Melville House Books

A group of some major writers, including Iain Banks and A.L.Kennedy, have joined in the criticism of the Waterstone’s chain of booksellers for firing an employee who called the company “Bastardstone’s” on his blog. As Brian Donnelly reports in a story for Glascow’s Herald newspaper (and as previously covered on MobyLives), Joe Gordon was fired from an Edinburgh Waterstone’s after griping online about his shifts at the store, and calling his manager a “sandal wearing bastard.” But now Kennedy and Banks have “spoken out in a letter to The Herald and called for Mr. Gordon’s reinstatement.” Kennedy says the firing “is an invasion of privacy and it is a huge over-reaction to somebody talking about where they work in private context.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.