Homecoming for a Debut Novelist

Bookstore staffs are populated by struggling writers, hopeful authors and dedicated scribblers who are all a break away from getting published. Many give up, pushing their half-finished novels, ragged drafts of short stories, and marked-up pages of poems to the bottom of a drawer as they move onto more certain and lucrative careers. A few manage to get published, but by the time they do they've long ago left the bookstore behind and are never seen again.

Nina de Gramont worked for the Boulder Book Store in the mid-1990s, and she was one of the more earnest wannabe writers on the staff. Perhaps she knew all the hard work that lay ahead of her, since her husband David Gessner published his superb natural and personal history Wild Rank Place while she was a bookseller. More likely, she was just a bit more serious in her ambitions and much more willing than most of her colleagues to put in the hard work necessary to become a professional writer.

De Gramont, who now lives in North Carolina, returns to the Boulder Book Store on June 26th to speak and sign her new novel, Gossip of the Starlings. It's a magnificent look at adolescents careening towards disaster as they succumb to peer pressure. Her signing will be a rarity in the bookstore world. It's the first time in more than a decade that a former Boulder Book Store employee has had a reading for a published book at the store.

"I'm really looking forward to it," de Gramont said. "I'm excited. I have great memories of working at the store. David (Bolduc) was a generous employer. To me, the Boulder Book Store is a naturally calming space, especially the ballroom where the readings are held. I don't feel like a conquering hero returning, more like a humble servant visiting."

Gossip of the Starlings is a nuanced look at two high school friends, Catherine Morrow and Skye Butterfield. These aren't your typical teenagers. Skye is the daughter of a United States Senator, and Catherine competes at the highest levels of show jumping. Despite their high-class pedigrees, de Gramont manages to make their stories resonate. They are two teenagers caught in a spiraling world of drugs and high expectations. The inner turmoil that consumes them could mirror that of any troubled high school student.

"As a writer, you have to express compassion and sympathy for your characters regardless of their circumstances," de Gramont wrote in an email interview. "Part of what makes the story dramatic is the way in which these characters are willing to gamble with, and in some cases squander, all the opportunity and safety that's been granted them."

Catherine narrates the story in an elegiac tone as she looks back on the fateful year she spent as Skye's friend. This device allows de Gramont to view the wild and impetuous Skye through adult eyes rather than through the harsh lens of an adolescent. Catherine also imbues the entire novel with a hint of foreboding that begins on the very first page. The opening paragraph establishes not only the point of view and the sense of doom, but also the beautiful, meticulous, and poetic language that de Gramont uses throughout the book.

Now, when I see teenage girls laughing, when I see them loosed on a summer evening--
their limbs tanned and gossamer, their imagined freedom radiating like nuclear light--
I can't help but fast-forward two decades or more. I know the curve of their bones has
already made an imperceptible bow to gravity. I see the decay in slow motion, even or
especially through those stunning and immortal years.

"One of the reasons I wanted Catherine to narrate from a remove of years was to accomplish an adult sort of sympathy toward Skye," de Gramont said. "From a teenage point of view, Skye is glamorous and dangerous and very powerful. But from an adult point of view, she becomes quite tragic."

The reader begins to get a clear understanding of the recklessness of Skye's character and a hint of the tragedy that is sure to come in an extended scene that takes place in the eerily empty summer home of Skye's parents on Cape Cod. In the scene, de Gramont touches upon both the exhilaration of being a teenager along with the feelings of ennui that are experienced at that age. Skye's actions are so inappropriate and dangerous that Catherine's other friends clearly see her as a risk, even as Catherine is blinded by her seductive friend.

"I am drawing on some of my own experiences for that scene in particular," de Gramont said. "I wanted to establish the sense of freedom that comes from escaping rules, and at the same time illustrate the dynamics that evolve from new, self-imposed rules. In other words, Skye and Catherine may have escaped the bonds of one culture, but of course they've entered a new one. As a neophyte in the rule-breaking world, Skye doesn't understand the importance of the new parameters. She's as willing to flout her peers' rules as she is her parents', and that more than anything is what makes her dangerous."

The writing is remarkably powerful and emotionally true because de Gramont seems to dig deep into her own experiences and feelings in the narrative. Despite the nostalgic tone, there is an urgency that both teenagers and adults can appreciate in this novel. The drama and the feeling of living life on the edge that are the hallmarks of adolescence are perfectly recreated here.

Surprisingly, the skeleton of the story is based on a real life drug bust from the 1980s. Unlike so many other novels that have roots in true news incidents, Gossip of the Starlings has none of the stiltedness that comes from being bound to the facts of a story. The characters are fully fleshed out and wholly original. Catherine and Skye and those around them take on lives of their own that don't seem to follow a preordained script or fit into a network news cycle.

"In 1984 there was an infamous drug bust involving one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country," de Gramont said. "The incident got some press in the New York Times and even a segment on Sixty Minutes.... The surrounding events lingered in my imagination for years, but they only provided the barest template. I intentionally didn't go back and research any of the old news stories, or conduct any interviews, because I wanted the action to belong purely to the characters in my novel."

De Gramont's fertile imagination has yielded not only a beautifully written novel that perfectly melds tone, character and plot into a riveting narrative, but also an important cautionary tale for teenagers who are just beginning to explore the world on their own.

She might not feel like a conquering hero as she returns to the Boulder Book Store, but coming back to her old stomping grounds with one of the most accomplished books of the season certainly makes her a literary hero.

Nina de Gramont will read and sign her book Gossip of the Starlings at the Boulder Book Store on June 26th at 7:30 p.m.

Judging Books by Their Covers

Every week I place 40 to 50 advance reader's copies in the staff lounge here at the Boulder Book Store. Advance reader's copies are basically paperback versions of hardback books that will be published in the next few months. The distribution of these reader's copies are a critical component to the publishers' strategy for selling their new titles to booksellers.

The idea is that while our booksellers are noshing on the freshly baked bagels that are delivered to the store, they will pick up a reader's copy and become hooked. Once the booksellers are sold on a title, they will recommend it to customers. That's especially how the publishers are hoping it will work for unknown authors and titles they have paid a lot of money for, like Brunonia Barry's The Lace Reader.

Rarely, however, does it really goes as planned. Our 45 staff members pick up an average of 10 to 15 reader's copies a week, leaving 25-40 untouched. The rest end up being used to reward customers, as perks for local school teachers, or in boxes that get hauled off to the Goodwill. Over the years, I have tried to bribe or cajole the staff into taking more copies. I write up a sheet highlighting what I consider (based on conversations with the publisher reps, my own reading experience, and Publisher Weekly Reviews) to be the best titles of the week.

I've learned to put the books out about a month or two before their release date. If I put out the October copies now, there is a distinct possibility that the staff member who grabs a reader's copy won't be working by the time the fall rolls around. In months like May and June, when tons of new titles get released, I often start falling behind and sometimes I'm putting the reader's copies out on the eve of their hardback release dates.

