A Bookseller’s Elegy

“Do you have the book Hillbilly Elegy?”
“Yeah, we should have a copy on the front table; let me grab one for you.”
“Is it any good?”
“…It’s sold really well.”
“I hear it’s so powerful and important, especially now, since, well, you know…”

Working at an independent bookstore in the Greater Boston area, I find myself having some variation of this conversation a few times a week. To be fair, bookselling, like any retail or service job, comes with its fair share of repetitions. For example, the sales pitch for our loyalty program is so ingrained in me that it comes pouring out in a breathless flurry of words. Such things are largely innocuous, a necessary (if not occasionally tedious) part of the job. But when it comes to the above conversation concerning bestselling memoir, there is something a bit more personal at stake, viz. my moral objection to the book that has become, for conservatives and liberals alike, a means of understanding the rise of “Trumpism.” And while it’s easy enough to take this moral high ground, it comes into