OMFG....

[tabaqui]

Okay guys, you know i don't do this kind of post but...

What in the *fuck*?

I just called my local bookstore, which is a pretty awesome bookstore for the smallness and crumminess of this town... I needed a copy of Captain's Courageous. Not exactly an obscure book. And it's by Rudyard Kipling - not exactly an obscure author.

The person who took my order? Who is *not* a sixteen year old kid? Had no clue.

Didn't recognize the title. Didn't recognize the *author*. Had me *spell* it. I mean...good fucking lord. And was all 'oh, wow, he has a lot of books!' when the 'Kipling' list came up on her computer.

*What the fucking fuck*, people?

*flails*
*has no clue*

Comments

[innie_darling]

It's a little scary, I think, how much gets lost from generation to generation. When I taught college, my students looked blank when I said "Tennyson" or "Keats." If I said, though, "A thing of beauty is . . ." they could complete the quotation.

On the other hand, kids these days are getting books from so many more cultures and lifestyles that there's a way to see the fragmentation of canon as pretty damn cool too.

[tabaqui]

I love the idea of 'classics' of Indian or Vietnamese or Latin American literature becoming more 'the norm' or well known, but still! It just boggles my mind.

And yeah, makes me sad. If i see a movie i like that was based on a book, i go read the book, *knowing* it will be different, probably better, and have lots more details. The scariest thing about 'kids these days' is they seem to have no curiosity whatsoever. Never look beyond the surface.
*sigh*

[shakatany.livejournal.com]

Are people not Kipling anymore *g* Have they never heard of Kim or The Jungle Book or Gunga Din or ...? Also all these books were made into movies. What are they teaching these days?

Shakatany

[tabaqui]

People are just nuts, i guess. His books are so good! I'm...kind of scared to know what they're teaching.

[cormallen.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I've found that Kipling is a lot less known here in the US than he was in Russia (where I grew up, and where he was only known in translation!). Sure, once one brings up Mowgli, people say "oh, the cartoon", but so many are surprised there is poetry involved, and OMG other books, surprisingly without cartoons to go with them.
< / end gripe >

[tabaqui]

To me, it's just odd. The Jungle Books is a very popular movie and you'd think people would just...want to know the source material! It's crazy. I've run into a lot of that, too, people having no clue the movie was based on a book.
*sigh*

[piratepurple.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Sometimes you get smacked in the face with the fact that when you have even an average intelligence, that means roughly half the people are stupider than you are. If you happen to be above the average mark, the number of seemingly brainless people goes up. There's no help for this. Intelligent people produce fewer offspring, in general, so the problem will only get worse.


/channeling Rodney McKay

[tabaqui]

It makes you tired, doesn't it?
*pets Rodney and you*

I support negative/no population growth as much as possible, so, yeah - the smart ones aren't breeding *at all*. We're heading toward a world of 'Real World' and Jerry Springer graduates.
*flails*

[herself_nyc]

Sad sad sad.
No one really reads Kipling anymore, I don't think--at least, maybe they still do in England but I doubt it even there.

[tabaqui]

I can't imagine! I love Kipling.
*sigh*
Woe.

[ladycat777.livejournal.com]

What. Okay, I'll admit -- I've never read Captain Courageous and wouldn't have recognized it just as a title.

But to not know Kipling? Even if you haven't personally read him? Oh my god.

Then again, I once heard a conversation among the undergrads in my building that went along the lines of: Bram Stoker? Yeah, he's that movie Dracula guy, right?

I weep.

[tabaqui]

I know!! Insane. People are just....omgsostupid it *hurts*.
Gah.
*offers tissues*

[brunettepet.livejournal.com]

Okay, minus points for not recognizing the title, but not knowing Kipling? Needing the words Captains Courageous spelled? What the hell? You work in a book store?

[tabaqui]

Man, it makes me just shudder. No wonder they don't have the damn book on their shelves.
*sigh*

Sometimes, i hate people.

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

Icon!

