debased society are interchangeable. WH Auden, another Oxford-educated left-wing polemicist who lost his heart to America, is the poet he [Christopher Hitchens] most often invokes. The late Thirties, with Auden and his contemporaries, was the last time poetry was part of the mainstream media. "In a culture more and more dominated by dunces and fraud", an "empty landscape of slogan and cliché", to borrow his own phrases, Hitchens' prose, saturated in poetry, is more and more vital.
from Olivia Cole: GQ: Words from the wise
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Book shops are not a lost cause. While 72 independent book shops closed last year, 50 new ones opened. And while there are 1,159 indies trading at the moment, down from 1,252 in 2010, it's simply not true that the book industry is suffering like the music industry and that there's no longer a desire for books and book shops.
Highbrow and well-stocked, Daunt Books, with branches in well-heeled neighbourhoods in north and west London, will next year hit a turnover of about £10m. In America, Barnes & Noble saw its profits grow last year by 37 per cent, mainly due to the success of its e-reader.
from Olivia Cole: GQ: Extended shelf life
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