In the beginning it was one of those wonderful bookstores; a jumbled cornucopia of the mind and spirit ruled by the goddess Serendipity.
On the weekend days when Court street was fine for strolling to the butcher and the baker, you could wander by and glance at the "Buck a Book Bin," or dive deeper into the shop itself and browse the long afternoon away. I once found a catalogue to a long forgotten show of paintings by John Denver in that buck book bin and bought it. I sold it later on Ebay for over $900 in the wake of Denver's death to a fan with more money than restraint. I still cook from the elegantly produced Classic Home Cooking by the brilliant and wonderfully named Mary Berry. At least a hundred other volumes in my library came from the labyrinthine aisles and niches of this endlessly quirky store.
But as the years went by, the mania that catches many old booksellers set its talons deep into the the owner. He began to buy books at a greater rate than he could sell them. It became an uncontrollable compulsion until the shop contained towering cliffs of odd volumes threatening to collapse at any second and bury you in a mound of remainders and the rat-nested remains of remainders. It went from being an inviting jumble to a horrorshow of hoarding. You might spy, somewhere in the stacks around you, a volume that called out to you. Taking it from that stack was like playing a game of giant Jenga. You never knew if removing the volume was going to bring the whole thing down on your head; as from time to time happened to the hapless customer.
In due course the shop went from diamonds and rust to cobwebs and dust. The owner drifted in that direction as well. I often thought he had no home but just lay down in the aisles at night after closing and then got up in the morning to open the store and have himself hosed off up along Warren Street.
And now, like so many other bookstores run by bibliophiles, it has folded in on itself, and will be gone in May.
All things must pass....
This is its bookmark.
There was a bookstore like that in Ottawa 30 years ago. I was young and thin in those days; now I doubt I could squeeze through the piles of books without knocking something over. The owner not only kept acquiring more books, he didn't want to sell the ones he had! Once I found an atlas of Napoleon's campaigns I wanted to buy for my fiance.
"Ohhh, this is rather an expensive book!"
"That's alright!"
"It's... ummm... $45.00"
"I'll take it!"
(Sigh)
"Let me just write down the name of it. (Sigh) I won't see a copy of THIS again... (sigh)"
Spot on! This was this bookseller's method as well.
He started to price everything so that it stayed in his private collection.
Posted by: Van der Leun at March 24, 2016 8:55 AMThere was a place on the corner of Wellington and Clark in Chicago exactly like that. On three occasions I was there when the Fire Marshall came in to give the old MSU professor who owned it a warning. He was partial to art books, and gave away Military History.
Posted by: Casca at March 24, 2016 10:07 AMI'm struggling to picture it. Will have to ask the wife she lived over there for a while. We used Community over in Dark Slope as that was close to home. Nothing like that collection, but workable when the staff were willin'. The now defunct Accident Or Design in Providence as well as Newspeak served us well also.
Posted by: Will at March 24, 2016 12:18 PMCommunity Books in Park Slope is NOTHING like The Community Bookstore. It's a jill-come-lately.
Posted by: Van der Leun at March 24, 2016 7:37 PMAgreed. I google-mapped it and see where it is. I was picturing something the other side of Atlantic.
Posted by: Will at March 25, 2016 6:34 AM
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