Currently, I am frantically trying to clear out the June titles, but I am being foiled by the publishers at every turn. In today's mail there were May reader's copies still coming in, including our 5th copy of A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif, a great new comic novel that is already out in hardback.

We have one main rule at the Boulder Book Store regarding reader's copies: once a staff member takes one, it can never, ever come back. A few old books found their way onto the reader's copy shelf yesterday, much to my chagrin. After an intense investigation, the culprit--a wonderful young bookseller--was discovered. She explained to me that she was about to move and had way too many books and so she thought her January reader's copies would just blend back in.

I told her and a few other employees in the lounge that as soon as their hands touched a reader's copy, they couldn't put it back on the shelf. It was theirs. I knew I was in trouble when one of our most creative staff members began searching for barbecue tongs in order to look through the reader's copies while avoiding actually touching them.

This week, I tried a new tactic in an effort to get more people to take reader's copies. Instead of describing what the books were about and the merits of the various authors, I featured the beauty of the covers. I know, I know--that sounds shallow. But if you were faced with as many rejected titles as we are (1500 or more per year), you'd get a bit desperate as well.

The publishers spend a fortune in an attempt to make these books visual appealing. Some come in boxes, others have ribbons wrapped around them. It costs more to produce a reader's copy than a hardback. Maybe the staff will appreciate the production value over the content. After all, it works for the movies. Below is the note that accompanied the 45 reader's copies that I put in the staff lounge this morning:

Reader's Copy Highlights 5/21/08

When I first started working at the bookstore in 1992, we got about 10 reader's copies a week from the publishers. They came in plain yellow or blue covers with the title and author's name in unadorned black script. Nowadays we get 50 or more every week and many of them are truly beautiful. Liesl (one of our long-time buyers) noted that the reader's copy covers are often nicer than the finished book's. The advance cover of Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant was far superior to the jacket on the hardback. In this week's highlights, I'm featuring books as art objects. These are the most beautifully designed reader's copies of the week (without regard to content).

• The Size of the World by Joan Silber. The cover features three photos, the middle one tinted in a sumptuous orange, evoking the feel of a Vietnamese film. It's a novel set in wartime Vietnam.


• The Montefeltro Conspiracy by Marcello Simonetta. A reproduction of a Renaissance Italian painting graces the jacket of this historical look at the attempted assassination of the Medici brothers.


• The Other by David Guterson. The author of Snow Falling on Cedars is given the stark black and white treatment featuring a photo of a mysterious snow field with one set of footprints running through it.


• The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman. A gorgeous wraparound cover of an 1892 harem painting by Frank Disksee lets the reader know of the delights that will surely be found in this novel set in the 16th century Ottoman Empire.
  


• Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan. A luscious dark blue cover features a swirling jacquard (a fabric of intricate variegated weave or pattern named after Joseph Marie Jacquard, a French silk weaver in the late 1700s.)


• Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen. I admit that the cover isn't great, but the line drawings are interesting at least. The author photo on the back cover is what really makes this reader's copy. Rivka is quite alluring.


• The Island of Eternal Love by Daina Chaviano. A spiral staircase with an intricate wrought-iron railing is the centerpiece of this cover, which also features a ghostly image of a woman in period costume (I'm not sure which period). The author's photo on the back cover is absurdly posed, but Daina is beautiful enough to get away with it.


• The World Before Her by Deborah Weisgall. The cover photo of Venice's St. Mark's Square and the Doge Palace as seen from across the water with two gondolas in the foreground just makes you want to leave work immediately and head for that enchanted city.


• Promise of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst. An orange-hued jacket featuring the silhouettes of a couple of crows along with a wolf. What makes this cover stand out is the embossed title. The series name--The Wolf Chronicles--and the author's name are also embossed in gold lettering that is prettier than a shiny wedding ring.

Dying to Climb Mount Everest

Everest is a rugged, cold, oxygen-deprived, inhospitable mountain that isn't suitable for human life. A few nearly super human souls like Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler, who climbed the mountain solo and without oxygen in 1978, defy the odds and stretch the limits of human endurance. Many more people, like the dozens of amateur climbers who ascend the peak every year with the help of fixed rope lines, oxygen canisters, and teams of sherpas, conquer the mountain's 29,029 feet with all the resources that modern life can bear.

But modern conveniences and large tours only mask the true danger of the mountain. In 2006, eleven people died trying to reach the summit of Everest. Unlike 1996, the focus of John Krakauer's thrilling account Into Thin Air which documented a brutal storm that lead Everest's deadliest year, there was no swift-moving storm in 2006. In fact, there was a great deal of controversy about how and why so many people died in relatively calm weather. Nick Heil's new book Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season delves into the personalities and the histories of both the climbers who died and those that survived as well as the checkered past of Everest, in an attempt to untangle the mysteries of 2006.

Two men at the center of the controversy -- David Sharp, a British climber who lay dying as scores of climbers passed him in their attempt to summit and Russell Brice, the preeminent tour operator on the north side of the mountain -- get a lot of attention in Heil's account. Sharp's fate made headlines around the world when it became known that he perished on the mountain despite being seen by so many climbers. Brice, because he runs the most lavish and well-outfitted tours, was subject to a great deal of outrage in the climbing community. Why didn't Brice's people do more to save Sharp, even though he wasn't on Brice's tour?

"Brice, arguably more than any other individual, has been responsible for developing commercial climbing on Everest's north side, and where his responsibility and accountability ends when it comes to the welfare and activity of other teams and climbers on the mountain has become a subject of spirited debate," Heil wrote in an email interview. "Brice has been criticized for developing a heavily supported system that pampers clientele and removes most of the challenges (finding and putting in the route, dealing with weather, managing gear and food, etc) from high-altitude mountaineering, and thus enabling amateurs to make it up a peak they otherwise might not."

Sharp wasn't one of those amateurs. In 2002 he climbed Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world and less than 2,200 feet shorter than Everest. The next year Sharp attempted to climb Everest and fell just hours short of the summit because he was struggling with his oxygen system. In 2004, Sharp attempted a solo climb of the mountain and was turned back just a mile from the summit (about six hours) when he began to suffer frostbite. When he returned in 2006, he was a determined man. Once again he was climbing without a sherpa or a support team.

Sharp's forays were in direct contrast to the type of trips Brice ran. He was also a much different climber than the ones that Brice brought to the mountain. Among Brice's 2006 clients were several people overcoming physical difficulties. Mark Inglis, who lost his legs in a 1982 climbing incident on New Zealand's Mount Cook was attempting to become the first person to climb Everest on twin prosthetics. Gerard Bourrat, a 62-year old man who was barely recovered from kidney surgery, had the doctor cut into his abdomen rather than his back so he could carry a backpack without irratating the wound. Perhaps strangest of all, Tim Medvetz, a motorcycle crash survivor who was 6-foot-5, 220 pounds, had signed onto the trip at the last possible moment in questionable shape. Brice seemed to be running a wayward camp for guys trying to prove that they were physically up to snuff.

