The Redhead and I spent Sunday touring through downtown Boston, and while walking down Newbury Street (which in Accordion City terms, is like splicing Queen Street West, College Street West and Yorkville together), we stumbled into Avenue Victor Hugo Books, a used bookseller (alas, we don’t have a nice single word like the French do: bouquiniste).
I knew about the store since I remember reading the little writing
exercise/stunt in which Harlan Ellison spent three days sitting in
their window display writing short stories.
We noticed a sign in their front window announcing that after 29 years
in the bouquiniste business, they were closing their doors. Every book
in the store was being sold for half its marked price. Being avid
readers, the Redhead and I went in.
The store’s shelves, which have been fitted into every possible nook
and cranny, are groaning with books. I could spend days just hanging
out in this place, thumbing through old volumes.
The picture above shows a little nook into which a chair was placed for
the serious reader who wants to examine potential purchases very
carefully. I spent about a half hour here engrossed in some E. F. Schumacher.
The Redhead and I each walked out with a half-dozen books. Just for laughs, I topped off my purchases with a copy of Left Behind, just to see what the fuss is about. I’m prepared to be amused in that “so bad it’s good” way.
Right by the cashier were photocopied sheets with a short essay titled The Crepuscule
(Psst! That means “twilight”!). Subtitled “Twelve reasons for the death
of small and independent book stores”, it is a indictment of those who
helped kill the small and independent book store.
I asked the store for permission to reprublish the essay here. They
consented being quick to point out that while the essay points the
finger at others, the store management also acknowledges their own role
in the demise of the store (one has to wonder what it takes for a store
that sells books on the cheap to fail in the most college-y of college
towns).
The Crepuscule
Twelve reasons for the death of small and independent book stores
Ever
thankful to those who made the effort before us, with heartfelt
apologies to those who are still in the fight and the few who support
them–offered upon the closing of Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston.
1. Corporate law
(and the politicians, lawyers, businessmen and accountants who created
it for their own benefit)–a legal fiction with more rights than the
individual citizen, which allows the likes of Barnes & Noble and
Walmart to write off the losses of a store in Massachusetts against the
profit of another in California, while paying taxes in Delaware–for
making competition a joke and turning the free market down the dark
road toward state capitalism.
2. Publishers–marketing
their product like so much soap or breakfast cereal, aiming at
demographics instead of people, looking for the biggest immediate
return instead of considering the future of their industry, ignoring
the art of typography, the craft of binding, and needs of editing, all
to make a cheapened product of glue and glitz–for being careless of a
500 year heritage with devastating result.
3. Book buyers–those
who want the convenience and cost savings of shopping in malls,
over the quaint, the dusty, or the unique; who buy books according to
price instead of content, and prefer what is popular over what is
good–for creating a mass market of the cheap, the loud, and the shiny.
4. Writers–who sell their
souls to be published, write what is already being written or choose
the new for its own sake, opt to feed the demands of editors rather
than do their own best work, place style over substance, and bear no
standards–for boring their readers unto television.
5. Booksellers–who
supply the artificial demand created by marketing departments for the
short term gain, accept second class treatment from publishers, push
what is hot instead of developing the long term interest of the
reader–for failing to promote quality of content and excellence in
book making.
6. Government
(local, state and federal)–which taxes commercial property to the
maximum, driving out the smaller and marginal businesses which are both
the seed of future enterprise and the tradition of the past, while
giving tax breaks to chain stores, thus killing the personality of a
city–for producing the burden of tax codes only accountants can love.
7. Librarians–once
the guardians, who now watch over their budgets instead–for destroying
books which would last centuries to find room for disks and tapes which
disintegrate in a few years and require costly maintenance or
replacement by equipment soon to be obsolete.
8. Book collectors–who
have metamorphosed from book worms to moths attracted only to the
bright; once the sentinels of a favorite authors work, now mere
speculators on the ephemeral product of celebrity–for putting books on
the same level with beanie babies.
9. Teachers–assigning
books because of topical appeal, or because of their own lazy
familiarity, instead of choosing what is best; thus a tale about the
teenage angst of a World War Two era prep school boy is pushed at
students who do not know when World War Two took place–for failing to
pass the torch of civilization to the next generation.
10. Editors–who
have forgotten the editorial craft–for servicing the marketing
department, pursuing fast results and name recognition over quality of
content and offering authors the Faustian bargain of fame and fortune,
while pleading their best intentions like goats.
11. Reviewers–for
promoting what is being advertised, puffing the famous to gain
attention, being petty and personal, and praising the obscure with
priestly authority–all the while being paid by the word.
12. The Public–those
who do not read books, or can not find the time; who live by the
flickering light of the television, and will be the first to fear the
darkening of civilization–for not caring about consequences.
Thus, we come to the twilight of the age of books; to the closing of
the mind; to the pitiful end of the quest for knowledge–and stare into
the cold abyss of night.
John Usher
From THE HOUND by John Usher, copyright 2004. Permission to reproduce is granted to all upon request with proper attribution.
This essay garnered a number of nasty comments. The person whom I
contacted at the store told me that some people seem to have taken it
personally, interpreting it as an attack on their character (or at
least their lack of bibliophilia).
What do you think? What’s the state of small and independent book stores where you live?
