by Ronald Rice
In the years between then and now, I’ve become a proper bibliophile. When last my wife and I moved five years ago, I had fifty boxes of books. There are many reasons I love books: for the worlds they show me, for the things they teach me, for the way they feel in my hands or in my satchel, for the way they look decorating my house, for the questions they arouse from my children, for their mystery, for their cold or warm truths, for their lies, for their promise. But mostly I just love being transported to some place outside of my everyday life.
As a book nut, it stands to reason that I enjoy shopping for books, and this is true. Just ask my wife, who still (after fifteen years together) can’t understand how date night inevitably ends with us browsing bookstores.
Over the years, as my taste in literature has evolved, so has my taste in bookstores. When I was in college at the University of Minnesota, I used to haunt the Book House in Dinkytown or Biermaier’s just up Southeast 4th Street. It was in those shops that I discovered the likes of Camus and Dostoevsky. Biermaier’s is gone now, but I still creep into the Book House every time I pass through Dinkytown.
After college I lived and worked in downtown Minneapolis, and on my walks home up the Mall, I’d stop at James & Mary Laurie Booksellers almost every day. The rare-book room in the back of the store was like paradise, and there were Fridays when the better part of my paycheck went toward first editions I’d been coveting on those rare-book shelves for months.
My wife and I lived in the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis when we were first married. At least two or three times a week we’d walk from our rented house up to Hennepin and Lake and have dinner. After dinner, inevitably, we’d stop at Magers & Quinn or Orr Books. Twice that first year of our marriage I had to invest in new bookcases in order to accommodate what I was bringing home from those dates. And though Orr Books has gone the way of Biermaier’s, I still consider Magers & Quinn to be a wonderful store.
But there’s another shop in the Twin Cities that I find myself gravitating toward these days. Tucked away in one of the quaintest neighborhoods in St. Paul, halfway between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul, Micawber’s Books is like the answer to the question that all the bookstores in my past have posed. We’re exactly copacetic, Micawber’s and I. Like my favorite pair of broken-in shoes.
Setting aside its charm and warmth and the benefit of its being in such a great location, Micawber’s is a straight-up kick-ass store. This is in no small part thanks to the ownership tandem of Tom Bieleberg and Hans Weyandt. I’ve never been in the store when one or the other (if not both) wasn’t present. And not present in a back room sort of way, but standing at the cash register or talking to customers in the children’s section. I admit, just having the boss around isn’t sufficient to guarantee great service or a great experience, but in the case of the boys who own Micawber’s, their presence means better service than I’ve ever had in a bookstore. In any store, for that matter.
The last time I visited, Hans saw me milling around a table of new books. He came over, said hey, we talked about baseball and business, our kids, my new book. The usual. But then he put on his bookseller’s cap. He stepped around the table and took a book from a small stack.
“Have you seen this?” he said. “M. Allen Cunningham has a new book out.” He handed me the book.
I looked at the cover. “I haven’t seen this. What’s the story?”
“He started his own press. This is a limited-edition collection of stories. It’s gorgeous, where both the writing and the book itself are concerned. You’re a fan of his, aren’t you?”
“I am,” I said. “Thanks.”
This might seem unremarkable, but consider a couple of the variables that went into this conversation. One, Hans had to remember a conversation we’d had years ago in order to recall that I was a fan of Cunningham. I didn’t remember this conversation myself until he recommended Date of Disappearance. This alone is impressive. Hans must have twenty conversations each day about which books people like to read. But more impressive still is the fact that Date of Disappearance was on the table in the first place. Here’s a book that was printed as a limited edition—only 300 numbered copies—by a small press that I can guarantee not a hundred other booksellers in the country even know about. That it was in Micawber’s speaks not only to the depth of knowledge the boys at Micawber’s have, but to their unwavering commitment to small presses and lesser-known authors.