"I'm sure most able-bodied mountaineers who have climbed big peaks can appreciate what Mark Inglis, the double-amputee, accomplished by climbing to 29,000 feet," Heil wrote in his email. "That said, mountaineering does seem to attract a percentage of people seeking to reaffirm their own self-worth or bolster their self-esteem, and there may be no better case study than Everest--largely because it continues to carry such cache, no matter how cynical you might be about commercial climbing."

The tension between the amateurs and the accomplished climbers, between the well prepared mountaineers and people who might not even be in peak shape animates much of Heil's book. In one particularly memorable scene, Medvetz -- a rank amateur by most people's reckoning -- gets stuck behind 16 people waiting to climb the rock ledges at the bottom of the second step. "C'mon, let's go! It's fucking freezing down here," he screamed. "I'm going to die of frostbite! It's not funny."

Heil describes the climbers, a group of Turkish women, flopping around as the sherpas try to yank them up by their backpacks. It almost reads like a slapstick comedy, if the effects of standing around at 27,000 feet weren't so perilous. Once Medvetz scrambles up the ledge he gets stuck behind the women again, except now there is no reason to scream. The sherpas are performing CPR on one of the climbers that has collapsed and is blocking Medvetz's path. All he can do is wonder if he's going to watch someone die.

If there are any true heroes in Heil's tale it is the sherpas. They are the ones that fix the ropes at the beginning of the season, they are the ones that share their oxygen when western climbers collapse and they are even the ones that drag the dead bodies off the mountain. In the end, the only person who really tried to save David Sharp was Brice's lead sherpa Phurba Tashi, who spent hours trying to revive the Brit.

"Phurba Tashi is really just fantastically strong, and he knows what's happening on the mountain," Heil answered when I asked him about Everest heroes. "He helped turn Tim (Medvetz) and Gerard (Bourrat) around (when it was obvious they couldn't reach the summit), then did more than anyone else to try to help David Sharp, and THEN he carried Mark Inglis halfway down the North Ridge on his back when Inglis could no longer walk. He's an extraordinary individual who gets far less recognition than he deserves."

Dark Summit is a riveting book not just because the human drama that played out on Everest in May of 2006, but because of Heil's fine descriptive writing and keen insights into the motivations of the climbers, the guides and the tour operators. These portraits of the people and the landscape paint a much more complex view of what is happening on Everest then is generally understood. The difference between right and wrong is much easier to judge at sea level than it is at 28,000 feet. Heil shows completely exhausted climbers who aren't making the decision to ignore people in need, but are rather just trying to survive in the deadly climate.

"In fact, when I was on Everest in 07, I was struck not by what a circus it was (and there was some of that) but by the sense that these people did care, by and large, and that they WERE looking out for each other," Heil emailed. "What tends to get reported is all the nasty stuff of course; you never hear about the Sherpa who gave up his oxygen, or the guide who stopped to check on someone along the route, or really all of the small gestures of kindness and thoughtfulness that take place all the time."

Heil also gives a brief overview of Everest history including the exploits of George Mallory, Maurice Wilson (a crazed climber who planned to crash a plane into Everest to begin his ascent) and Edmund Hillary which helps to ground the tales of today's climbs. He also discusses the medical effects of cerebral edema, frostbite and freezing to death which come in handy when the climbers start collapsing all over the mountain.

Heil's book ends on a surprisingly high note with one climber who collapsed and somehow got up again. Lincoln Hall, who has written his own account of his climb Dead Lucky: Life After Death on Mount Everest, survived even though he was basically left for dead overnight on the mountain. Heil tells the improbable story of his rescue, including tales of desperate sherpas who violently threatened Hall in an effort to get him down the mountain. Of course, the sherpas couldn't possible inflict more violence on a human being then the brutal world of Everest's North ridge.

Nick Heil will be discussing and signing Dark Summit at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 14th at the Boulder Book Store.

Additional Questions for Nick Heil:

Kash's Book Corner: After your extensive research and multiple interviews and your own experience on the mountain, what would you suggest for dealing with the problems of a crowded mountain. Should permits be tighter? Should there be a fitness test? What is even feasible?

Nick Heil: There are some basic steps that could certainly help: for starters, previous 8,000-meter experience on another peak (Cho Oyu or Shish, for example), minimum five years climbing experience, and probably a cap on the total number of climbers. I think the rope-fixing needs to be figured out and managed through a consistent system. And I think some sort of infrastructure that could deal with emergencies, like a rotating team of Sherpas that stays at one of the high camps during the busiest summit days. This all pertains to the commercial outfits of course. Independent and private outfits would need to demonstrate some kind of previous experience and expertise. I think the mountain's guides, outfitters, and permitting agencies could reach a fair consensus on all this. It's going to take Nepal and China to step up and require it, however.

Kash's Book Corner: The Olympic torch going up Everest has been in the news this week. What was the attitude towards last year's practice run? Is this just another step towards turning the mountain into a circus?

Nick Heil: I think the attitude about the torch test run in 07 was mostly mild bemusement. This year, with the mountain closures and general ruckus related to the torch relay and pending Games, it's turned to annoyance, if not genuine anger. The torch fiasco probably points less to the circus like nature of Everest than to the iron fist with which China controls that part of Himalayas. They care far less about the tourism industry (including the Everest climbing community) than they do about creating their own propaganda and news spin. The torch's trip up Everest is obviously of great symbolic importance. But all those who were put out of work this year on the mountain might have a significantly different interpretation of that symbolism than the Chinese.

Kash's Book Corner: If the sherpas can fix the rope lines early in the season, would it be possible for them to store emergency air cannisters and other supplies at key places in the route?

Nick Heil: Yes, they could. Problem is, it's expensive (oxygen canisters run upwards of $400/pc), and it's also quite a project for someone to try to manage independent rescue resources on the mountain. As I mentioned before, there could in theory, even be a small rescue team positioned up high, but again, there's the cost, and such a thing would also seem a bit excessive to mountaineers who pride themselves on the notion of their own self-sufficiency. One of the reason the Brice/Himex model works so well is that Brice has built in failsafes to troubleshoot problems during the climb. I think that's probably the way to go, before trying to establish elaborate rescue systems.

Deconstructing the Library

I first read T.C. Boyle's classic novel Budding Prospects in 1991 when I was a sportswriter in Maryland. I picked up my hardback copy for about five bucks at a used bookstore a few blocks away from the newspaper office one sunny spring afternoon. I flew through Boyle's comic masterpiece of ill-fated, paranoid pot growers in between covering high school baseball and softball games.

