brain is in tune. CHU KNOW? Great! Keep writing. Cyaaaaa.

Tips for starting your chapter one

in

Hi everyone,I'm sure many of you have really good ideas for novels, but unfortunately don't know how to start them. You're probably wondering what you need to have in the first chapter or even how much you should include. Well, Elizabeth Sims in her article "8 ways to write a 5-star chapter one" can help answer some of your questions. Her article gives  tips to writers (especially those who are freaking out) who don't know how to start their books. Some of her advice includes deciding on the story's point of view,  the tense the story will be written in, the purpose of the book, and not wasting too much time setting up the opening scene. She also states that it is imperative for starting writers to be brave. That's right;  you should not be scared of editors and agents. Sims claims they don't want perfection in manuscripts, but rather originality (still you don't want your manuscript to have silly typos, now do you?).For an in-depth reading of the article, follow the link. I also recommend reading writer's digest in general because it has a wealth of information for writers.http://www.writersdigest.com/article/8-ways-to-write-a-5-star-chapter-one/

I Bet You Think This Prompt Is About You

in

In honor of poet (and CWP professor!) Matthew Rohrer's reading and upcoming book, I thought it would be fun this week to write a poem in the style of Rohrer's "will the red hand throw me?"  Try out the prose-poem structure, perhaps employ a list or numbers for a surprising effect.  Rohrer also accomplishes a great deal with personification here, the "lives" of an old radiator and tarnished fork become a high drama for us.  Or one could go a different tack entirely (but still within the vein of the poem) and use unconventional objects to arrive at a perspective on mortality.  It will be extremely exciting to see what you guys come up with.  Feel free to respond with your poems as a comment below!1. Though our radiator is painted the color of the walls we know he's there. Whatever we set on top of him bursts angrily into flame. He has come to be known as Petulant. He has come to be known as Wasted Space. To be contrary, the radiator will not heat us when we need it. "If only I could find his fucking face," I say to her (who sleeps beside me), "I'd stick something in his eye. I'd stick this in his eye." And I hold out a fork. Night has grown up around us and this luminous fork is our only light. 2. By the light of our luminous fork I see the old Mexican shortwave radio weeping on the corner. All her tubes are cracked and it is late in the century. No one will be putting on a hat and boots to find tubes for her, because they can't be found. She is like the last auk in its cage with a shattered wishbone, while the naturalists were helpless and could offer to bring it something, again and again. She is like the last passenger pigeon when it realized it was the last passenger pigeon. We don't notice her anymore. "God's curse on you for ignoring me," she used to moan at night. Now she only weeps or says her prayers, but either way we can't hear her because her tubes are withered and it is late in the century. 3. The luminous fork is also worthy of investigation: Our grandparents cannot remember when the luminous fork first came into their lives. It was prefigured by the tools of Poseidon and Michael. It has appeared in my poems before. It is the last of the luminous flatware and is lonely in our drawer. Imagine a luminous fork in the company of our silverware and their steely glances. Think about this fork who cannot share his secrets with the dark knives, who will never lie with the smooth spoons. The luminous fork knows that someday when I open the drawer I won't recognize him among the tarnished forks pointing at me, just as I am told one day there will come a knock at my door that I won't answer. P.S. Peeps:  Head over to the West 10th launch party this saturday night.  Special shout out to mah gurl Malarie Gokey who is among this year's poets!!!  Here's the facebook event page for more info... 

