The bookstore employee is semi-literate; he knows the titles and covers of the books, and perhaps vaguely what they are about, but never their content. In his figure, semi-literacy presents itself as self-satisfied, self-referential, and complete; and it is precisely this quality of his that is the professional advantage that ensures his livelihood and a place in the world. The more he "knows," the more semi-literate he becomes, since all this accumulated "knowledge" does not serve him to change his life but plunges him more and more into the abyss of his profession, a poorly paid white collar, a garcon of the spirit who can never taste what he offers.
This insoluble contradiction, the contradictio in objecto of his existence, gives his life an aura of drama, something tragic, although now we know that the dramas of the bourgeoisie rarely exceed the level of tragicomedy. Alyosha Karamazov, Hans Castorp, Vittorio Moscarda, Fisher King, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, and all the women Madame Bovary; this is the comedy that accompanies him in the "Search for the Loss of Time" and even at a bargain price. It is not just the bombs that "Desolate the Earth," and it is not just soldiers who are deceived servants of the culture of destruction. There are armies of fools who, without the coercion of the soldier, voluntarily strip themselves of their personality in order to taste the joys of voluntary servitude and its false passions. In this army, the bookstore employee rightfully claims his place as a corporal.