The novel resonated with me in ways that are hard to describe. I didn't grow pot, I'm not particularly paranoid and I certainly wouldn't be as inept at anything that I put my mind to as Boyle's characters are in their endeavours. There was a spark and a lightness in Boyle's language and his characters that struck me. The voice of the first person narrator, Felix, was direct, honest and humorous all at the same time. The spectre of failure haunted Felix from the opening sentences. I was at a difficult point in my life where I was getting by (sharing a broken-down house with two other reporters), but success in the adult world of work certainly did not seem assured. Maybe I was feeling a bit hopeless as I read Felix's opening words:

"I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team," Boyle writes. He continues, "I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston."

A year later, I did quit my job at the newspaper and headed west to Colorado. My personal list of quitting had risen to include the cities of New Orleans and Houston along with a relationship and now my career as a sportswriter. Budding Prospects, along with about 75 other precious books, was packed away in the trunk of my car as I sped across the country with my friend's windsurfer tied to the roof.

When I left Maryland, I didn't even consider ditching my books. They were part of my identity. The battered copies of Bernard Malamud's novels helped me understand my Jewish ancestry. Joyce Carol Oates' Because it is Bitter, Because it is my Heart gave me some insight into racial relations in America. Richard Hugo's book of poems 31 Letters and 13 Dreams described the satisfactions and heartaches that lay ahead for me if I followed my most secret desire of becoming a poet. As I drove across America, I thought of Alex Kotlowitz's recently published instant sociological classic There are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America that told me what was really happening in the inner cities that I sped past on the highway.

I treasured these books for how they had touched me as a reader and person, and I couldn't imagine being without them. I believed that I would refer back to them over and over again as the years went on. They were irreplaceable to me. You couldn't just go into any library or bookstore and find Hugo's poetry or Malamud's more obscure novels. I needed to carry them with me to create my own personal library.

I hung onto these books and added hundreds more over the subsequent 15 years. Budding Prospects was packed up and moved five separate times over the years. Each time it was placed on my bookshelf as if it was a valuable family heirloom saved in the Armenian exodus from Turkey by my great-grandmother. The bookcases in my condos grew from bricks and boards to beautiful painted wooden cases acquired at a Mexican furniture store in downtown Boulder. No expense was too great when it came to caring for my books. When those cases were bursting with titles, I installed metal brackets and wall-to-wall shelves on every available wall. Finally, when there were still books that couldn't find a home on any of the shelves, stacks started accumulating on the floor.

Then, a funny thing happened about two years ago -- I tried to reread Budding Prospects. As part of a store contest, every staff member was supposed to pick a backlist book to recommend for the summer. What could be a better fit for pot-smoking Boulder than my old beloved friend. I managed to get to about page 75 before I set aside Boyle's work in boredom. It seemed more meandering than I recalled, and all of the wonderful passages that I remembered held none of the surprise for me that they did on the first reading. Here was this book that I'd carried for over 2,000 miles and packed and repacked for the last 15 years and I had no desire to read it again.

I didn't immediately get rid of my copy of Boyle's debut novel. But I started thinking about all of my books. Why was I holding onto them? At the age of 40 I was much more confident of my identity than I had been at 25. I didn't need them to define me anymore. I never seemed to reread them, except for an occasional poem or short story. I didn't really refer to them very much. Some I even forgot I owned and would snag a remainder copy of a title that it turned out was sitting in our spare room collecting dust in its alphabetically correct place on the shelf.

Furthermore, even if I let go of Budding Prospects I could turn around and get it right back if I really wanted it. Over the last couple of months, I've gradually been dismantling my personal library. As I part with each precious tome, I'm addicted to looking up what it's really worth out in the world. It turns out that most of my books are worth between one penny and three dollars according to Amazon and Abebooks. That's not much when you consider how valuable every inch of an 800-square-foot apartment is in downtown Boulder.

Sometimes, I fear that as I get rid of them I will miss their physical presence. It will be like the fresh paint on a wall where an old picture used to hang. You might not even know what the picture was, but you miss the frame, and it's almost painful to see that clean spot on the wall. This worry was assuaged a bit last night over drinks with an old friend, a writer, who said goodbye to many of his books when he moved from a house into a 640 square foot condo with his wife.

"We packed up and got rid of so many boxes of books when we moved, and I don't miss them at all. There isn't a single thing that I miss," he said. I peered at him closely trying to figure out if I really believed him. "It's great," he blurted out in conclusion and grinned. He sure looked like a happy man to me.


It was reassuring to see him smiling; it is kind of depressing to think that these objects that have had a hold over me like holy relics or talismans for the past 15 years could be worth-less. On the other hand, it is freeing to think that I no longer need to construct a personal library. Every obscure Malamud novel can be had in several different editions.

I spent a couple of days during the last week receiving used books at the bookstore. I was amazed at the plethora of titles that comes in every single week. Classic works of literature, religion and history, along with books that are still on the bestseller list. If you want to get a cheap copy of Eckhart Tolle's Oprah sensation A New Earth or Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize winner The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, just put in a request at our used book office and one will probably show up within a few days.

In the used book office, I felt like I was standing beneath a waterfall of books as I looked at the floor to ceiling shelves of books we'd recently purchased waiting to be received. As I stood there, I began to realize that there is a never-ending flow of books. There's no reason to dam up a tiny area for my own personal pool. For a modest amount of money, I can reach into this flow at any time and read exactly what I want.

The dismantling of my library hasn't gone that smoothly. There are still books that I've owned for 12 years that I insist that I will eventually read. My wife doesn't quite understand why I have to hang on to two copies of Don DeLillo's Underworld. I explain that one is the reader's copy and the other is a signed first edition. These are the hazards of my profession. I got rid of Budding Prospects, but I can't let go of T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain and Road to Wellville. They are both signed, personalized and dated. Then there are books like Kevin Canty's collection of short stories, Honeymoon. It's one of 250 signed first editions. I've never read Canty, but perhaps this will become a holy relic if Canty goes on to win a major award.

These books with personal touches seem to be all that I want to keep anymore. They seem to me to be irreplaceable in a way that most books simply aren't. I'd sooner sell my couch (my wife might disagree since she's currently napping on it) than my autographed Philip Roth books. But is this really a library? No. It's just a fairly random collection of signed or rare books that I've stumbled across in my years as a bookseller. The world, for better or worse, is now my library.

From Fugitive to Professional

The word terrorist is thrown around quite a bit these days. We can all agree that the events of 9/11 was the work of terrorists. Few people would hesitate to call Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, a terrorist. But what about Palestinian children who throw rocks at Israeli soldiers? What about the Zapatista movement in Chiapas? Those are more difficult questions, especially now that the Zapatistas aren't using military weapons to achieve their revolution. But they are actively working to overthrow the Mexican state.

For a brief moment in the late 1960s and early 1970s the protest movement against the war in Vietnam took a violent turn. Frustrated protesters made the argument that the immoral war needed to be stopped by any means necessary. Bombs were set, people were killed and many of the perpetrators went into hiding. They became fugitives. Were they terrorists?

