Johnny H.
Yelp
In the ancient Sumerian period known commonly as the 2010s, your pal Johnny swapped his $80/day coke habit for an $80/week book buying habit. Now your pal doesn't want any pats on the back for cleaning himself up. You can save your hugs for the next celebrity who tumbles out of rehab -- if only to return there a year or two later. I mean, most of you who live in gentrified neighborhoods like Fort Greene just walk past anyone who isn't making at least $60,000/year.
No, the theory behind this choice was strictly economic, although your pal can't say that he misses meeting creepy dudes on street corners or ending up in some sketchy motel room with suspicion stains on the wall.
Giving up blow for the sake of books meant that your pal would no longer smashing the piggy banks of friend's kids to score. On the whole, it was probably a better use of his time.
And so on the first day that your pal Johnny got clean, he decided that reading would be his new calling. It was many years ago when your pal stepped foot in this independent bookstore, under the theory that supporting independent businesses was also part of his new Zen life. Spread the wealth, you know. Support the costermongers and the milliners and the humble bootstrapping merchants of Brooklyn. Be a Robin Hood to the little guys. Such was the incoherent mishmash of capitalism and philanthropy that your pal had conjured up while in rehab shortly before settling on the new reading life.
Upon entering the store, your pal was sneered at by two employees. The big difference here between these two vegan-looking Napoleons and your pal was that your pal was over thirty and these two pipsqueaks were under thirty. Ageism, of course, is as old as time. Nevertheless, your pal Johnny is, if anything, unflappable and resilient. It takes a lot of resilience to kick any habit and start another one that is decidedly healthier for you.
So your pal approached the counter:
-- You got any Norman Mailer?
-- You want to read that misogynist?
-- I hear he's good.
-- He stabbed his wife.
-- Yeah, I know he stabbed his wife. But I want to see what the fuss was all about, you know?
I was then given a stern lecture and rebuked for not being woke enough. I was told that my money should go to an emerging writer of color.
-- Well, maybe I'll read that writer later. But, for now, I'm interested in reading Mailer.
-- It's people like you.
People like your pal Johnny?
In the end, your pal bought THE NAKED AND THE DEAD at another bookstore. I mean, it wasn't as if your pal was buying Ayn Rand or Bill O'Reilly. Although when your pal left Greenlight, he did hear some additional grumbling about David Foster Wallace and what an evil man he apparently was. The sheer condescension that your pal received from this bookstore was far greater than any of the holier-than-thou snark that your pal had ever received from record store clerks shortly before the hammer came smashing down.
Greenlight has an enviable collection of titles. Even so, call your pal Johnny crazy, but you shouldn't have to feel as if someone is trying to cancel you simply because your particular reading preference doesn't match the sneering hubris of the jaded twentysomething behind the counter. I mean, it's not as if that rapscallion ever had the focus and the effrontery to try kicking drugs.