Right, so I've been neglecting the urge to contribute anything to this bluddy thing but not for lack of anything to say. Rather, I've been busybusybusy with the start of an entirely excellent new job coinciding with the fag-end of a dull and drab and dreary old job. The outcome was three weeks of solid bookselling and literally not a single unaccounted-for minute for nearly a month. The new job finds TheDiscourse at Toronto's finest bookstore, doing shipping/receiving sorts of things. The new job is head and shoulders and abdomen above the old job.
I was thinking today about how booksellers have an absolute advantage over academics as far as the fashionability of literature, criticism and analysis is concerned; the academy (at least the litewawy and culture wonk end of it) is predicated on accounting for the vanguard of ideas and creative artifacts but ultimately publishers, and by extension booksellers, are responsible for allowing these things to be accounted for. As a result I have a much better notion of what is au courant now than any chatty cathy cult stud senior ever could simply because I see what's coming and going bookwise. The resulting sense of superiority and complacency is terrific. It makes me feel better about dropping out of university.