In Janis Hallowell's new novel She Was, Doreen Woods, a professional mother living in Denver, is one of these fugitives. A student radical at Berkeley in the 1970s, she has eluded capture for 35 years and transformed herself from a violent teenage war protester into a mother nervous about her son's attendance at a peaceful anti-war rally. She hardly seems like a violent enemy of the state.

"I wanted to write about a fugitive woman," Hallowell said in a wide-ranging interview. "These women really existed, more than one. There were few notable political things that women did, but women took starring roles in this kind of action."

The action in question is a bombing at Columbia University that kills a black janitor. Hallowell recounts the night from the perspective of Louis Nilon, the victim, in a spellbinding prologue that evokes pathos without being sentimental. The janitor makes his rounds thinking about his life while listening to the Ali-Frazier championship fight. It's clear that a human being has died in this explosion. There's no writing off of Nilon as collateral damage.

That's more damage than Hallowell's real life model for Doreen Woods, Kathleen Soliah, did when she planted bombs in Los Angeles police cars in 1975. Those bombs didn't go off. Soliah went into hiding and 24 years later was arrested living under the name Sarah Jane Olson. She was back in the news last month, when she was released from jail and rearrested due to an administrative mistake.

"I decided to turn up the volume a little more," Hallowell said. "I wanted to bring into higher relief the moral ambiguity of the situation. It's one thing if you set a bomb and it doesn't go off. But it does explode and kills a black working-class man--the very kind of person that the radicals said they were doing these things to help. I made it harsh on purpose. I didn't expect to feel compassion for her."

Gradually, the reader does come to feel compassion for Woods. Hallowell not only shows us the life that Woods leads in Denver, which includes taking care of her sick brother, but also her personal history leading up to the fateful evening at Columbia University. It's a story set in the turbulent, emotional times of the Vietnam war. The beliefs of sons and daughters are set against the values of their own parents as American living rooms became increasingly hostile places. It's easy for a smart, impressionable 19-year old to be lured into the world of violent student radicals after seeing the damage the war has inflicted on her beloved older brother.

More importantly to developing compassion, Hallowell shows us Woods' life after the bomb explodes. She gives us the story from a variety of viewpoints including those of her husband, the woman pursuing her and her brother Adam, a troubled Vietnam vet. These different narratives add texture and a scope that couldn't be achieved if we were with Doreen the whole time.

"I had to find ways to get into their skin," Hallowell says of the characters she writes. "You have to find the humanity of everyone you write about. There are memoirs about the subject, but as a memoir you only get your perspective. In fiction you have the freedom of telling the story from any perspective. That's what's powerful about fiction. I didn't even try first person with this book."

It's a good thing, too, because the scenes from Adam's point of view are among the most powerful she writes. Adam has some harrowing memories of cruelty and inhumanity from Vietnam that are floating to the surface of his hallucinating mind throughout the story. It's not the kind of writing that you'd expect from Hallowell. Her first book was the excellent novel The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn, a first-person tale of a teenager who might have the divine spirit in her set in a fairly tame Boulder. It hardly seemed like the resume of someone who would write searing scenes of the Vietnam War.

"When it became clear to me that Adam's story involved being a vet, I resisted it. I'm a woman. I had no business writing about a war that I couldn't have fought in. I talked to Nick Arvin (the author of Articles of War) and he told me some of the best war scenes were fiction. I decided to dip my toe in with some research and went to the Vet center in Boulder. One of the vets told me that everybody in the war knows the war from the 10 feet around them. Everyone's experience was insular and different. That gave me the confidence to write the scenes."

Once you read this novel it's almost impossible to think of Doreen as a terrorist. Her mistake, which haunts every day of her life, seems like a terrible youthful indiscretion. It pales in comparison to the atrocities that Adam witnessed in Vietnam. When a grandstanding politician refers to her as a fugitive terrorist at the end of the novel, it is jarring. Surely Doreen Woods isn't what we mean when we talk of the war on terror.

But it's our contemporary situation that gives this novel such resonance. Hallowell might be writing of the anti-war movement in the 1970s, but its impossible to read She Was without thinking of Iraq and our grappling with how to handle terrorism now.

"When I proposed the book, I had to stick to my guns and say 'I think this is going to be timely'", Hallowell said. "If we'd pulled out of Iraq, I wonder how easy it would have been to sell the book. It has to be relevant to what's happening now. I'm pleased it's coming out before the election. After the election, things could really change in Iraq. A novel has to work in a timeless way, but it taps into the zeitgeist of today and that is nice."

Hallowell will be speaking about and signing She Was at the Boulder Book Store on May 8 at 7:30 p.m.

Bay Area Indies

For most tourists, San Francisco conjures up images of the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman's Wharf and historic trolley cars climbing steep urban hills. The tastes of sourdough bread, fresh seafood and authentic Chinese food are all promised in a visit to the city. It's a bonanza of unique museums (show me something that beats the Exploratorium), stunning neighborhoods and gorgeous views of the Bay.

I enjoy all of those attractions, but what I'm really interested in are the independent bookstores in the city and beyond. You can get amazing views and good food in just about any city in America, but finding a great bookstore is never easy. I always make an effort to derail our vacations and steer us into these stores. It's a bit like a hijacking. My wife develops a great itinerary after hours of studying travel guide books. Usually, we get about 30 minutes into her plans before I notice that we are within 3 miles of an independent bookstore and insist on a detour.

Here are some bookstore observations from our recently completed California trip:

City Lights Books

The store founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti continues to amaze me. I'm not sure if they do anything the way a modern bookstore is supposed to do. Their signage is haphazard at best and often illegible, their books are almost universally displayed spine out instead of face out, there are books on their shelves that probably should have been returned months -- if not years -- ago, and yet shopping there is pure joy.

There's a true sense of discovery at City Lights. They carry a wide variety of university press titles in several different subjects and often prominently feature these books. In the window, there were more university titles displayed than titles from mainstream publishers. Books that I had skipped when buying for our store, I suddenly found fascinating in City Lights.

It seems like the buyers at City Lights (whom I do not know) have a real sense of the store's identity. They're not trying to find the next popular trend, or ride Oprah's wave (although I did see dozens of copies of Eat, Pray, Love squirreled away in overstock), or take advantage of sweetheart co-op deals from corporate publishers; instead they are buying books that fit the City Lights aesthetic and inviting customers to partake in it. It's a gutsy way to try and survive in today's book market, but at least from the outside, it seems to work. There were dozens of people in the store on the Monday night I visited.

The store's quirky layout, with rooms opening onto other rooms and a warren-like basement with strange, yet fitting section names like "Situations and Actions" or "Topographies," lends itself to satisfying browsing.



The greatest space of all is the poetry room. Easily the most pleasant physical area in the store, it is entirely devoted to verse. I was stuck in the room for over an hour reading stanzas, taking in odes and breathing couplets.

