Last Call!
A call from Austin Writers’ League board member Suzy Spencer last week corroborated the perception that while it takes work to produce tragedy, the serious work lies in creating comedy. Spencer, Esther’s Follies Shannon Sedwick, and other AWL volunteers have been working around the clock lately to ensure that their Big Hair Follies event October 26, 7pm, at Esther’s Follies will have audience members rolling in the aisles. With Ann Richards reported to be singing, Cactus Pryor and Liz Carpenter playing George and Barbara Bush, and with dancing hair spray cans abounding, Big Hair Follies looks to be a success; dress rehearsal this Tuesday indicated as much. Scads of local restaurants like Paggi House and Star of India will be serving hors d’oeuvres at the event, and the $22 ticket cost raises funds for AWL, so not only can you not go wrong in attending, you’d be missing a rare Austin event if you’re a no-show. Call 499-8914 for ticket information. AWL often has an answering machine that answers their calls when staff members are out of the office, so you should leave a name and phone number where you can be reached if you’re interested in buying tickets.
Large and Small
There’s a debate coursing through the nation, one often addressed in the pages of this paper, about the nature of the influence chain stores have on small, local, independent stores. By no means will the debate be decided right here and now in this column, but it’s an issue that I keep returning to when thinking about the opening of the new Barnes & Noble superstore, 2246 Guadalupe, on October 29. The clearest insight into the issue that I’ve seen comes from two traditionally opposed camps, James Gardner in a May 20, 1996 article in the National Review and a June 20, 1991 Op-Ed piece in The New York Times by Victor Navasky, publisher and editorial director of The Nation. Both, oddly enough, come out in support of the chain, though Navasky, a good liberal to the core, hedges somewhat in his support. Navasky, in fact, bemoans the loss of New York’s Upper West Side Shakespeare & Company to Barnes & Noble’s “two new superstores [which] have come down on my old neighborhood shop like the Assyrians who came down like the wolf on the fold” while confessing that he buys most of his books from the chain. Gardner asserts that “the pseudo-egalitarian claim that chain stores represent big business squeezing out the little guy is ill-considered, not to say hypocritical on the part of tweedy types looking to defend their overpriced and understocked enclaves against the middle-brow hordes.” If you’re not a tweedy type and yet still find reason to oppose the increasing visibility of Barnes & Noble in the local books world, consider Navasky’s concluding statement: “Perhaps the best way to keep the chains on course is to patronize and strengthen the independents… Such bookshops are, as Shakespeare once wrote about the heart’s true place, `my home of love. If I have rang’d, like him that travels, I return again.'”
Barnes & Noble Guadalupe will occupy 26,500 square feet in the old University Co-op location. It will specialize in academic texts but offer some 175,000 additional titles. On October 28, 7-10pm, the store will host a preview night honoring University of Texas Press, its authors, and UT faculty. A portion of sales that evening will benefit First Book, a national nonprofit that distributes books to children who have little or no access to books outside of school. n
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This article appears in October 24 • 1997 and October 24 • 1997 (Cover).