Anarchy in a Bookstore

For years, I've performed my own small anarchy when I visit bookstores, particularly the large chains (Barnes & Noble and Borders). When I see a particularly disagreeable book on display, I cover it with a more agreeable book. For instance, a few years ago there was a nauseating book extolling the loving relationship of Ronnie and Nancy Reagan. That usually got covered with something by an author like Hunter S. Thompson (or someone of his ilk).

In recent years, books about the Bush Family have been particular targets. For every happy little Barbara Bush book I find one in praise of Hillary Clinton, which I place on top of it. For the past few years, the Clinton biographies have been excellent ammunition for my own little propaganda war.

This morning in the Boston Globe, I found the perfect add-on to my anarchy in the form of "reshelving." In this particular performance art, bookstore customers re-invent the categories in which books are found.

Here's the story (which I include below in its entirety) and I encourage all like-minded individuals to become a Minister of Reshelving. I plan to do it at my next visit.

The Ministry of Reshelving
By Joshua Glenn | August 21, 2005

"EARLIER THIS SUMMER, Jane McGonigal and three dinner companions were chatting about doublespeak, censorship, and surveillance when someone idly commented that George Orwell's dystopian novel ''1984" should be reclassified as Non-Fiction, or even filed under Current Events. ''Five seconds later, I said, 'Wait--we could actually do that,"' recounts McGonigal. So last Monday she took the lead in launching the Ministry of Reshelving project, an ambitious, opt-in performance piece whose goal it is to secretly reshelve 1,984 copies of Orwell's book in bookstores in all 50 states.

Though such an undertaking sounds daunting, it's child's play for McGonigal, a doctoral candidate in performance studies at UC-Berkeley who earns a living working as a designer and ''puppetmaster" for 42 Entertainment, an Emeryville, Calif.-based outfit that creates elaborate ''alternate reality games"--played by thousands via chatroom, cell phone, e-mail, even billboards and want ads--in order to drum up excitement for various new products. But McGonigal's true passion, she said via e-mail from San Francisco, is ''making games that give people a platform for changing social norms and public policy." As of this writing, she reports, some 55 ''ministers"--from California, New York, Idaho, Kentucky, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and a half dozen other states--have relocated over 100 copies of ''1984." Evidence of these hijinks is being posted around the clock to the photo-sharing website Flickr (flickr.com/groups/reshelving).

Is Boston behind the curve? By no means! On Thursday morning, McGonigal said, a Bostonian ''minister" informed her that a copy of ''1984" had just been moved from the Fiction section of the Borders in Downtown Crossing to the Political Science section, where it was reshelved next to a book titled ''Inside the Mind of Bush."

This was too good not to pass along. I hope someone reading this will join the fun!