INDIGNITY VOL. 3, NO. 97: In the drugstore of the future, there's no shopping.
FUTURISM DEP'T.
R.I.P. DEP'T.
Remembering Robert Gottlieb
ROBERT GOTTLIEB, THE editor of a colossal body of literature and a quiet titan of high culture, died today at the age of 92. Last year, I wrote about seeing Turn Every Page, the documentary about his partnership with Robert Caro, author of The Power Broker and of the still-unfinished multivolume biography of Lyndon Johnson:
The story of the two Roberts in the movie raised far more haunting questions than whether the Johnson series does or doesn't get done—questions about meaning, and fulfillment, and the size that a person's ambitions or hopes can attain in this world, then and now and hereafter...
...Gottlieb posed a structural and narrative problem: he has simply done too much, too well, for too long and across too many domains; he is not only the prolific editor of several eras’ worth of vital literary authors, and the editor of books by powerful and important public figures, but a writer himself, and a magazine editor, and a hugely perceptive and influential balletomane whose enthusiasm for George Balanchine led him onto the board of the New York City Ballet and now the Miami Ballet.
Turn Every Page is available now for rent on a range of streaming services.
FUTURISM DEP'T.
A Conversation About Chicago's Experimental Walgreens
A FEW WEEKS ago, when Steven W. Thrasher—the author of The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide and a faithful Indignity reader—tried to go to his local Walgreens drugstore in Chicago, it was undergoing renovations, with a few things ("cough drops, some booze, and gum," Thrasher recalled, in a direct-message conversation) haphazardly crammed in the front of the store while the rest was a work zone.
This week, he went back there to fill a prescription. The building was open, but what was inside was barely describable as a drugstore. Nearly all the aisles were gone, and the majority of the floor space was out of view and inaccessible.
According to a story on the CBS News website, Thrasher's pharmacy is now what Walgreens calls a "digital-first experimental store to benefit customers." Nearly all the merchandise is in the back, in "an in-store fulfillment area" off-limits to shoppers. People are supposed to order items on self-service tablets, then pick them up at a window.
Even though this seems like the obvious escalation of the current fad for putting locked barriers on drugstore shelves to deter shoplifters, the CBS News story carried a corporate denial: "It's not designed to deter theft, Walgreens says." (The story then cited retail experts saying that it would clearly be effective as an anti-theft design.)
Indignity got on a DM chat with Thrasher to learn more about his encounter with the future of retail, or of anti-retail, as the case may be:
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