Gradually, I came out of my reverie and began to look for specific poets that I longed for. I searched for Richard Hugo, Lucia Perillo, Paul Guest and Paul Zimmer and somehow came up empty handed. I found a Philip Levine's What Work Is, but was turned off by the $16 price tag on an 80-page paperback. I took a deep breath. Here I was in what might be the most extensive poetry section in an independent store in the country, and I couldn't find what I wanted.

It brought to mind the problem we face every day at our store. Customers come in and ask for fairly obscure books, and when we tell them we don't have them, they are surprised by our lack of selection. We offer to special order the title for them, and they just tell us that they'll order it from Amazon. Well, I wasn't going to go to Amazon, and I really wanted a book of poems for the plane ride home.

I refocused and decided to see what City Lights was recommending. Perhaps I'd actually discover something new. They were featuring Bob Hicok's Insomnia Diary on an end cap. I picked it up and read a few of his narrative poems and was soon laughing to myself. I decided to buy the book when I read "The bald truth." Hicok is as bald as I am, so I could identify with his opening line, "My hair went on a diet of its own accord."

Those other authors will have to wait for another day. I've read them all before anyway. Thanks to City Lights, I've discovered somebody new.

Book Passage

The renovated Ferry Building is one of San Francisco's great places to grab lunch and just look at the Bay Bridge stretch out over the blue water. The independent bookseller Book Passage from the Marin County town of Corte Madera opened a small store facing out onto the bay in the Ferry Building. It's the opposite of City Lights in many ways -- good signage, faced-out titles, fairly slick marketing.

The challenge of a small store in a tourist location is to retain some identity while catering to both locals and travellers from all over the world. Book Passage manages to appeal to both audiences in a limited space without feeling cramped or schizophrenic. Their recommended section was interesting and featured an eclectic range of novels, memoirs and other nonfiction. It added a real personal touch (especially since I know one the main recommenders) to what would otherwise feel like a busy airport or train station store. I also thought that their board listing events held at both of their stores was impressive yet homey. Immediately upon returning to our store, I told our promotions manager that we should think of posting a similar board.

Once again, I thought: here's a store that really seems to know itself. Comfortable in its own skin, it isn't trying to overreach. It was hopping with customers perusing the staff picks as well as the travel titles. The staff was enthusiastic, helpful and seemed glad to be working in such a beautiful place. I found several books I wanted, mostly on the sales table, but alas I was pulled away by the relatives before I could make my final decisions.

Cody's in Berkeley

Has anyone been to Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley lately? Wow, what a disappointment. I remember going there 15 years ago (long after its true heyday) and really enjoying the energetic music vibe, radical politics and great shopping. The heart of the experience for me was Cody's Bookstore, along with the two giant record stores, Amoeba and Rasputin. Well, Cody's is gone and it's a miracle that the record stores are still there.

My wife and I wandered around for about half an hour searching for a decent place to eat lunch. Most places looked like student dives with inedible food. There was no real feeling of progressive politics, protesting or even anti-corporate sentiment on the street. Instead, we were met with overly aggressive pan-handlers, a band standing outside of Rasputin trying to hustle their own CDs and lots of fashion-challenged college kids. We didn't return at night, but it would be easy to imagine how the whole scene might turn menacing after dark.

No wonder Cody's packed up and left. It's a true shame though. On our last visit to Berkeley, we spent hours searching through their left-wing political books, extensive international fiction selection and staff-selected titles. Making matters worse is that Cody's second location on 4th street, a much more upscale neighborhood, is also shuttered now.

Now, the biggest draw of that 4th street neighborhood is the East Bay Vivarium. I have to admit that the Vivarium (that's reptile store in English) is one of the most amazing places I've visited recently. It features a plethora of snakes, lizards and turtles. Some of these animals are huge, including a monitor lizard that looked quite a bit like a komodo dragon.

After we left the Vivarium, we wandered past the just-closed Cody's location. I remember visiting a few years ago, just after it opened. It was a beautiful location with high ceilings and wooden fixtures. The staff had done a magnificent job creating tables that just made you want to buy books you didn't need. But frankly, the store didn't seem quite right to me. It was too pretty for what was really a gritty independent bookstore. Sure enough, the rent was jacked up (that's what happens to new buildings in pretty places) and Cody's was back out on the street. They are now in downtown Berkeley in a relatively tiny 7,500 square-foot store.

As I stared in the windows of the nearly empty store, a shiver went through my body. It was more than the cool breeze blowing that March day. It felt like I was looking at the future of independent bookselling in America. A few unidentifiable, forgotten author photos hung up on the far wall, empty spinner racks populated the selling floor and a silent cash register was permanently shut. A man in his late forties tried the door and was alarmed to see that it was locked shut. We told him they were closed for good.

"Well, that sucks," he said, before heading down the street to Anthropologie.

I found it hard to tear my eyes away from the windows. It was like looking at the body of a relative before the coffin is shut. It's painful to see, but more painful to turn away.

How I Became a Bookseller

Note: This blog entry is part of the American Booksellers Association blog carnival. A blog carnival is a collection of posts on a given topic. Links to blog entries on how people became booksellers will be published on ABA Omnibus on March 25th.

The glimmering movie screen in Houston’s art deco Alabama Theater was an immense backdrop to aisles and aisles of carefully shelved books. The looming, white expanse stretched across the entire back end of the flagship Bookstop location like an enormous blank page. It was there to project your imagination upon even as you discovered the published efforts of thousands of authors.

Unfortunately, my imagination was in short supply on the hot, muggy, September day that I first entered the historic theater-turned-bookstore in 1987. I needed a job, and I was desperate to land one. I was daydreaming about paying my rent, buying gas for my car and maybe having enough money left over to buy my girlfriend, Cathy, dinner. The three months of freedom from academia since my college graduation had turned into a strange, humid, house of horrors on the Gulf Coast that I couldn’t seem to exit.

Houston wasn’t even the beginning of my adventures. I had spent the better part of the summer in New Orleans with my college friend Debbie and later, her girlfriend, Barb. We arrived on a sweltering day in late July and quickly found an apartment on the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line above a steak and eggs joint on South Carrollton Avenue. It wasn’t a bad place: hardwood floors, a banana tree in the backyard, a sunny kitchen and one air conditioner. Sure, the neighborhood was a bit seedy, but we were beginning life on our own in a new, exotic city.

Day after day, Deb and I looked for work as we waited for Barb to join us. I applied to restaurants (talking up my busboy experience in high school), newspapers (noting my experience as the editor of my college paper), and to music stores (pointing out my years as college a DJ). No luck. No matter where I went, I was told that there weren’t any jobs.

New Orleans was quickly becoming a disaster for me. Ronald Reagan might have brought morning to America with his Reaganomics, but New Orleans was still mired in darkness. Unemployment was in double digits, the racial tension in the city was palpable, and no one in the south wanted to have anything to do with me and my foreign-sounding name. Truthfully, why should anyone in Louisiana be able to pronounce my name right when I couldn’t even say New Orleans properly?

