A Tale of Two Booksellers

When the big box bookstores did their War of the Worlds number on Nashville, killing off the independent booksellers before succumbing themselves, the best-selling novelist Ann Patchett teamed up with a friend to open Parnassus Books.

As this PBS News Hour video demonstrates, Patchett is, indeed, an apt ambassador from book culture to the world: witty, engaging, and passionate. The novelist turned politico Benjamin Disraeli said when he wanted to read a good book, he wrote it; Patchett, desiring a good bookstore, opened one herself.

Another celebrated writer, July Bloom recently opened a bookstore in Key West, Florida, where she winters.

These ventures, and the copious PR they generate, give us hope there is still a future for small book dealers. But- like Barton Keyes, Edward G. Robinson’s insurance investigator in Double Indemnity- there’s a “little man in my stomach” who wonders if that hope isn’t really transferrable to real life.

Writing best-sellers, as Patchett and Bloom do, gives one more than a few advantages, and protections- in the process of starting and running a bookstore. Fame is one, and the ability to command attention: to roll a bookmobile up to a farmer’s market and have PBS come to film it.

Access to capital, and publishers, and other best-selling authors to come do readings is another basket advantages. Patchett gets points for planting an oasis in a big city book desert, but Bloom has pitched her flag on a tiny island whose everyday workers increasingly commute in from the cheaper islands up the highway. Key West is an enclave of the wealthy and famous; they have leisure time and cash aplenty, and a celebrity bookdealer completes the local ambience. It is a fact universally acknowledged that famous people only know other famous people; the next logical step, as in other boutique settlements, is that their tradespeople be famous as well.

The lure of tourists- book and regular versions- is undeniable. Who wouldn’t like to go visit a book shop and ask the famous author behind the counter for a recommendation?

It’s as if one is visiting a Colonial Williamsburg Experience of A Bookstore, where it “looks” like the ideal bookstore, and everyone is in period garb but especially attractive and with good teeth. And you get to buy things!

A Tale of Two Booksellers

When the big box bookstores did their War of the Worlds number on Nashville, killing off the independent booksellers before succumbing themselves, the best-selling novelist Ann Patchett teamed up with a friend to open Parnassus Books.

As this PBS News Hour video demonstrates, Patchett is, indeed, an apt ambassador from book culture to the world: witty, engaging, and passionate. The novelist turned politico Benjamin Disraeli said when he wanted to read a good book, he wrote it; Patchett, desiring a good bookstore, opened one herself.

Another celebrated writer, July Bloom recently opened a bookstore in Key West, Florida, where she winters.

These ventures, and the copious PR they generate, give us hope there is still a future for small book dealers. But- like Barton Keyes, Edward G. Robinson’s insurance investigator in Double Indemnity- there’s a “little man in my stomach” who wonders if that hope isn’t really transferable to real life.

Writing best-sellers, as Patchett and Bloom do, gives one more than a few advantages, and protections- in the process of starting and running a bookstore. Fame is one, and the ability to command attention: to roll a bookmobile up to a farmer’s market and have PBS come to film it.

Access to capital, and publishers, and other best-selling authors to come do readings is another basket advantages. Patchett gets points for planting an oasis in a big city book desert, but Bloom has pitched her flag on a tiny island whose everyday workers increasingly commute in from the cheaper islands up the highway. Key West is an enclave of the wealthy and famous; they have leisure time and cash aplenty, and a celebrity bookdealer completes the local ambience. It is a fact universally acknowledged that famous people only know other famous people; the next logical step, as in other boutique settlements, is that their tradespeople be famous as well.

The lure of tourists- book and regular versions- is undeniable. Who wouldn’t like to go visit a book shop and ask the famous author behind the counter for a recommendation?

It’s as if one is visiting a Colonial Williamsburg Experience of A Bookstore, where it “looks” like the ideal bookstore, and everyone is in period garb but especially attractive and with good teeth. And you get to buy things!

Parnassus, after all, is, in Greek mythology, the peak where lived the nine goddesses of the arts. Mortals, thin on the ground.

Most booksellers, however, aren’t Ann Patchett or Judy Bloom. Life isn’t all hot scones and marmalade without end. Regular booksellers still get showroomed, and lose their leases to the builders of condo towers. They still smile when visitors show them a book from the shelf, tell them they can order it cheaper online and leave the staff to put the book back.

And it’s one of the oldest of American stories. It’s Horatio Alger and Ruby Keeler plucked from the chorus line opening night to save the show. Given the right luck and hard work, PBS will come see us, and the books will sell themselves.