A Remembrance of Bookstores Past

Nicholas Hoare, Toronto

A decade ago one of our semi-largish city's mega bookstores was crammed to the gills with not only the newest and most enticing, but a selection of back list so huge I could barely take it all in in one visit. I won’t name names here, but this well-respected independent store once felt like a very good reason to live in a city: because resources like this existed.

Tonight I decided to pay it a visit, eagerly anticipating a hit of "big-city culture." Here in the land where mediocrity can be neither spelled nor defined,  I should have known I was shooting the moon. But as I started browsing, I quickly realized that this place was a shadow of its former self. First of all, no one was in it. (OK, Tues. night, but still…) Second of all, it held a LOT fewer books--and a lot fewer shelves, sparsely filled. The few lonely books appeared to be huddling together for warmth, with big gaps around them. Around the square-footage strode a small pack of roving booksellers, loudly accosting customers, asking them what they were looking for, and practically begging for the opportunity to drag them to the book. It was unseemly, obnoxious, and made me long for those rat’s nest bookstores where the employees keep their heads bent down over Spinoza and don’t utter a single word unless you beseech them. As I walked in to Anonymous Bookstore One, the cashier/greeter even let loose a fist pump, expressing approval of my T-shirt. Sigh. I guess if I’m hoping for comportment, I should do my book shopping in Boston instead of Relentlessly Blue Collarquerque.

Gotham Book Mart, NYC

Tangentially, as I stood on line for our monthly library book sale last weekend, I overheard a dealer saying that most of the smaller bookstores in NYC, save The Strand, had closed. And The Strand’s stock is apparently now quite different, much less obscure, more oriented toward bestsellers than it used to be. I recalled all the cute little shops we used to browse—Mysteries and More, the Gotham Book Mart (“Wise men fish here”), Coliseum Books, the gay bookstore in the West Village—and began to ponder their fates. Then of course I needed to know…Googled, and gulped. I realized that if the axe had swung on all these venerable shops in the heart of the civilized world, the rest of the country is somewhere between life support and Last Rites.

Livraria Lello, Oporto, Portugal

I’m trying to believe that the booksellers' demise is NOT related to the “dumbing down of America.” I’m trying to believe that people are NOT reading fewer books because they’re doing their reading online. I’m trying to believe that it’s NOT about the fact that an increasing number of kids graduate high school barely knowing how to read. But as I walk around this airy square footage, it’s like hiking through a clear-cut forest. And then an ugly little voice whispers, “Enjoy it now. In the future, this will be a fond memory.” The memory of when you used to be able to go browse in a bookstore. To pick up titles of interest and scan them without necessarily buying them. To carry a book to a table and pore over it while sipping tea. To take it home the same night you bought it and read it right away.

I realized that what I was standing in was a dearly loved piece of my past 50 years—one that might not continue into the future. And it made me extremely sad.

I don’t want to live in an über-digital world in which little is tangible. Specifically, I don’t want to live in a world in which media isn’t tangible. I like being able to pick up a volume I own and see the notes I made, or the coffee stains, or even just the bookmark at where I stopped reading. This taps directly into memory, evoking a whole time in my life—the week or month when I was reading this book, what was happening around me. Was I reading it in bed with my lover? Were we reading it over the phone to each other? Was I using it to comfort me during a time when I felt alone? Was it the volume that made me decide to enter my spiritual practice? Was it the book I carried in my backpack while hiking the Appalachian Trail?

Proust 1, Nook 0

These recollections simply don’t happen from seeing a book as a file on a Kindle. Even Marcel Proust could not wring a memory out of a Nook download. These memories emerge via seeing, touching, and smelling a book. Or a record album. Though my albums are currently in storage, I could pull them out tomorrow and each would bring back a part of my life and a deluge of memories. I might even be able to tell you why its cover had that stain, crease, or tear on it. Try that with your iPod.

It’s sad to realize that the almighty price point has killed yet another institution that many of us have held sacred throughout our lives. One that provided not only books, but community and the chance to see human eyeballs (even if their owners fist-pumped you at the register). And yet, it’s also tough to live in an economy so poor that it’s made people choose between buying a book or buying groceries. As much as it’s easy to rant, “Why don’t those idiots support their local bookstore instead of buying online?!” it’s also tough to justify paying $35. for a hardcover when you’ve seen it on Amazon for a penny—especially when you’re $100 short on the rent and that hardcover costs 5 hours of your pay.

My point is not to find something or someone to blame. (If that were my point, I’d quite certainly opt for George W. Bush.) My point is to express sadness for a part of the world that I’ll really miss when it’s gone. Sure, life goes on. We can all sit in our dark houses alone and scroll through the latest Danielle Steele on our Kindles. But if that’s what it comes to, please take my carcass out back and toss me to the wolves.

**Please note that the Canadian and Portuguese bookstores shown above have not gone out of business. I show them only as examples of how amazing bookstores can be.