The Towering Irrelevance

A brief note to Chad Post, because his comments section requires a facebook login, which, no thanks.

Here is Chad over at Three Percent, the blog of his really great press Open Letter, spurred into commenting again by today’s Times op-ed from Richard Russo about Amazon’s recent showrooming app promotion. 

A point of clarification: Chad Lives in Rochester, is a swell dude, is very supportive of indie bookstores and translation, and has taken grant money from Amazon for his press. So he’s a great guy but not uncompromised. Anyhow read his post first.

Dear Chad,

AMAZON IS A COMPLETELY BAD THING. There is no simpler or more needless equation than to say that Amazon = Wal-Mart. In many ways the entire Amazon warehousing model was built by Wal-Mart veterans. To call Amazon a tech company is at this point obscurantive. Amazon is a fulfillment business, and a cruel and manipulative one. To that end, they’re working to convince people that cheap fast fulfillment is all that matters. And I know you’d be among the first to argue otherwise.

I agree that the big six (and Russo and King and that reactionary Turow) are not the purest of spokespersons for a world of literature divorced from bloodthirsty capitalism, but to say that Amazon is not a bad thing—or I guess not that bad a thing—because Wal-Mart and Target are also bad things is facetious Chad.  Anyhow, let’s argue about it more in person soon.

Dustin

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