Manager: Let me get this straight. You recommend to every customer the same book? We can't keep it in stock.
Clerk: Yes, that's right.
Manager: Let's see. _The Satanic Verses_. To everyone?
Clerk: Yes.
Manager: Why, for God's sake?
Clerk: It's a good book.
Manager: Have you read it yourself?
Clerk: No.
Manager: How can you possibly recommend it if you haven't read it? Not to mention that it is sort of politically incorrect for me to even stock it.
Clerk: It says it all.
Manager: But you haven't read it.
Clerk: Don't have to. It is all in there.
Manager: How do you know?
Clerk: Well, if you must know, here is the deal. If you read anything, anything of some substantial minimum length, doesn't matter, fiction or non-fiction, in there you will find the answers to all life's mysteries.
Manager: Interesting thesis. But I doubt _The Satanic Verses_ is going to help you bake a cake or prevent a souffle from deflating. Otherwise we could put it with the other cookbooks. What am I talking about? This is crazy. You have got to stop it.
Clerk: Well, think of all the sales and no complaints ever lodged against me, or dissatisfaction with my recommendations, what I have said, I mean . . .
Manager: You don't make recommendations. You make only one.
Clerk: You seem to be the only one complaining. Have you read the book?
Manager: Well, no. But that's beside the point. We can't be recommending just one book. We have others to sell.
Clerk: People buy other books. I don't prevent that.
Manager: But they go out with their book and either a copy of that damn book or they have reserved a copy for when the backorders arrive. And I only order and re-order _The Satanic Verses_. Nothing else.
Clerk: I guess our customers' experience reading this book stands as a testament to what I have said. I mean my opinion that one book is as good as another, if you read it carefully.
Manager: I don't think that follows. But why this book?
Clerk: There is enough there, they tell me, to keep them entertained and enlightened for a lifetime. When they come back to get a copy as a gift, that is. Seems like pretty often.
Manager: Pretty strong recommendation.
Clerk: Yes.
Manager: What do you say to customers? Do you reveal your opinion about reading or this philosophy of yours?
Clerk: It depends.
Manager: On what?
Clerk: On the customer.
Manager: Now you are a psychoanalyst. I don't believe this.
Clerk: Is there anything else?
Manager: Hmm. Could you just recommend something else once in a while or something.
Clerk: Sales'll drop.
Manager: I'll take that . . .
Clerk: Chance?
Manager: Yes. I mean, no.
Clerk: I think you will find the right answer to your questions after you read _The Satanic Verses_ and consider this chance business of yours. At least it might help you with your indecisiveness.
Manager: Don't start with me. I am not the one on trial here.
Clerk: I'm on trial?
Manager: Go back to work.
Clerk: Yes, sir.
Manager: I suggest you read that book before recommending it to another customer. You might change your mind, or your philosophy or whatever.
Clerk: I have another one to recommend if _The Satanic Verses_ ceases to please and instruct.
Manager: And what is that?
Clerk: Oh, it will come to me. The dust jackets and any illustrations figure into an important decision like that.
Manager: For Christ's sake!
Clerk: Sounds like a lesson from _The Satanic Verses_.
Manager: I haven't read it. And besides, half the world hates him for writing it. There is, or was, a contract out on his life for writing it and defaming the prophet.
Clerk: Which prophet?
Manager: See, you should read the book.
Clerk: Why?
Manager: To see what it says and why all these people are so up in arms.
Clerk: Brilliant. I can use that with some our customers--like you--teetering on the edge. Thanks.
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*** Page 126: A bookstore clerk decides to recommend the same book to all customers, regardless of what they ask her. _The Writer's Book of Matches_.
