10/18 Response

As I made my way through A History of the Book in America Vol 2, I realized that this introduction highlights many of the same aspects of the early republic and print culture that we read about in Starr and Davidson.  Following along the same general path as our previous writers, Robert Gross seeks to explore the rise of print culture in America, and as is typical in an introduction, Gross highlights the basic foundation of print culture and briefly stated the three main areas of focus for this rather long volume: economic growth and capitalism, democracy and the public sphere, and nationalism and national identity.  Perhaps I am becoming versed in this subject matter, as much of the introduction made reference to similar material that we've read in previous weeks; however, due to the almost 700 pages of text and notes, I can assume that we are on the path to discovering the material in even more depth than before!

Out of all of the material in Gross's introduction, I found myself pondering the role of the face-to-face book selling technique that was prevalent in the early nineteenth century.  According to Gross, the vast territory in the early republic provided for quite a logistical problem in terms of selling books to the general population and the answer was book agents who made rounds selling orders to the local families in rural areas.  Gross suggests that locals worried that either they would pay and not get their book(s) or that they would not be able to rid themselves of the book seller.  The later immediately made me think of Mr. Haney on Green Acres, who was always peddling something to Oliver Wendell Douglas, and it usually involved some level of trickery, similar to the fictional story that Gross provides with the book agent and the minister.  In this light, the book agent (or all face-to-face salesmen in the example of Green Acres) seems to be destined to be dishonest.

Mr. Haney, Green Acres 

However, Gross also makes the point that book selling in the peddler fashion was hard work and often unrewarded, quoting a salesman as stating, "To bring books among such rabble is like throwing Pearls before Swine" (26).  Wow!  In contrast to the previous view of the dishonest salesman, this book seller seems to have little faith in the book buyer.  Again, this idea of the face-to-face is interesting to me.  Why is it that a face-to-face transaction could have so much doubt and frustration from both sides?  I began to think about my own buying experience with face-to-face salesman.  Gone are the days when people go door to door selling books, but it is not beyond my memory. Apparently, I am on a TV show reference roll, as I remember the episode of Friends when Joey buys one book of an encyclopedia series.  He is so proud of his purchase, even though the fifty dollars is an extreme amount of money for his financially strapped situation.

Perhaps this clip explores both perspectives: the book seller needing to make a sale and the book buyer being put in a position to make a purchase.  Of course, this is far from identical to the book selling situation of the early republic, but it relates directly to the buying and selling of books using a face-to-face method.  I realize that we often, especially in our technologically friendly environment, avoid the face-to-face transaction when we buy our own books.  The days of door-to-door book sellers may be behind us, as this Friends clip dates itself, and we often - or at least I will owe up to this - initially doubt door-to-door salesmen of any kind; however, how many of us even go into a bookstore to purchase our books now?  I, for one, buy everything on Amazon, where I manage my book lists and orders with a click of the button.  Even Gross mentions the change in book buying when books could "be sold through the mail" beginning in 1851 (25).  There seems to be a theme in the idea that buying books from a distant subject, via mail in mid-nineteenth century or online today, is less problematic for both parties than physically purchasing from an individual.  Just something to consider when we think about how similar/different we actually are from book buyers of past generations.

On a side note, I am tempted here to also include a clip from You've Got Mail that highlights the role of the small bookstore; however, that would transition even more off-topic that this blog already is!