As I stood there looking the book over, I began to feel as though Hans had ordered it to have in stock just so he’d be able to recommend it to me personally. I know this isn’t true, but it’s a hell of a feeling to have. In fact, as a customer, it’s about as good a feeling as I can imagine. But it’s not even the best indication of what great advocates the boys at Micawber’s truly are.
When Hans finished a galley of my most recent novel, he didn’t send me an email to say how much he enjoyed it. He didn’t talk about it on a panel at a trade show. He didn’t wait for the next time I visited his store to impart his kind words. What he did was look me up in the phone book. He dialed the number to my house. And he told me over the phone that he was excited about the book. He said he was looking forward to hand-selling it when it was released. This all sounds self-congratulatory, I realize, but by mentioning it I only mean to describe the sort of grassroots work the boys at Micawber’s are doing. Of course it means a lot to me that he liked the book, and that he’s going to be hand-selling it when it releases. I’d be a bald-faced liar if I said otherwise. But the greater truth is that it’s just another indication of how committed they are to providing a unique book-shopping experience. And it’s because Hans has undoubtedly made countless other such calls that I love his store so much.
Over the course of the past couple of years, as my career as an author has gotten under way, I’ve had the great fortune to meet many of this country’s best booksellers. I’m amazed on a regular basis by the general good feeling, by the enthusiasm, by the commitment, by the generosity. I have no doubt that there are other bookstores and booksellers out there with as much to offer as Micawber’s. I’m sure other booksellers reach out to local authors and encourage their careers. I have no doubt book buyers think of individual customers when they stock a title. I’m sure they keep inventory on their shelves for years simply because they love a book or writer and know that one day, the perfect customer will come in and find it. I’m just lucky that Micawber’s is a fifteen-minute drive across town. Most of the most recent books that have made their way onto my own personal shelves have come back across the river with me from Micawber’s. Then they sit on my shelf right alongside those Signet Classics from twenty-odd years ago.
And if my wife is sometimes dismayed by the quantity of those books, which she is, I tell her it could be worse. Rather than collecting books and spending the bulk of my free time reading them, I say, I could be buying motorcycles or exotic pets. This is usually justification enough, but it’s nice to add that those same books have been helping to make me the man that I am. Often as not, she’s pleased with who that is. I thank Thoreau and Dante and the hundreds of others between them and M. Allen Cunningham for that.
And I thank the boys at Micawber’s.
PETER GEYE is the award-winning author of Safe from the Sea and The Lighthouse Road. He was born and raised in Minneapolis and continues to live there with his wife and three kids.
Albert Goldbarth
Watermark Books and Café, WICHITA, KANSAS
I tried to talk Skyler out of our getting married. “It’s so wonderful right now. Why rock the boat?” But evidently that language was Martian; and evidently she was from Venus.
The no-brainer, uncontested part was the venue: Watermark Books, Wichita’s premier (well, only) full-service independent literary bookstore. When I arrived in town in 1987 the business was already a decade old. It has been the undercurrent of my Wichita life for as long as I’ve had a Wichita life, and day by day it’s been enriching a community that
ranges from the overspill crowd for Republican senator Bob Dole to the overspill crowd for hottie rocker Pat Benatar—a community that, but for this bookcentric haven, would have by now spent thirty-five years grazing on a much thinner, less sustaining Kansas pasture of social and intellectual possibilities.
Sometimes a contrasting background allows for greater appreciation of what is otherwise taken for granted. Of late, my benighted governor’s misguided decision to defund the state arts council (among other, similar strikes against free expression) serves to especially highlight the necessary role of Watermark Books in maintaining the privileges and pleasures of unconstrained reading. But even without that fabular context in which the Forces of Biblio-Goodness combat the Drooling Armies of Repressive Limitation, who could not automatically smile on entering through these doors, browsing the staff recs, checking out the soup of the day?