Early in my stay, I had wandered into a bar and ordered a drink -- something strong and cheap. A grizzled old man sitting on the barstool next to me looked intensely at me, his eyes taking in my ripped jeans and my faded Who t-shirt. Finally, he said in a gravelly voice, “How long you been in Nawlins?”

“Excuse me?”

“Nawlins,” he said, gesturing around the bar with his arm.

I was flummoxed. “Nawlins,” he yelled again as if I was deaf. Then, thinking I’d put the pieces together at last, I decided that Nawlins must be the name of the bar.

I picked up the sweating glass, swallowed a mouthful of my drink and said, “I just got here. I’ve been here five minutes, tops. I walked in the door, sat down and ordered my drink.”

He stared at me pretty hard and I stared back at him, looking right into his clouded blue eyes and wondering if he was going to lunge at me. Suddenly, he broke out into a big grin and raised his glass. “You’re all right, son. You’re all right.” He turned in his stool and shouted to some guys playing pool, “Says he’s been in Nawlins for five minutes! That’s the first time I heard that. Five minutes in Nawlins and comes straight here, to this fine establishment.”

Rejected from one job after another, Deb and I quickly discovered that we couldn’t afford life in New Orleans on our dwindling savings. We could barely pay for beignets from a street vendor as a weekend splurge. Late at night, we stood outside of the city’s bars and listened to the raw music flowing out into the street through the opened windows.

It was on one of these nights in late August that I came to realize my time in New Orleans was over. Earlier that day, I had checked back in at a local music store for about the tenth time, hoping to see if there were any openings. When I pleaded my case to the reluctant manager, he simply said, “Look, you don’t even have a degree in music. I’ve got 20 resumes from music majors, some with graduate degrees. But I’ll hold onto your resume, if you really want me to.”

That night, as we walked the streets of the city, I was so disconsolate that I bought a small bottle of scotch. Debbie, who was celebrating Barb’s imminent arrival the next day, was happy to share swigs as we pushed through the neighborhoods in our quest for live music. Eventually, we came to a bar where the guitars sounded as though they were being played underwater, and the singer’s voice sounded like it had been treated with sandpaper. The front of the bar was opened like a garage door, and Deb and I swayed to this dark music and drank scotch from our paper bag.

As the night wore on, we were joined by at least a half-dozen men sipping cheap liquor out of their own paper bags and enjoying the music. Most of them looked to be homeless, and we were the only white people among this ragtag crew. They treated us well and offered to share their schnapps with us after Deb and I drained our bottle. Throughout the hot, humid night, one common thread ran through our conversation with these men: Why would you be in New Orleans if you could get out?

By the morning, just as Barb was arriving at the apartment, I was making plans to move to Houston and join my girlfriend, Cathy, in her hometown. She had transferred back to the University of Houston and was about to start the fall semester. I figured the economy had to be better there, and perhaps in a big, modern city, gleaming with glass skyscrapers, my Armenian name wouldn’t be such a handicap.

A few days after my arrival in Houston, a fledgling weekly newspaper out in the distant suburbs hired me on as the sports editor. I was elated, relieved and immensely grateful to the publisher, a woman in her forties. My euphoria died when I reported to work and discovered that the newspaper didn’t exist. It was my job, as well as that of a few other journalistic wannabes, to will it into existence. Basically, I was a commissioned sales rep, pounding the scorching hot Texas blacktop trying to sell inches of ad copy for a newspaper that was a figment of the owner’s imagination. Once enough ads were sold and an issue was in the works, then I could be the sports editor.

I spent a week going in and out of every kind of business in a dozen different nondescript strip malls, including grimy car repair shops, Mexican bakeries, mom-and-pop drug stores, an Irish pub, Chinese restaurants, a tattoo parlor and even an adult bookstore with a peep show. My spiel was awful and my sales technique thoroughly inept. I didn’t know what geographic area that the newspaper would cover, what our politics were or what kind of stories we’d write. Those things kept changing based on where we sold the ads.

Each day I returned to the office empty-handed, and the publisher would scowl at me and chastise me like a lazy child. Finally, I sold a quarter-page ad to a photography store. I almost kissed the man when he bought it. My commission, for the week, came to about $50. It was barely enough to buy my lunches and the gas I’d used.

The next Monday morning, I couldn’t bear the thought of driving 50 miles across the flat Texas landscape only to find failure waiting. I quit with a phone call before I even got out of bed. My worst fears and personal doubts were realized when the publisher replied, “I didn’t think you’d last from the moment I saw you. I thought I’d give you a chance to prove me wrong. A lot of good that did me.”

I would have stayed in bed, hiding, for the rest of the day, but that afternoon, with Cathy’s urging, I was in the Alabama Theater Bookstop with my resume and a desperate plea. I told the clerk at the counter that I would clean toilets, mop the floor, work the midnight shift, work both Saturday and Sunday. She looked up with what seemed to be a hint of kindness and promised that she’d do what she could.

By the time I got back to the apartment, there was a message on the machine from the store manager. The next morning, I was in his office for an interview, freshly shaved, wearing an ironed shirt, my best pants and black, polished shoes. My lifetime revolt against my father’s lawyerly ways and wardrobe advice had come to a quick end after a couple months of near-poverty. I was offered the job at $4.00 an hour before I even left the manager’s office that day. I could even work 40 hours per week if I wanted.

Despite being part of a small regional chain (there were nearly 20 stores in Texas and Florida, including four in Houston), the Alabama Theater Bookstop was a truly unique store that had been featured in national magazines for its historic architecture and funky layout. We were located in a hip, gay neighborhood teeming with actors, writers and artists. The store was the hub of a small, socially liberal oasis in a largely buttoned-downed city.

Although my friends Deb and Barb were in a lesbian relationship in New Orleans, the experience of gay culture was new to me. I grew up mostly in the suburbs, and Allegheny College is a fairly conservative school with a very small gay population. This urban, gay neighborhood forced me to see the world in a different way, to accept things that I hadn’t previously encountered. The Bookstop had its share of cross-dressers and flamboyant types saunter in on many a weekend night, but I found the cultural differences to be more subtle. There were a lot of jokes in our tiny break room that I just didn’t get. There were secrets that I was never privy to. It was a lesson in being an outsider.

I quickly gained two responsibilities at the store beyond the usual duties of a bookseller: author companion during signings and assistant in the large magazine section

Bookstop specialized in huge celebrity signings. We’d take out an ad in the Sunday paper, and customers would line up out our front door and around the block. It was my job to make sure that the author (though calling some of these people authors was a stretch) had everything he or she needed. Making the author feel appreciated became more of a challenge when there were no lines. One night, I listened to a hyped-up Tama Janowitz ramble on for over an hour, nodding and laughing as I pretended to follow along with her gossiping monologue, all the time peeking at the front doors in hopes that a fan of hers would arrive and rescue me.

