I am a frequent visitor of bookstores, but lately, I find myself studying the structure of bookstores, stemming from our discussion on Missing Sarah and paratext. How is the bookstore structured? How are books arranged, advertised, and sold? Where are all of the books placed? When I went to the Metrotown Chapters in order to gain information on our short paper assignment for the class, I began to notice all sorts of things that I had never tried to look for before, and it was surprising just how much a single glance around the area can tell you about what you’re looking for.

I’ll start with a short description of the Chapters I went to. First, it’s worth noting that the section on life narratives was labelled “Biographies,” and it was as far away from the Fiction section as possible. Surrounding this Biographies section were all sorts of books about real life activities: Sports, Foreign Languages, Pets, Travel, Religion, Local Interest, Political Science, Military History. All the books regarding any sort of made up story were absent from the surrounding area. This, combined with the specific label of “Biographies” tells us that Chapters wants us to believe that the life narratives that it sells are all real. Additionally, it also shows us that it believes that those who peruse life narratives should also be people that like “interesting” things like sports or military history.

So it seemed like how life narratives were sold at Chapters advocated the fact that it was real, this legitimate account of people’s lives. But when I got to a closer glance, it turned out that the realism appears to be a show. I noticed the small things that the bookstore used in order to promote popular books: they were put cover first, and unsurprisingly, I looked at them first. These novels were the ones of famous people that were all over the media: Steve Jobs, Olivia Chow, Mandela. Other more minor biographies tended to be put spine first, and were dwarfed by these more popular books. There were two ways that I saw book covers to be designed. For someone like Steve Jobs, whom everyone appears to know, the cover is simply that of his face, nothing else. The other method was editors put shocking bits of information in. I’ll quote one from one book that I saw, Escape by Carolyn Jessop & Laura Palmer:

I was born into a radical polygamist cult. At eighteen, I became the fourth wife of a fifty-year-old man. I had eight children in fifteen years. When our leader began to preach the apocalypse, I knew I had to get them out (Jessop).

I wrote about this in my paper, but I think it’s worth mentioning here again. Does that quote not sound like something you’d read in a page-turning fiction novel?

It concerns me just how sensationalized and fake most of these books look. The blurbs meant to draw in readers make these books sound like an adventure that you’re going on, not an account of a person’s life. It tells of this wild experience that you, as the reader, will go on if you read this person’s biography. Here’s a quote from the back cover of Olivia Chow’s My Journey:

My Journey reveals a woman deeply committed to addressing injustice in our society. To all the challenges she has faced, Olivia has brought her sensitivity, intelligence, boundless energy and courage. She never gives up! I thought I knew Olivia Chow, having worked with her, but this book is a revelation, and her story is an inspiration. -Margaret McCain (Chow).

The descriptions here turn Chow into this inspirational figure that readers should look up to. What I find noticeable is the sentence that describes this book as a “revelation.” The story is now shown as this “unknown” quantity meant to draw readers in to consume this product. I find the way these books are portrayed to be something that is concerning. Another quote I found worth noting was that the list of people written about in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs is named “Characters.” Quaint, isn’t it?

What are other people’s thoughts on this portrayal of life narratives?

Works Cited

Chow, Olivia. My Journey. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 2014. Print.

Issacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print.

Jessop, Carolyn, and Laura Palmer. Escape. United States: Broadway Books, 2007. Print.