[tabaqui]

Heeeee!
Beaker seemed to best express my confusion and sense of *flail*.
:)

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

What young people these days don't know makes my head hurt.

For instance, the Timberline Regional Library System just gave up and let people search for author names first name first.

Julia, the world is going to hell, I swear

[tabaqui]

She's not young! She's my age or older!
*flails*

OMG, dude. That is the lamest of the lame. WTF?
*is so, so lost*

[anelith.livejournal.com]

All I can hope is that the employee was a temporary hire who was literally pulled in off the streets. Still depressing, but not as much as if he/she were a full-time staff member of a bookstore.

When I was a kid I somehow found a copy of Captains Courageous and read it for fun. Not an assignment. It was really great.

[tabaqui]

She's one of the regulars there. The staff is small and i mostly know them. Just. Wow.

Captains Courageous is one of my very, very favorite Kipling's ever. I've read it over and over and over since i first 'found' it.

[sorrelchestnut.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I've spent a lot of my life busily avoiding any of the "classics" or "serious" literature, simply because I had to read a lot of it that I didn't like in high school, but it's a phase I know I'll get over eventually, so I'm not too worried. But not to recognize the *name* Kipling, that's... man. That's really depressing.

[tabaqui]

It really, really is.

Some of the 'classics' suck. It's true. But Kipling!
Sheesh.

[deirdre-c.livejournal.com]

:0

I get the same face when my students don't know who Ross Perot or Ralph Nader are. But they're 18yo n00bs, bookstore employees have no excuse!

[tabaqui]

I know!!
Sheesh.

I may not have a brain that retains stuff like it should, but man...some people are just...*important*.

[ruric.livejournal.com]

WTF?

Works in a bookshop and doesn't know of Rudyard Kipling?

*boggles*

[tabaqui]

Yeah. Pretty nutso, if you ask me. Sheesh.

[moimoietmoi.livejournal.com]

Are you sure you called the bookstore? Is the world ending? Honestly... *hands*

[tabaqui]

Heeeeeee!
I know! Something is afoot.

[lemmealone.livejournal.com]

IT'S THE BRAINPOCALYPSE. Seriously, if the next generation gets any dumber the western world is going to look like a Romero zombie flick. I'm really starting to agree with Rodney McKay in re. the idiocy of everybody, and I'm not exactly the genius type.

I mean, fine if you'd asked someone on the street - assuming everyone in the world is familiar wth Kipling would be ethnocentric and weird. But seriously, in a bookshop?.

I need to own a bookshop. And QUIZ prospective employees.

[tabaqui]

HA!
Yes. I would so do that. If you don't/haven't/can't read, you can't work here!
*flail*

Man, that kind of future looks more and more possible.
*is skeered*

[orchid-slayer.livejournal.com]

My biggest peeve is how they've 'dummied down' so many of the classics, if you can even FIND them. (seen Uncle Tom's Cabin lately? or Huckleberry Finn?) Luckily I"m a pack rat of the worst kind and never throw out a book. Most of my 'classics' are pre 1960. Daughter has read Kipling, Twain, Steinbeck, etc. Pick a classic author and we probably own it.

[tabaqui]

Bah. I cannot *imagine* changing an author's work for *any* reason. Just...ick.

I read Tom Sawyer over and over as a kid. Didn't like HF as much, but still... I just don't fathom people, i really don't.

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

Eleanor (12) revealed to me, her shocked mother, today that she's never heard of Star Trek in any of its incarnations. Totally blank. Kirk? Spock? Who?

I swallowed hard and forced her to stare at the Wiki entry for several seconds in the hopes that something sank in.

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

And as a longtime Kipling fan, I'm shocked but not surprised somehow. When I saw that they have dumbed down versions of the LITTLE HOUSE books... well.

So books written for children, that I read as a child are now too difficult for children? Huh?

