Hey, baby, do you want a date or my last copy of Stephen Mitchell's translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies?When I lived in Florida, I briefly worked for a bookstore that sold nothing but remainders. Well, we occasionally got in best sellers because when people came into the book store, they actually expected to see copies of books they wanted to read.
I called this store The Book Whorehouse. I was a whore for books. I should never have accepted a paycheck because most of my extremely paltry salary went to buying books. Left alone among such largesse for the whole day, or even part of a day, how could I expect to walk out, untainted by the printed word, untempted by the pleasures of touching a book's skin?
I'm reading Lewis Buzbee's The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop. This man completely understands books and how those who lust for books think and operate. He worked for a couple of primo bookstores in the Bay Area. (I'd been auditioning with BDalton and Waldenbooks for years and never got a callback. The best I could do was Book Whorehouse.)
He completely understands the aesthetics of bookstores, he explains why I'm creeped out by the wide open spaces of the newer Borders stores I've been in. It should not be this way. There should be towers of shelves, but not perilous. There should be room to navigate comfortably, but the feeling of being sheltered by the stacks and stacks of books is a must, something I don't get at Borders.
I'm half way through this little book and I've lost count of the number of times I've gasped and said, "Yes! Exactly!" When he listed off the books he ordered from Scholastic, I recognized at least half of them.
Right now, he's going into a history of bookstores and libraries, along with a brief history of the printed and written word. And explains why, for the longest time, booksellers were regarded with suspicion.
My time at the Book Whorehouse was the palest reflection of Buzbee's career. I didn't really get to wander among the stacks to learn the books. I spent my days slipping the stickers off the remaindered books, using a combination of lighter fluid, a double-edged razor blade, and paper towels. I knew my time was coming to an end when I called the main office one day to tell them the safe had been left open when I came in that morning - and the CEO screamed at me for spending the $1.25 for a long-distance call.
We didn't arrange books by title or genre. We arranged them by color. I'm not kidding. We had one wall of books displayed front-out and it was our task to make sure there were stripes of books in the same color, to make festive patterns as if books were quilting blocks.
I spent one day completely rearranging the cookbooks to reflect this bizarre merchandising method. My reward was high praise from the manager who was moving onto the big leagues of Barnes & Noble. He took pictures and sent them to the headoffice and apparently my example was passed around from store to store.
I'm still trying to get into B&N as a bookseller. They still won't have me.
I was still teetering on the edge when a man threatened to assault me over a copy of The Vampire Lestat. I couldn't and wouldn't give him a bookseller's discount because he didn't have his tax id. There were three other men in the store at the time and they gathered around and shouted at him to back off. The shortest, oldest man was the one who challenged him the most. The man stalked away. Later on in the day, a woman phoned the store and asked if I was all right. I said I was and asked how she knew something had happened.
"My husband was the one who spoke up," she said. "I think it's just shameful what that other man said to you."
But the very end, the last day was on a sunny spring Saturday. One of the frequent customers who came in but never spoke to me was a man who always wore black jogging shorts, a black t-shirt, and had a ZZ Top beard. He was there and a woman came in with her 12 year old daughter and the girl's friend.
The woman came up to me and said, "There's a man back there in the Bible section...masturbating."
"Where are your girls? Get your girls." She did.
I called the cops, but it was too late. He'd already left and I wasn't going to challenge him. The cops showed up. I described the man to him. "Oh yeah. We know that guy. We've run into him before."
I wonder if Lewis Buzbee ever ran into those types. I've heard they aren't that uncommon.
Thus endeth my career as a book whore.
