I feel dirty

[forsyth]

There's a problem with working at a bookstore. It means, every so often, you have to sell somebody something that you know is bad, lame, and utterly irredeemable. Sometimes I can tell people this, other times, I can't really because I know they won't care. So I sell them their horrible book of lies and poor writing, and feel a dirty because I helped support people churning out more of this trash.

The case in point, this time, was Left Behind, the horribly written series of books and movies that are basically the apocalyptic fringes of the Religious Right gloating over how everybody's going to die in the end of the world except them. Thew books are based around their weirdly "literal" interpretation of Revelations, which involves a lot of reading into things that aren't literally never mentioned in the entire Bible, the whole "Rapture" idea first among them. If you want more explanation of the problems with these books, clink the link above, which leads to Slacktivist's page by page dissection of the first book. But the ultimate scary thing about these books? They're written by and for people who think the end of the world will be a good thing, and look forward to it, and try and hurry that day through politics and begging their idea of God. That's the kind of things the bad guys in D&D or Buffy or something do.

And this came up, because yesterday a lady came in, and bought all three of the Left Behind movies, plus most of the series. For her children. I'm sorry, kids. I'm really really sorry. Not just for the years of therapy they'll have to go through if they escape the millenialist cult, but also because they'll have to sit through the books. And the thing is, there's nothing I could have done. Refuse to sell them to her? They'd send another person to run the register. And if that failed, the lady'd just go over to Borders or the religious bookstore or somewhere else and still inflict them on the kids. I could have tried to convince her, but that was hardly the place, and I'm 95% sure nothing I would have said would have made a difference to her, anyway.

But I still feel dirty inside.

Comments

[frustratedpilot]

Remember this: kids rebel. One or the other of them will discard their parents' example, shave their hair off and find a guru in California.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

That's not always better.

[leticia.livejournal.com]

What you need is to print up nice http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/left_behind/index.html bookmarks and slip them into the bag with a Left Behind purchase.

[leticia.livejournal.com]

I do, mostly, jest. One wouldn't want you to risk getting fired over such things, and the chance of a mortally offended patron is possible.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, there's a whole SHELF full of the atrocious books just waiting to have helpful cards stuck in them. And I've actually seen religious groups stick their own cards in books before, and hell, slacktivist is pretty darn religious anyways. (The person, not the site. Though he talks about it on the site a good bit, which is part of the point)

[leticia.livejournal.com]

He is religious, yes, and so is his commentary on things. Especially the LB books, which he lambasts for bad theology almost as much as for bad writing. :p And he is, of course, right.

[surlyben.livejournal.com]

You see, now, I *like* that the Left Behind books exist. Granted, I wouldn't read them, and I'm not really familiar with them beyond the slacktivist analyses. Yes, they are evidently crap, and the characters all have names like gay porn stars, and I find the ideas in them objectionable. But they are *post apocalyptic* crap with porn star names and objectionable ideas. And I like that.

As far as impressionable children reading them, well, I read a lot of dangerous sci-fi crap as a kid, and so did most of my friends, and I don't think it warped us too bad... (I mean, Gor books, Xanth, that Heinlein rape novel... My god, it's all embarrassingly awful, but we all got better.) At least the kids are reading.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

It's not really post-apocalyptic. It's post-Rapture. All the bits about the kinds of things that would happen if a third of the planet's people vanished pretty much get ignored, it seems.

But what worries me about the books is how MANY of them there are, and how many they've sold, and how many people actually believe something along those lines. And that some of those people are literally working to bring about the end of the world. Trying to fulfill prophecies and find the right incantations to bring about God's Wrath and that sort of thing. Like comic book villains. And that's scary.

[surlyben.livejournal.com]

Oh. Well, I stand corrected then. I thought it was basically Mad Max (or Y the Last Man?) with an extra helping of evangelical religion... Or at least like that weird Jehovah's Witness apocalypse art (http://www.boingboing.net/2005/10/12/awesomely_weird_jeho.html) (alas, the real link is no longer valid.)


And, yeah, the actively working to bring about the end of the world thing is way scary.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

They may go more into the actual apocalypse in the later books. But I think The Apocalypse is the title to like the second to last book. THe rest is all the "Tribulations". I'm not certain, I've ventured no farther than the first.

[surlyben.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I suspect that they are using the christian eschatology jargon-word "Apocalypse", and not the more general sense of "apocalypse" to mean "the end of civilization as we know it"

[meridethfate.livejournal.com]

Freedom of religion...not from it. The wonderful thing about being human is that you dont have to atone for others stupidity. The great thing about being American is that you can let them be stupid and still get paid.