One afternoon, an ebullient, matronly gathering Q&A’ing its way through the signing for a cookbook’s release; another afternoon, bright beelines of bikers riding in from a three-state area for a vintage electric-guitar show. Here, a 5-year-old zoom-zooming an Olivia doll above a jerry-built skyline of Olivia books; over there, a 25-year-old woman intent on Siddhartha. Somebody solo; someone here for a book club. New York Times best sellers hobnobbing companionably with local poet Jeanine Hathaway’s new ribbon-bound chapbook. Art on the walls. Java in the urns. There’s Carol Konek! There’s Dan Rouser! Hey, there’s Tim! Howzzit goin’? Drawn here by the book-surround comfort. A neighborhood of—you’ll know what I mean—unalike like-mindedness.
Sarah Bagby, once-upon-a-time guitarist (“a sweet little Gibson SG”) for Wichita all-chick rock group The Inevitable, wouldn’t have had any notion that, a number of transformations down the time line, she’d be—as the owner of Watermark Books—an ABA board member. But America is made for such stories. Here she is, with President Obama, both of them smiling over an open book, in a recent White House photo op.
And there we were, at Watermark Books, on November 27, 1989, a small group bent on big doings. Sarah was there. And her husband, Eric (back then, he managed Maple Grove Cemetery, which unknowingly loaned a few of its foldout chairs to the cause). Shirley and Robert King, on the bride’s side. John Crisp, up from San Antonio, Texas, on mine. We screened that 1930s cartoon in which Mickey croons “Minnie’s Yoo Hoo” by way of courting the femme mouse of his dreams. We played Bonnie Raitt singing “Baby Mine.” Skyler Lovelace said “I do” and Albert Goldbarth said “I do” and the thousands of witnessing books seemed to nod in affirmation.
Time goes by. Time can’t be talked out of that. And I haven’t always been Mr. Perfect Husband, believe it or not, but on rare occasions I do Get It Right. When my latest book was published in January 2012, of course I kicked off my modest tour with a Watermark reading. Well attended, by Wichita standards: 150 people or so. What Skyler didn’t know was that an hour into what would be a two-hour event, John Crisp, on cue and fresh up from Texas, would briskly walk up to the podium, seemingly out of nowhere, interrupting my inter-poem gab. That was my cue for my essential line: “Skyler Lovelace, come on dooooown!” Shirley King was whisked up to the podium too, and Skyler’s friend Cindy, and rare-book dealer Kris Strom. Sarah officiated. Snazzy headgear was donned. Beth Golay saw that the wine appeared. And twenty-two years after our Watermark wedding, Skyler said “I do” and Albert said “I do,” renewing our vows to Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love” before the second half of the reading commenced.
Things change, I know. One of John’s hips is plastic now. The Watermark Books of 2012 is three locations removed from the Water-mark Books of 1989. But here we are, still; and here’s the store, still, having outlasted both of Wichita’s Borders stores and one Barnes & Noble. Do we take the books on Watermark’s shelves, again and forever, to be our companions, our life enhancers, our manifold loves and exasperations and hopes and assuagers and lights in the dimness, both in lean times and rich times?
We do.
ALBERT GOLDBARTH has been publishing notable books of poetry for 40 years, two of which have received the National Book Critics Circle Award; the latest is Everyday People (Graywolf Press). He is also the author of five collections of essays and a novel. A staunch computer refusenik, his fingertips have never touched a computer keyboard.
John Grisham
That Bookstore in Blytheville, BLYTHEVILLE, ARKANSAS
When my first novel was published in 1989, I hit the road with a trunk full of books in a valiant but misguided effort to create some buzz and launch a new career. After a month or so of miserable sales, I had learned the painful lesson that selling books is far more difficult than writing them. While libraries, coffee shops, and grocery stores were generally more welcoming, most bookstores could not be bothered with an unknown author’s first novel published by a tiny company too poor to even produce a catalog. The first printing of 5,000 went unsold, for the most part, and there was no talk of a second printing, no dreams of paperbacks or foreign editions. The fledgling career was on the rocks.