[yanagi-wa.livejournal.com]

When I was working, we had a woman come in right after the move 'A Scarlet Letter' came out. She asked for a book from the movie so I told her to go to the library. She said, "But the move is too new for the book to be in the library yet." Eeeekk!

[tabaqui]

Skeery!
Why did you tell her to go to the library, though? Just curious...

[bendtothesun.livejournal.com]

Oh lord, I have what I consider a sadder story than that.

I was in the college library today. Decided to check out Watership Down because I finally had a chance to. Took it to the lady at the desk, mind she was a Library Tech the woman is getting a degree in this, and she looks at it and goes 'This is a book?' (as opposed to the movie).

I wasn't sure what to think of the world anymore. On the other hand had a nice conversation with my mother about violent bunnies. :)

[tabaqui]

Oh, that's sad. Sheesh.
I adore Watership Down - have you started it yet?

[laazikaat.livejournal.com]

I read an old sci-fi classic once (can't remember the title or author, sorry) where the hero arrived in the future to find himself in a world where only the stupid had bred .

The few (very few) intelligent people remaining kept civilisation going by a system of 'smoke and mirrors,' fooling the population into thinking they were capable, when technology and a few key people looked after it all.

I remember that cars were built to vibrate and give the impression of high speed to the driver when they only were only going a quarter of the speed shown on the dials, as the population couldn't be trusted with higher speed vehicles.

It was a sad little story and I read it at least twenty-five years ago, and it was old then, but I think the author had something.

I deal with the general public every day at work, and the amazing amount of ignorance and just plain stupidity that flows down the phone lines is amazing, and booking a taxi really shouldn't be as hard as they seem to find it. "Where are you? When do you want it? and the real stumper for some, "What is your name?" Sheesh! Even fifteen years ago they weren't as bad.

My own private book peeves are nobody seems to know the names Edgar Rice Burroughs or John Carter of Barsoom, but they've all heard of Tarzan, and nobody seems to mind that the latest Harry Potter movies are leaving out or changing whole parts of the books, especially the last one, which even changed the identity of the snitch.

End rant now.

[tabaqui]

Oh, man, yeah. It's amazing to me what people *don't* know that i take for common knowledge. It kind of scares me. A lot.

I rather expect movies and books to be different - i don't always like it, but i *do* expect it. I just can't believe the amount of people who have no clue that a million other worlds out there exist that they have no knowledge of, and they *don't care*!!

[ruthless1.livejournal.com]

[insert voice of doom]
Tabaqui - Welcome to the future where all 'written' communications are done in graphic novel style.....

[tabaqui]

Heeeeeeeeeee!
*flail*

[shakatany.livejournal.com]

Just read a review over at My Left Wing for a movie called "Idiocracy" (http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=19144) about life in the future if this goes on and it's not so farfetched as I'd want it to be *sigh*

Shakatany

[tabaqui]

Bah. Jayzus.
*shakes head*
I fear for humanity.

[pyrite.livejournal.com]

we had a woman in the store the other day who refused to believe that "catcher in the rye" wasn't by faulkner.
i also had a woman insist on finding a copy of "princess caspian" by c.s. lewis. "prince caspian" by said lewis would NOT do.

[tabaqui]

Ah ha ha!
Good gods.
People are nuts.

[irisbleufic.livejournal.com]

...that happens all too often, sadly. I work part time at Borders while I'm working on my Ph.D., and I have to say, some of my co-workers are a bit...yeah.

(Just letting you know I friended you - I hope that's all right!)

[tabaqui]

That's just scary. I can't imagine working at a bookstore and not...well...*reading*.

Sheesh.

Welcome! I don't post a ton of stuff, so you're safe from spamming!
:)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_beetle_/]

::snorfles::

I am, yes, on one level, utterly horrified that someone at a bookstore hasn't at least heard of Kipling. But your reaction? Hah! I'd have paid to see that.

Yes, he certainly has a lot of books. . . .
=D

[tabaqui]

Oh, man. I was on the phone or i think she'd have flinched. Hard.
Heeeee!
Just...sheesh.