Yesterday I went to the mall on a personal errand. The mall has a bookstore, or at least a Borders Express posing as a bookstore, so I also thought I’d drop in there and buy a play to read. A 30ish clerk of indeterminate shape came over to help me.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked.

“I’m looking for your drama section,” I said.

“That would be in with literature,” she said, corralling me precisely where I already was and was already looking. Then to confuse matters, she added, “If what you’re looking for isn’t there, it’ll be in fiction.”

“Why?” I said. “It isn’t fiction.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s drama.”

“What’s drama?” she said.

I glanced at her badge to make sure that she did indeed work at this bookstore, then looked around to make sure that this was indeed a bookstore. I gave myself a qualified yes to each inquiry. “Plays,” I said.

“If we have any, they’ll be on the bottom shelf.”

So of the literature section, which contains novels that are in some way “literature” but not “fiction,” the bottom shelf would be reserved for plays if there were any. I looked. There weren’t. Unless you count those of Mr. Shakespeare, which don’t count: In my mind, they are there by dint of being “literature” and because no one can hang a shingle that says “book store” without having them, even if your name is Borders Express. What was there, on the “drama” shelf of the “literature” section of the “bookstore” were a few anthologies of poems. I leafed through one and liked it a lot and was going to buy it but then quickly decided that I didn’t want to reward Borders Express, so I put it back.

Macy’s, by the way, had socks in the menswear department next to the shoes, and handkerchiefs where one would expect them, too, and both salespeople I asked knew this. If only Macy’s sold books.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 7:51 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.