Barnes & Noble, the world's
largest bookseller, has reprinted
4,000 to 5,000 books. Mr. Riggio
said the company does no more
than buy and print the film upon
which the original was photo-
copied. Generally, the reprinted
editions are no longer in print but
might be contained in a cata-
logue. They are also sold at low-
er cost.
Mr. Riggio said he knew noth-
ing about the contents of Gypsy
Folk Tales until he got the first of
many calls from a reporter.
'We're not obliged to read mag-
azines and go in and say they say
something [offensive] about
African-Americans, Italian-Amer-
icans, American Jews. That's not
our job. Our job is to sell books.
Why would I want to sit here and
read 19th-century folktales?
"We have to stand on higher
ground. We have bigger issues to
fight in this war against anti-
Semitism. It makes the Ameri-
can Jewish Congress look silly.
You take a stand where the real
anti-Semitic fires are burning,"
Mr. Riggio said.
Barnes & Noble, he said, will
not withdraw the book from cir-
culation.
Marc D. Stern, co-director of
the AJCongress legal depart-
ment, said the organization
doesn't want to bar the bookseller
from selling Gypsy Folk Tales but
wants Barnes & Noble to at least
rethink its decision to reprint the
book.
"We didn't ask them to burn
the book, to buy back copies.
We're saying, 'OK, you didn't read
it, fine. But now that it's been
called to your attention, do some-
thing about it."'
The flap between the book-
seller and the AJCongress is part
of a larger debate, said Anti-
Defamation League Michigan Re-
gion Director Richard Lobenthal.
By carrying Gypsy Folk Tales or
a Louis Farrakhan book, the
bookstore could be accused of giv-
ing its "seal of approval' to hate-
ful messages, or at the very least,
being extremely insensitive to
Jews, who are uniquely sensitive
to the written word, he said.
"The converse is to say, 'You're
censoring, rewriting history —
here are 100-year-old folktales
and you want to rewrite them.'
These are two legitimate posi-
tions at odds with each other,"
Mr. Lobenthal added.
He believes nobody is right or
wrong in the matter but sug-
gested Barnes & Noble might
have considered adding an ex-
planation in the book's forward
about the attitudes of Eastern
European peasants toward Jews,
for example.
"The bookstores are correct.
The bottom line is to purge every
reference to Jews that is negative.
That is not only not possible, but
it's not desirable," Mr. Lobenthal
said.

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