My newest McSweeney's column is now live, where I talk a little bit about one particular bookshelf at Barnes and Noble. Here's a little preview:
I think about this shelf a lot. Sometimes I just stand in the store and wonder who all of these women are. There must be some special contingent of them out there, some unique modeling subgroup that continually dons turn of the century clothing and stares wistfully off into the distance. I wish I could talk to one. I have so many questions.2 Surely there are not enough of these books made for the models to earn a living off of them. So what else do they do, when they are between covers? Do they also sell lace gloves, or let their hair down occasionally for a Land’s End catalog? Do they have an ongoing, bitter rivalry with the milk-skinned, red-lipped army of brunettes that leer out of the vampire romance novels two shelves over? Do the two groups have crazy brawls at modeling conventions, Anchorman-style, aiming only at legs and torsos to avoid damaging each other’s faces? Or are they, perhaps, actually the same group of women, just done up in different colors?
Read the rest at McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
If you're still waiting for the sequel to The Towers, don't worry. I'm diligently working on it in between baseball games.
