March 3, 2023, 10:21am
The portrait is stern, defiant, of bountiful hairline.
Shot by Ramona Rosales for the cover of Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, it planted a flag in the golden Californian soil and hung a shark-tooth necklace around the decrepit institution it set out to eviscerate. Tiled in your local Barnes & Noble, it looked like you were being marched on by an army of angry Lancastrians, as writer Luke Winkie found.
Absolutely horrific sight at the Barnes & Noble pic.twitter.com/2hkUX4GCIc
— Luke Winkie (@luke_winkie) February 23, 2023
Winkie was not alone in feeling persecuted by the carousel of Nook accessories. People across the Commonwealth and in other dying empires noted the alarming sense of being attacked by a battalion of angry Grown Sons, or seeing an entire team of water polo players rise up before them as they floated obliviously on a pool noodle. The reaction was strong enough for Winkie to opine in Slate on the state of publishing that:
It is depressing to know that the modern publishing industry, much like the film industry, is buoyed by a few megaton releases each year, and therefore retailers need to order an ungodly number of Spares—truly the Ant-Man of books—to stay above water.
Indeed. For my own part, in the wall of Harries I saw the sight I imagine I shall see when I one day journey on foot to the ginger-haired town of my ancestors, and am welcomed with a terse “hello, then,” and the lack of affection that is common to my people. (“Farther down the line I spied Ginger Spice, the only Spice with whom I felt any connection—a fellow ginger.” — Prince Harry)
It is not as alarming as were the bestseller walls of A Little Life (ecstasy and pain, over and over), or those of the weepy-looking eyes on the original cover of The Great Gatsby.
If one wishes to avoid such a sight, one supposes Prince William can just order His Highness’s books on Amazon.
[via Slate]