Today, Susie and I walked from Place Maubert to rue du Four, and turned up to go to rue Princesse to visit the Village Voice, an English language bookstore in Paris. We were stunned to find it closed. A waitress in an eatery next door said they just couldn't make a go of it anymore. So we bought two dozen cartons of Nespresso capsules on rue Bonaparte two blocks away and trudged home, pausing to rest in the garden of the Cluny -- the Museum of the Middle Ages at the corner of Boulevard St. Germain and Boulevard St. Michel.
When I got home, I googled Village Voice, Paris, and closing, and up came a 2012 story in the NEW YORKER about the demise of the famous bookstore. Susie and I subscribe to the NEW YORKER but never noticed the story. I guess maybe I should look at something else besides the cartoons.
Radical or no radical, I hate it when some things change.
You still have Shakespeare & Co. or the Abbey Bookshop in the Fifth Arrondissement.
ReplyDeleteBut Village Voice could not compete with Amazon anymore...
"Radical or no radical, I hate it when some things change."
ReplyDeleteThat's how things are. Phersv is right: nobody can compete with Amazon anymore.
This is how Amazon works now (courtesy of that paradigm of journalistic integrity, the Daily Mail):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2286227/Amazons-human-robots-Is-future-British-workplace.html
This is how it will work in the future (no R2D2 or C-3PO there, though):
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-30/amazons-robotic-future-a-work-in-progress