REVIEW: Yoko Ogawa's HOTEL IRIS

in ,

At a party about a month ago, I picked up a thin paperback that was sitting on my friend's kitchen table called One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed. I hadn't heard a thing about it but apparently everybody else had-- the cover claimed it was an international bestseller (translated originally from Italian) with over 1,000,000 copies sold. One Hundred Strokes is an ostensibly autobiographical novella that recounts a Sicilian schoolgirl's sexual exploits over about a year. It isn't really a coming-of-age story-- it's more like borderline soft/hardcore erotica, a strange book about a young girl who discovers her body and "wants to explore its limits," asking for help from a few older men she finds to seduce her on the way. I took it home with me and read it quickly, and it was quite a romp, as far as that kind of stuff goes. I say "romp" because it isn't a story of a sexually-curious girl who gets hurt and learns a lesson at the end after something tragically rape-y happens to her. Melissa P, the novella's protagonist, doesn't really learn many lessons. She is in control the entire time. She learns about her body as she goes along-- she is entirely conscious of what is being done to her and how her body reacts to it. So she's a likable protagonist, because she isn't stupid. Sure she's naive, as most sixteen year old girls are, but she has limits for herself and eventually knows when to hold her hands up and say "no." I wouldn't go as far to say that this book was a good book, because it wasn't. It's a translated text, and the prose just kinda pedals through until it gets you to the end.Similarly, Yoko Ogawa's Hotel Iris also follows a naive protagonist who goes through a journey of sexual enlightenment and awakening -- sort of. The difference between One Hundred Strokes' Melissa P and Hotel Iris's Mari is that while Melissa P falls in love (healthily, almost normally) with the idea of sex, Mari instead falls in love with a fifty eight year old sadist who lives on an island off the coast of her tiny Japanese shore town. He whips her, and binds her, and essentially makes her his slave, and she doesn't think twice-- because she loves him. And so all these things he does to her, she "LIKES IT", or thinks she does- because of how in love with him she is, she doesn't know anything else. Originally written in Japanese, the translated prose of Hotel Iris is really quite beautiful. There are moments in the story during which the writing itself is just as exciting as the suspense you feel during the graphic sex scenes between Mari and her "lover". (There is one chapter in particular in which Mari and the old Russian translator visit a traveling circus that does nothing to advance the plot but is gorgeously descriptive and sad, and may be the literary highlight of the entire book.)My one issue with Iris, though, is Mari herself. The author gives us reason enough to like her-- having grown up beneath her mother's strict grip, it's exciting to watch Mari invent excuses to leave her post at the front desk of her family's run-down motel to go gallivant with the old translator. But this is where Mari's agency stops. In any scene where Mari is with translator, her character draws inward and becomes-- boring, maybe? Although the observations she makes about her lover are certainly perceptive and intriguing (the old man is actually quite a fascinating character in his own rite and not at all entirely despicable), they all come from a place of utter entrancement, pure infatuation. The fact that Mari is so in love with this stranger, the fact that she never once questions her feelings towards him, makes her quite limited as a protagonist. Even during the climax of the story, during which Mari is exposed to a truly humiliating circumstance, her inner thoughts sway only slightly-- she's still so in love with the translator that her thoughts come close to being inconsequential in the context of the events she's experiencing. Mari's lack of any sort of emotional revelation, big or small, made me question how to feel at the end of the book-- is Mari's blamelessness what makes this story tragic? What makes the story good? Or is the ending a sort of triumph for Mari? It's difficult to decide. Which, I suppose, is a good thing.Unlike Hotel Iris, One Hundred Strokes doesn't leave you with much of a feeling at all. Because Melissa is never really hurt, although she is likable, there is no reason to really feel for her. It certainly made me question the thought that a protagonist has to be likable in order for a book to be good. In this case, with these two books, the answer to that was blurred for me. I'm certain I much preferred Hotel Iris to One Hundred Strokes.So:Do not read: One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed by Melissa PInstead, read: Hotel Iris by Yoko OgawaAlso, while we're on the topic, watch Secretary!Enjoy the snow?CD

Getting to Know the Bounties of the CWP Website

in , , ,

Hello! Long time no blog. I blush. And I digress. So right to business:The NYU Creative Writing Program website is chock full of fun things to listen to when putting off homework/studying. I want to bring two such gems to attention.Did you know that NYU CWP and Slate magazine collaborated to create the Open Book series of videocasts with famous writers? People you admire and envy? Intelligent, intelligent folks? You can now listen to them and SEE them moving and breathing and being alive and successful right in front of your eyes, being interviewed by our own Fearless Leader and Director Deborah Landau, along with Slate's (and now NYU's as well) Meghan O'Rourke. The likes of John Ashbery, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Junot Díaz reside in the link below.Check them out here.And this I did already know about: the CWP has been putting up lovely podcasts of the past couple of semester's reading series. If you missed out on catching your favorite writer visiting NYU--or if you desperately want to remember that astonishing turn of phrase that writer said and you without your writing implement repeated over and over on the walk back home but forgot right at the door--your problems are solved.Check the podcasts out here.Perhaps you have already discovered such corners and gems. Alack (changin' it up). You super sleuth.

