November 6, 2007 By Robert Amsterdam

Dostoevsky Meets Costco and Wal-Mart

Canada’s Only Magazine reports on an amusing imagined encounter between one of Russia’s greatest writers and two marketing managers of mass consumerism. In the battle of Russian art vs. modern Western commercialism, apparently the customer is the biggest loser of market failure in the books business. “Two men burst into the study, one tall and thin, one short and stout, both wearing cheap suits and expensive gold watches. Before Dostoevsky can utter a single objection they set up a PowerPoint display showing a pie chart, a flow chart, a graph chart and a picture of two kittens in a teacup.