Month: April 2004

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

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 author’s 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?

Over at The Farm: The Tucows Developers’ Hangout, I have a long-ish entry covering starting salaries, some advice on how to make

CDN$12.50 an hour.