Oct 29 2011
Barnes and Noble unclear on meaning of “In-Stock”
Wanting a hard copy of Three And Out by Jason Bacon, I surfed over to BarnesAndNoble.com and saw that it was available at the Easton store. So off I went. When I arrived at the store I was informed that they had the book in-stock but all the copies were on hold. When I asked why the website would tell me copies were available when in fact they were not, I was met with blank stares.
I assume the book is not taken off the in-stock list until it is purchased. This is what the kids today call a “fail.” It leads to the false assumption that a copy is available when it is in fact not.
Guess I will just buy it at Amazon.
Donohue manages the dream logic well, modulating registers from one mystery muse to the next with mostly-subtle shifts in dialect and voice. When the key to the puzzle finally is disclosed, however, the answer is an obvious one, and a bit of a new-age, pop-psych let-down, lacking the intellectual crackle of Borges and the tooth-gnashing comedy of Beckett–qualities this seductively irreal novel seems to want to foster. And yet there’s a satisfaction in the telling, and in the notion that stories find their resonances even across the generational tides of forgetting, that ultimately the tale is the only transcendent force we can bring to bear against death and its savage requitals.