The magazines were thrust upon me because our magazine buyer was in and out of the hospital with various complications from AIDS. It was tedious, those first few days, searching for the titles at the base of the big movie screen, desperately trying to pull all the old copies and still helping the customers who wandered by.

Each time the magazine buyer returned to the store, he looked more frail, more beleaguered, and his skin seemed to be flaking off his arms. The long-time staff members, who had worked with him for years, fawned over him, while the newer employees just tried to politely take on as much of his work as possible without making it obvious.

On days when he returned, there would be hushed conversations about the state of his health, whispered remembrances of other men who had succumbed to the disease in our neighborhood, and lots of head-shaking about what was happening to the community. My two best friends in the store were having an on-again, off-again relationship, and I could see that they were deeply impacted by the increasing frequency of our magazine buyer’s trips to the hospital. One of my friends was already feeling skittish about whether or not he was really gay. The illness that was among us seemed to be pushing him away from the relationship, despite the deep and genuine affection he felt for his boyfriend.

My dual duties (yucking it up with authors and subbing for a dying man) gave the job a surreal quality. One day, Chuck Norris was in the store signing his autobiography. Things were going great until I joked that he wasn’t any taller than me, and his high-heeled cowboy boots weren’t fooling anyone. He challenged me to a fight. For a moment, I thought he was kidding, but when the sneer stayed on his face, I feared he may be serious. Luckily, I escaped unscathed, and we all got a good laugh out of it afterwards.

The mirth would completely disappear the next day, however, when I was unloading a large order of gay men’s magazines because our magazine buyer was too sick to come in. I used to wonder how many of our customers who had bought these very magazines over the years had perished since, and how many more were dying now.


Outside of the store’s thick art deco walls, the city of Houston was grinding me down. The incessant heat, the horrendous traffic and the complete flatness of the landscape were things I could never get used to. Where was downtown? Why weren’t there sidewalks in our neighborhood? Why did everyone make such a big deal about the Galleria when it was just a gaudy mall?

In the evenings, Cathy and I used to walk or jog along the bayous that ran through the city. When she first told me about them back in Pennsylvania, I imagined lush waterways, perhaps lined with magnolias. Instead, I found wide concrete troughs with dirty rainwater and few trees. Occasionally, we went to the beach down in Galveston. Our day would invariably be marred by a pick-up truck carrying a keg that would pull up right alongside our blanket. It was like sunbathing on the highway.

Despite these glaring problems, just about everyone who lived in Houston seemed to love the city, including Cathy. I felt more and more out of sorts and out of place, except when I was roaming the aisles of the Bookstop in a conversation with a customer or in the employee break room debating why we shelved Larry McMurtry in literature instead of fiction.

Many of the customers would ask me where I was from after hearing my East Coast accent. When I told them Philadelphia, they’d look at me like I’d managed to escape from a gulag. They ask me how long I’d been in Houston (pronouncing it “Youston”) and why I moved to the city. Then the inevitable question would come: “How do you like Youston?”

I’d tell them, “I love my girlfriend.” Usually, they wouldn’t get my attempts at misdirection, and they’d ask again, “But what do you think of Youston?” I’d take a deep breath and tell them that I was enjoying my stay.

I was not alone in having my troubles getting along in Houston. One of my favorite customers was Joe Barry Carroll, the NBA player. Carroll, who had been traded to the Rockets in the middle of the season from the Golden State Warriors, used to skulk around the bookstore late at night. One evening, I got into a conversation with him. This was not an easy feat because Carroll, nicknamed Joe Barely Cares, was known as a loner who was loathe to even grant interviews.

We talked of literature and, if I remember right, philosophy. He bought books that reflected a highly educated and eclectic taste. I asked him about life in the NBA. He told me it was pretty bad, especially the traveling. The guys never wanted to discuss anything interesting or real. Here was man who should have been a graduate student in some liberal arts field, and he was stuck traveling the country with a bunch of college drop-outs. I came to feel sorry for the poor guy, an intellectual trapped in a 7-foot-1 body. In a strange way, I came to identify with him and looked forward to his visits. I wondered if my cynical East Coast personality stuck out in Houston, like his height did.


The blank screen in the Bookstop continued to tower above us all, as the spring of 1988 turned towards the hot, hot summer. The shipping-and-receiving department, where the magazines were dropped off, was behind that high screen. One day, I was working back there when I turned and saw one of the female employees crying. I went to comfort her in the way an awkward 22-year-old guy consoles a sobbing woman in her forties: I tried to hug her without touching her. She had seen the magazine buyer the previous day and said that his condition had grown worse. He hadn’t been back in the store in weeks, and I’d come to think of the magazine job as my own.

On the other side of the screen, Randy Shilts’ book And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic was selling like crazy. Shilts had captured the moment in time perfectly. For months before the book was released, people had been asking about it, waiting for it. Our special orders were piling up every single day. In 1988, there was no hope for AIDS victims; what people needed was some kind of an explanation, and Shilts was providing that.

My two friends in the store broke up for good not long after that. The one that was unsure about his sexuality knew that he could never tell his family he was gay. He was headed to medical school, and although he loved his boyfriend, he couldn’t lead the life necessary to sustain that relationship. I remember him telling me that there are many lives you can lead, and sometimes you have to recognize the ones you can’t.

His words made me think longingly of Deb and Barb in New Orleans, and the life that I’d so quickly given up on. I thought of those blues clubs and how New Orleans, for all its faults, was a city that I could understand and live in, and that perhaps Houston was a city, no matter what the job, that I could not live in. I began to realize that as hard as I tried to feel at home and as much as I cared for Cathy, I couldn’t project a life in Texas upon the big empty screen of my future.

A few days before our relationship began to crumble, I was promoted to a supervisor role at the bookstore. It was a short, joyous time period. I was now up to $5.00 per hour and could move out of the shadow of the magazine buyer. I’d have a few more bucks for going out, and perhaps Cathy and I could even take a little trip. However, it was not to be. As my relationship collapsed over the next few months, I also decided that I needed to do something serious with my life. I couldn’t stay in bookselling forever. I had to find a “real” job. In July of 1988, I quit the Bookstop and thought I had left bookselling for good.

By August, I was out of Houston and have never returned. Over the years, I have come to realize that during my time in Texas I loved, not just my girlfriend, but also the Alabama Theater Bookstop and many of my co-workers there. I left in such a hurry, distraught over the broken relationship and feeling like a failure because I never did find a real job, that I never said goodbye to any of my friends at the book store.

At a recent American Bookseller Association meeting in Brooklyn, I ran into a bookseller from Blue Willow Books in Houston. I mentioned my days in the Alabama Theater and she told me that there was talk in Houston about a developer tearing it down. My heart started racing as I thought of that movie palace being destroyed by the wrecking ball. I just might have to return to Houston before the demolishing crew arrives, taking one last look at that movie screen to see what’s playing on it now.