What Do I Mean When I Inscribe My Books, “We Will Win”?
Since 2005, when autographing, I’ve inscribed every copy of Rebel Bookseller with the words “We Will Win!” I’m also using this phrase as the inscription in every copy I sign of my new book You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read This Book?
What do I mean? It must seem obvious to me, but I have no way of knowing if my books’ buyers understand my implication.
Well: since Rebel Bookseller is all about independent bookselling, and since independent bookselling is embattled, my inscription “We Will Win!” admittedly seems to suggest that I believe independent bookselling will triumph over competing means of selling books—centralized corporate means, like chain bookselling and Amazon.com.
Do I really believe that independent bookselling will triumph, in this way? Isn’t this a ridiculous thing to assert, since data shows that chain-stores and Amazon.com jointly control ninety percent of the retail book marketplace?
What would winning even look like, for independent bookselling?
And what about my new book, the one attacking book-banning? When I inscribe copies “We Will Win!” am I suggesting that those of us opposed to book-banning will succeed in bringing an end to book-banning?
Hmm.
I suppose the confusion here is related to the fact that I’m a person who does not believe the ends justify the means. This translates into my feeling that how we do things is more important that whether we achieve our desired outcomes.
My favorite clarification of this concept is in the Bhagavad Gita. I drafted a very long footnote (which I never published) about this topic, for Rebel Bookseller. Here it is, below. This unpublished footnote sums up the philosophy that underpins my repeated declaration “We Will Win!” I think the footnote shows that, in my worldview, the key issue is this: “winning” is always in the future. There will never come a moment when we, or our opponents, have finally won. That’s impossible because history never concludes. To declare “We Will Win!” announces the vector of our force, the direction of our right action, the vigor with which we—abandoning restraint—pursue our aim. Never will we reach the aim. Never will there come a time when we can declare victory. But our pursuit conjures our vision, inspiring our present action. So, I inscribe my books, “We Will Win!”
Here's the footnote. It takes off from a sentence in the text of Rebel Bookseller where I’m insulting Barnes & Noble’s greed-driven approach to bookselling:
Page 89. “Greed is good”: the phrase was made infamous by actor Michael Douglas playing a corporate raider (named Gordon Gekko) in the Oliver Stone film Wall Street. Supposedly the words were actually used by raider Ivan Boesky. Len Riggio: “It was the go-go eighties…there were a lot of sharks swimming in shallow water.”—David D. Kirkpatrick, “Barnes & Noble’s Jekyll and Hyde,” New York Magazine (July 19, 1999).
Saints to sharks: “Greed of acquisition and the living principle of creation are antagonistic to each other….When the non-living elements of our surroundings are stupendously disproportionate, when they are mechanical systems and hoarded possessions, then the mutual discord between our life and our world ends in the defeat of the former. The gulf thus created by the receding stream of soul we try to replenish with a continuous shower of wealth which may have the power to fill but not the power to unite. Therefore the gap is dangerously concealed under the glittering quicksands of things which by their own accumulating weight cause a sudden subsidence, while we are in the depth of our sleep….The Iśopanisad [Iśāvāsya Upanisad, circa 600 B.C.] has strongly asserted that man must wish to live a hundred years and go on doing his work.”—Rabindranath Tagore, “Presidential Address to the First Indian Philosophical Congress,” quoted by T. N. Mallappa in “Trend of Thoughts in Vedopanisads and Basavēśvara’s Vacanas,” Sri Basavēśvara: Eighth Centenary Commemoration Volume (Bangalore: Government of Mysore, 1967): 90.
More explicitly: “This wish to lead a useful life in this world alone reminds us of the injunction of the Iśāvāsya Upanisad that a man should wish to live his full term of hundred years working without any intention of gaining any profit from it (‘Kurvanneveha karmāni jijīvisecchatam samāh/ Evam tvayi nānyathetosti na karma lipyate narē.’—Iśāvāsyopanisad. 2.)….This conception of work without looking for the result as found in Iśā Upanisad is the basis on which Bhagavad Gītā [400 B.C.] stands and in it, it is called Yöga.”(88-9)
Explains the man Tagore dubbed Mahatma (Great Soul): “The Gita says, ‘Do your allotted work but renounce its fruit—be detached and act—have no desire for reward, and act’….But renunciation of fruit in no way means indifference to the result. In regard to every action one must know the result that is expected to follow, the means thereto, and the capacity for it. He who, being thus equipped, is without desire for the result, and is yet wholly engrossed in the due fulfillment of the task before him, is said to have renounced the fruits of his action. Again, let no one consider renunciation to mean lack of fruit for the renouncer…Renunciation means absence of hankering after fruit. As a matter of fact, he who renounces reaps a thousandfold…”—Mohandas K. Gandhi, “The Message of the Gita,” reprinted in Bhagavad Gita, Translated by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Harmony, 2000): 208-9.
