"There are two questions to be asked respecting every new publication -- Is it worth buying? Is it worth borrowing?"

Roger Straus Jr., the Straus in FSG, who died on Tuesday at age 87, understood the difference between asking, "Is it worth buying?" and "Can it be sold?"

One by one, the last of the independents go out of business. We are supposed to accept this as the norm -- the great tidal shift to a model of publishing that has undone nearly all the vital instincts of the great editors and publishers who made publishing matter.