There used to be a little used book store in our downtown that I loved. It was owned and operated by people who valued ideas and loved to talk to people about the books where magical thinking came from. A mere hole in the wall, this merchant’s parlor was a place that could and did only last so long as the rent was cheap; it was a place where words and ideas flowed about readily. Banter there was seasoned with a wry, sly sense of humor. The store is gone now. Used book stores, just like second hand clothes stores that try to be tres' chic and also like weird single purpose stores like “All Things Purple”, just don’t seem to last.
I am not concerned so much about the passing of emporiums that carry eggplants and Prince vinyl in their inventory, but losing a good used book store is a big deal. It is in a used book store where you will find out what matters and what doesn’t in current thought. Maybe that term should be relatively recent thought.
When you walk into a used book store and you see that stacks of titles from the Oprah book club or piles of that book with the raised imprinted in foil quirky font letters in the title and the eerie cover art that was all the buzz just a year and half ago and they are selling for $1.25 each you pretty much know you don’t have to read either tome. They have been measured and found wanting. This isn’t always true, but more often than not it is. If the book was any good it would have been handed off to a friend or it would still be a shelf to be reread or loaned out to someone you know who needs to read it.
If you listen to the denizens of a used book store talk you will get clues to things that might be of value to read. A conversation that begins between two aging hippies and one says to the other, “You know I read this the year I lived in Denver, just after the co-op farm thing fell through. The writer was a realist about how ideals are good but just aren’t enough standing alone …” Right after a phrase like that you try to inconspicuously look at the spine of the book not trying to be too obvious you circle back when they have moved on and give it a serious perusal.
Or you see a title by someone mentioned in an article you read in Harpers a few years back, and the copy is a little raggedy but it is a later printing and the accolades on the cover are ones that seem to be something other than the kind that scream “they paid me to say this”. And when you crack it the page it falls open to a section where the writer is speaking about a sense of loss they can comprehend, or an awakening that you have sensed was possible or of an idea you have been revisiting for a decade or two in your mind and you aren’t sure if you are the only person who ever thought about this. Books in Barnes and Noble don’t fall open to pages like this.
Sometimes it is the little lady that sees what you have in your hand book wise and says “You know he was heavily influenced by what happened to his buddy Dalton Trumbo. Did you ever read Trumbo’s “Johnny Got his Gun?” “Odd book, but strangely moving when you are finished with it.” And then you look and sure enough there is a copy of the Trumbo book tucked in down the aisle somewhere and you pay the $2.00 for it and then you try and get your mind around the poker playing Christ. You don’t meet little old ladies like this in a new book store. There they are quiet islands unto themselves too focused or too formal to offer up their opinions to strangers. Or they sit in the obligatory coffee shop and nurse a decaf latte as they wait for a Sunday meeting with the kids or grandkids. However in a used book store they assume you are a fellow traveler and that talk to you about things you should be reading.
A good used book store like a good pastor can gentle guide you into places where you should let your spirit roam. I miss that place.
2 comments:
Well said.
You mean you can't get the same reaction from Amazon.com??????
My favorite used book store was on Hotel Street in Honolulu circa early 80's. My real education began there. The man behind the counter the most had longish, unkempt, mousy brown hair and wore glasses (of course). Mostly hard backs, I purchased a complete set of Balzac, nicely bound in green, that I still have today. My copy of HG Wells "Short History of the World" that is loosing it's dull red cover as well as many of the yellowed pages, was purchased there while waiting for a bus to the beach. I read nearly all the books that F Scott listed for Sheila Graham to read, all purchased from the book store that seemed transported from another world. Rabelais, Camus, Asimov, Nabakov, James Jones, Waugh, Dreiser, Kipling, Zola, Maugham. Studs Turkel was great beach reading as was Vonnegut, Roth and Collette. The 3 Jeans, Sartre, Rousseau and Genet. I read so much and so widely, often at the suggestion of mousy man (much like Jay's old lady).
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