Are Books Dead?
As the new year begins, I'm reading George Vecsey's history, Baseball, and Gideon Defoe's charming and funny novel, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists.
Defoe is also the author of
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab and
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists. (A-ha! I see a theme.) I'd never heard of these funny little books until I came across them at a book store in my neighborhood, Ivy's, which I only recently began patronizing. I saw the books laid out on a table at the front and thought they might be a suitable present for my precocious seven-year-old nephew, but after flipping through the pages and finding them hilarious but a bit racy, wound up buying them for myself. I rarely buy books on the spur of the moment, but there was something about the environment that prompted me to do so this time; the store's selection seemed so smart, I trusted its proprietors. Plus, I liked the dog, Gus, who slept near the cash register and briefly lifted his head to sniff the scone that I was carrying in a paper sack. Every bookstore should have a sleeping dog willing to lift his head and sniff you hello before going back to sleep.
About a week after that, I read in the Times that Ivy's, along with its darker half, Murder Ink,
was closing its doors, no longer able to afford a staggering $18,000 monthly rent for a space smaller than my apartment (which is pretty small). The owner, Jay Pearsall, wrote a lovely essay to explain his decision.
Every now and then I comb our apartment shelves for books that I can add to the inventory at the stores. Recently, when I grabbed a copy of ''The Plot Against America'' by Philip Roth, I noticed one of my scribbled notes sticking out of it: ''Every night, just before I leave the store, I take a seat on one of the rolling library stools and reflect on what a great place this is and how I won't have it much longer.'' There's also written on the slip, in quotation marks (from the Roth book?): ''One can only do so much to control one's life.''
Owning a book store, Pearsall said, was his dream job for 17 years. How many young people today will grow up to harbor such a lovely thought? And how many will look at Wall Street bonuses in the millions and lust for the soullessness of meaningless wealth?
Today the Times reports that another small bookstore, Micawber Books, in Princeton, New Jersey, is biting the dust.
“
The driving force of all of this is the acceleration of our culture,” [owner Logan] Fox said. “The old days of browsing, the old days of a person coming in for three or four hours on a Saturday and slowly meandering, making a small pile of books, being very selective, coming away with six or seven gems they wanted, are pretty much over."
It's hard not to feel deeply conflicted about this. I love much about our accelerated culture—I am addicted to wireless internet access, I think cell phones are great, I spend a decent amount of money at Starbucks, I think it's cool that you can now download the entire first season of
Star Trek from iTunes—but one needs charm and intimacy and slowness as well as speed and access and efficiency.
Recently the Tower Records on Broadway closed. I felt no sorrow about that departure. Tower was a cold, overpriced store, which combined the worst of the chain bookstore—impersonal selection, hapless help—and the worst (high prices) of the independents. Plus, it's hard to feel an emotional bond with a compact disc. If your medium is about efficiency and ease of storage, digital downloads are the way to go.
My feelings about Tower were only further vindicated when it promised massive savings on its remaining stock—40% off!—and then jacked up the prices on every cd to $18.99, so that you were still paying more than an album costs on iTunes. Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.
But bookstores are another matter. I'm no Barnes and Noble-hater—in Manhattan, there are some pretty good ones—but it's never going to be a charming place, and I don't stumble across unexpected finds there that I'll buy on the spur of the moment.
Truth is, I love
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists!, and in a couple of years, when he's old enough to know what a communist is, I'll pass it along to my seven-year-old nephew. I'll be sure to tell him where it came from.