Notes on the margins

in ,

Spring Break is here and I'm sure we're all ecstatic. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean you get time off from reading though---how can you  with all those readings you were assigned? While doing those reading assignments, I'm sure majority of us take notes on the side; for some of us it's probably become a habit. This habit of margin writing is called marginalia. Even library books aren't spared from marginalia; I've taken out many library books with underlined sentences and scribbles on the sides. Famous writers like Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Jane Austen and Nelson Mandala were margin writers. The books that  they wrote side notes on are under lock and key in some  libraries, where students can read them but can't take them out.Margin writing offers great insight  as to what the reader thought as he or she read the book. It shows how differently the same passage, the same  book can resonate with various people. Marginalia, however, is slowly disappearing because of technology. With gadgets like kindles and e-books people are no longer buying books and jotting down notes in them. If you would like to learn more on the deterioration of margin writing, read this article:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/books/21margin.html

Roam If You Want To

in

Hello peeps and a very welcome hello to spring break....A bit of bad news first before the festivities:  I wasn't able to attend tonight's reading at the New School with both Jonathan Franzen and Jhumpa Lahiri (tickets are now sold out anyway '_' )  If you are one of the lucky ones please feel free to comment with your reaction!  The decision to group those two together is worthy of commentary in itself.  Perhaps their use of multi-generational families and strong characters  bridges the gap between them--Franzen typically explores Midwestern dysfunction and Lahiri, the process of immigration and acclimation. I'm sure that their discussion on what unites them would be pretty fascinating to witness.At any rate I suppose the best I can do now is guess (le sigh).  But forgive me, THAT"S NOT THE SPRING BREAK SPIRIT.So peeps,  I highly encourage you to write about your travel, or lack of travel, experiences this week.  Approach it with a journalistic eye a la A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again or even the more lighthearted  Eat, Pray, Love. Better yet, allow your experiences to inspire your creative side.  Blur the boundaries between travel journal and fictional story like Kerouac did with On the Road, in a tradition, I would argue, that reaches as far back as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.Until next time then, enjoy your various pilgrimages...and if you see that Wife of Bath along the way tell her to simma down for goodness sake...simply not classy.

I Guess You're Just What I Needed

in

Hello all, hope the coffee is strong, the atmosphere comfortable, and the books enchanting.  When you are not busy counting and re-counting down the days to Spring Break (no judgment) there's a website that may be worth your time, even if it's just to know what the rest of the world is reading, (i.e. Seamus's exact situation.)  It's called Publishers' Weekly and from a brief perusal, the best comparison I can make is to call it the Wall Street Journal of the book world.  Though a good deal of the site really is devoted to the business side (especially telling was their bold tab at top of home page  BORDERS BANKRUPTCY WATCH: ALL OUR COVERAGE) there are some useful layman's tools--reviews, blurbs, and the comprehensive On-Sale Calendars which gave a preview of upcoming titles.  Apart from the typical releases from the omnipresent Jodi Picoult, Nora Roberts, and the ilk (again, no judgment) it turns out that everyone and their mother wants to release a memoir or cookbook.  I wish I was kidding but literally, April's selection is flooded with celebrities from Shania Twain to Billy Joel to Teresa from The Real Housewives of New Jersey.  Perhaps literature really is in it's dying throes, or maybe I'm just jaded, but I only found one promising book on the whole list:  Arthur Philips' The Tragedy of Arthur, a fictionalized memoir.  The interview with Philips, though brief, was enough to get me excited for the book.  Such examples lead me to believe that Publishers Weekly does meet a need for a book-starved culture...even if it does sometimes pander to a lowbrow set.Until next time!P.S. ***To be fair, Teresa Giudice can flip tables and help others make "fabulicious" Italian cuisine.  I for one, cannot claim such level of achievement.

