This weekend, I was working at the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association annual trade show in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. To most of the conventioneer’s confusion we were sharing the Soviet-era convention hall with a gun show. Since I’ve been old enough to choose where I live, I’ve chosen to live in the kinds of places where the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” signs are implied. In my world, men wear shirts with sleeves, women take a year to go through a can of hairspray if they even own it at all, and if people own guns, they don’t need to advertise it on their car or their tattoos. Arguably, there are a couple of people in and around the Hudson Valley that fit this description, but I don’t see them in the course of my regular day.
So seeing all these gun-totin’, target practicin’, American flag drapin’ rifle monkeys in the same building as people who are so literary they balk at the idea of mass market books was slightly unnerving. It was kind of like growing up in Oz and being transported to Kansas.
The Daily Tannenbaum 
Posted by Book Nerd on September 23, 2006 at 12:47 am
I sympathize — I grew up in a part of California where gun racks and camo wear were as common in some neighborhoods as cars on blocks, and my own dad used to be a frequent gun show attendee/exhibitor. Having been in NYC and the “literary world” almost ten years now, there was a very strange kind of nostalgia going on there
But I got to meet you, which was one of the nice parts of the weekend. Hope to say hello next time you make it to the city from your beautiful valley.