I haven’t been in the bookstore on Broadway since I moved here nine years ago. I remember it being stocked almost entirely with remainders.

Well, the stock seems to be slightly more extensive, but, wow, it’s true what they say about not being able to find anything. At least Video Express has a nominal organizational system (films organized by actor!), but Seaburn…well.

Maybe I’m overly sensitive to chaos, but looking through the children’s book section, I got that same sick and dizzy and I-don’t-think-I-should-be-seeing-the-way-your-mind-works feeling I get when I open one of Peter’s desk drawers and see cigarette filters, printer cartridges and a handful of Homies all knocking around in there together. At Seaburn, I saw three installments of Big Bird’s Encyclopedia series up against a Complete Idiot’s guide to reformatting your hard drive, and a worn copy of the script for Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide, when the rainbow is enuf.

I appreciate the variety, but I still staggered out of there with that ree-ree-ree noise from horror films pounding in my head. And no copy of Frog and Toad Together in my hand. (The guy did at least give me a no-tax discount on the random book I did pick up–Five Year Vest, some guy’s complaint about how the NYPD was the worst job he ever had–which I now notice is published by…Seaburn Books.)

While I was in the fugue state induced by browsing, I wondered: Doesn’t the urge to own a bookstore also come with a compulsion to put things in alphabetical order? I personally find it very soothing. Maybe Seaburn can just sell the business to me–before the current ownership suffers the complete psychotic break that’s obviously just around the corner.