The Death of the Bookstore Franchise

in

Helloooo from New Jersey. Yesterday I had the displeasure of getting the e-mail that a Borders in my area was closing-- specifically, the Borders I grew up loving and going to all the time ever since I was a little bookwormin' weirdo. There's been a Borders at the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, NJ ever since I can remember. First there was the old one, with the red-lettered sign (#90sswag?)... small, cozy, two stories... the children's room in the basement, I remember, had a stage for storytelling. This was before Barnes and Noble got all macho with their bookstores--this was before the franchising really started. I remember being about 8 sitting up on that stage waiting for my dad and reading an Amelia Bedelia book while these two pre-pubescent twerps next to me peeped a book about the human body. They were laughing at the penises and making sure it was tilted AWAY from me to protect my widdle eyes. They couldn't have been more than two years older than me. When my dad returned with a cup of coffee (It was not Seattle's Best-- Borders didn't start serving coffee in their stores until 2004), the kids had since gone, and right before heading to the checkout I placed my Amelia Bedelia book back on the shelf and instead picked up the Anatomy book the kids had left sitting on the stage, and offered it to the cashier for scanning and bagging.But then they closed that one, at some point while I was in high school, and they opened the Mondo Borders in the new wing of the GSP. This monster was created to compete with the immense Barnes & Noble that had opened down Route 17 a few years prior-- this new Borders was complete with the coffeeshop, the racks of DVDs, and even a designated area for selling clothing (at the time, probably all Harry Potter related). But monster or not: the new store was exciting. It was huge. They'd succeeded in creating a bookstore-turned-hang out spot, turned study-area, turned empire. More rows of books to leaf through and more comfortable couches to waste time on, and coffee or iced chais to sip on whether you were tired or not.In the past year or so there have been articles upon articles about how large bookstore chains are out and independent bookstores are in, as less and less people are actually going out and buying a novel when they could just as easily stream a movie via Netflix instant watch or download a book from a website. And now I was really about to understand what monster had actually been slain-- the store whose opening seemed so triumphant to me six or seven years ago is one of the  locations Borders Group is closing after the decision last month to file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.And so I made my way to the Borders at the Garden State Plaza yesterday which is set to close at the end of March. The entire store, as one can imagine, was in disarray-- magazines strewn all over the place, DVDs in the Poetry section, sets of Seinfeld series placed underneath the "NEW PAPERBACKS" table. Etc. Black and yellow signs hung from the light fixtures, proclaiming that "EVERYTHING MUST GO"-- 20% off all fiction, 40% off most everything else. The signs were everywhere-- the store felt more like a warehouse than anything else. Certainly no longer a hang-out spot. Certainly no empire.It was depressing. I trudged over to the Fiction section, picked up a copy of A Visit from the Goon Squad, and wandered around aimlessly to see if there was anything else I wanted to grab. And Then: I spotted the line. At first, it made me feel a little less bad about things. The line was the longest I'd ever seen it-- curving around the DVD section first and then through the animal calendars, it was the kind of line you see outside the Apple store the morning a new iPhone is released.  It raised my spirits a bit. People don't suck! People do like to read!I got on line and to the left of me I noticed a teenage couple fiddling with the Borders' version of the Kindle, the $150 (now only $99!) "Kobo". Unlike the Barnes & Noble down the highway, this Borders doesn't have an information desk manned by five or six "E-Reader Experts" whose job it is to push the e-reader on you like a travel agent would a timeshare package.  The Kobos simply sit on their own respective wooden table, next to "Great Gift Ideas", with only one Kobo actually hooked up and running for shoppers to fiddle with. (Some say this is where the Borders Group went wrong-- when e-readers started to become popular in 2008, Borders outsourced their e-reader sales to Amazon, who, in turn, were the ones to make a fortune on them. Barnes & Noble, however, did not outsource to Amazon, and now the B&N "Nook" accounts for 25% of the e-reader market.) I eavesdrop on the conversation and I hear the boy ask his girlfriend, "Can you click on this?" (Click on what? I'm wondering.)To which the girl responds, "I dunno, but I think you can use it to play games.""Huh," he says, before pounding away at a side button.There were about fifty to sixty people on that Borders line last night. I believe I spent about thirty minutes on it, which is a long time to stand on any line that doesn't promise a rollercoaster at the end. And I shit you not when I say that, as far as my eyes could see, not one person (not ONE) had in their hands an actual novel. The tiny happiness I felt when I first saw the line dissolved into minor whitegirlproblem-esque despair.So perhaps it isn't the bookstore franchise that is dying-- perhaps it just comes down to the simple fact that people just aren't reading novels anymore. Perhaps literature really is soon to be dead. But I refuse to believe that people can no longer find time in their lives for stories. And, luckily, eavesdropping on another couple's conversation left me feeling a tad bit better about the entire thing.Right before it was my turn at the cash register (my last time ever at this store), an elderly couple in line behind me start to get a bit rowdy. "I can't carry this shit anymore," the woman says to her husband. "Hold it for me." I turn around to watch as the woman passes over to her husband an entire collection of Burts Bees products that was marked down 40% from its original price."Oh." The woman is suddenly sidetracked. "Grab that funny New Jersey book. Is that on sale?"Her husband picks up Weird NJ from a nearby rack, and begins to flip through it. "You want this? This can't be real," he says to his wife."Who cares?" she yells, irritated. "That's not the damn point!"The old lady grabs the book from her husband and stuffs it under her arm, making an immediate decision to purchase it.Well , fine, okay then. I am okay with that spirit.