However, a handful of wise booksellers saw something the others did not, and enthusiastically pushed A Time to Kill. There were five of them; one was Mary Gay Shipley, of That Bookstore in Blytheville, Arkansas. I’ve always suspected Mary Gay had a soft spot because I was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, not too far away. When I was a kid I visited my grandfather’s music store on Main Street in Blytheville, so Mary Gay and I had some common ground, shaky as it was.
I soon abandoned all dreams of seeing my first novel on the best-seller lists. I got tired of hawking copies of it from the trunk of my car. Instead, I concentrated on finishing my second novel, The Firm. Mary Gay read an advance copy of it and said things were about to change. I agreed to do a signing in her store and arrived there on Sunday, March 17, 1991, St. Patrick’s Day. Her husband, Paul, had found some green beer to go with the green popcorn and the like.
It was a raw, windy March day, not that pleasant, but Mary Gay had called in the chips and there was a nice crowd. I signed books, posed for photos, chatted with each customer, and, in general, had a grand time. The book was selling, and I was on top of the world. The day was significant for another reason: The Firm debuted that Sunday on the New York Times best-seller list at number 12. I suspected life was about to change, though it was impossible to know how much.
In the rear of her store there is an old potbellied stove surrounded by children’s books and rocking chairs. Late in the day, we gathered around the stove and I read from my novel. I talked about the writing of it. I answered questions with little regard for time, and the crowd showed little interest in leaving.
As soon as The Firm “hit the list,” I was inundated with requests from bookstores to do signings, but I declined, and not out of some sense of revenge. I’d rather spend my time writing, and besides, book tours are not that enjoyable. However, it’s always been easy to remain loyal to those first five stores, especially That Bookstore in Blytheville.
I returned the following year with The Pelican Brief, then The Client. By the time The Chamber was published in 1994, the signings were going on for ten or more hours and everyone was working far too hard. We changed the rules and shrunk the crowds, but the signings still felt like marathons. Eventually, we stopped them altogether, and for the past several years I have sneaked into Mary Gay’s back door and signed 2,000 copies of each new book. This takes a few hours and we enjoy the quieter times. There’s a lot of local gossip, and I’ve picked up more than one idea for characters. Old friends stop by, and on several occasions, I’ve had lunch with my mother and her three sisters.
Blytheville is an old, declining cotton town, and many of its Main Street stores are empty. Mary Gay has kept hers open through hard work and the sheer will of her personality. With independent bookstores vanishing at an alarming rate, I wonder how long she will hang on, or if someone will take her place. She and others like her had a huge role in the early success of my career and the careers of many rooki
e authors. Without their encouragement and support, it will be even more difficult for first novels to have a chance.
Over twenty years have passed since that cold Sunday in March when we sipped green beer by the stove, celebrated all things Irish, and toasted the country’s newest best-selling author, but it remains one of my fondest memories as a writer.
JOHN GRISHAM is the author of 24 novels, one work of nonfiction, a collection of stories, and three novels for young readers. He lives in Virginia and Mississippi.
Pete Hamill
Strand Book Store, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
In the summer of 1957, home from a year in Mexico on the GI Bill, I found temporary lodging in paradise. That is, in an apartment on Fourth Avenue and 11th Street in New York City, right there in Book Row. I shared the rent with a friend of a friend, a student who attended school a few blocks south at Cooper Union, and though we talked through many beery evenings about art, I was already on the way to becoming a writer. My university was Book Row. My personal classroom was called the Strand.
The bookstore was almost directly across the avenue, at 81 Fourth Avenue, flanked by the other bookstores, all of them visible from the front windows of the apartment where I was living. On days of rain or snow, I could vanish into its shelves and tables, examining the endless literary treasures. There I bought my first volume of poetry by William Butler Yeats, my first copy of Balzac’s Lost Illusions, and I found my way into Winesburg, Ohio, with Sherwood Anderson as my guide. I also found a copy of Hemingway’s parody of Anderson, The Torrents of Spring. All at prices I could afford on my job as an assistant in the art department of an advertising agency.
