The Last Page
Mills, Nicolaus
In my Upper West Side neighborhood in New York, the latest in-spot is a bookstore. That a bookstore should have such drawing power says much about my neighbors. But it also says much about the...
...NICOLAUS MILLS 160 • DISSENT...
...Am I guilty of nostalgia for the small shopkeeper...
...Even on the Upper West Side, I find it hard to persuade friends that 30 percent extra is a small price to pay for guaranteeing a bookstore that will always have e. e. cummings on its shelves...
...It has soft green carpets, inset bookcases, brass light fixtures, and instead of bright signs advertising discounts, its walls are hung with framed caricatures of famous writers...
...But if it does, it will be in diminished form, with its virtues—its eccentric staff picks, its willing ness to stock books that move slowly—having to compensate even more for the pre-Barnes & Noble business it would have done in bestsellers and mass-market paperbacks...
...But longing for a bookstore in which individuals care about the books they sell isn't the same as longing for more boutiques...
...If the bookstore suggests anything, it is an old-fashioned library...
...There is no pressure on you to buy, just as at the numerous readings it sponsors (everyone from Jimmy Carter to Frank Conroy), there's no admission charge...
...It still does...
...For years the bookstore on Broadway was Shakespeare & Company (named after the famous Paris bookstore whose owner first published Ulysses...
...We need more bookstores...
...Books don't thrive finally in an environment where they're marketed like clothes at Macy's—even an upscale Macy's...
...It has a coffee bar on its mezzanine floor, where you're left free to read a book, and throughout the store, in strategic corners, there are comfortable chairs and tables at which you can sit and do more reading...
...From the start Shakespeare & Company always carried a large poetry section, plenty of university press books, and a table featuring "staff picks" of new books...
...But it also says much about the bookstore—a new Barnes & Noble superstore...
...There is no way that Shakespeare & Company can match Barnes & Noble's 30 percent discount on New York Times best-sellers...
...I ought, I think, to be celebrating...
...Parts of the store even have William Morris wallpaper...
...It's all genteel seduction...
...In contrast to most large bookstores, which—with their wide aisles and glaring fluorescent lights—resemble supermarkets, the new Barnes & Noble is all understatement...
...It has lost the atmosphere battle to Barnes & Noble—and the discount battle as well...
...It is difficult to imagine how any independent bookstore can compete with the new superstores, or how publishers (who need little encouragement) can resist being seduced by what superstores do best—move best-sellers and massmarket paperbacks with the speed that a supermarket moves cereal...
...But instead I'm worried about the impact of the superstores on the publishing industry...
...But walk into Shakespeare & Company on a Saturday night or a Sunday afternoon these days, and you find it almost deserted...
...The store is genuinely reader-friendly...
...You have to look closely for the modern touches—the long row of cash registers, the computers for checking on the stock...
...Shakespeare & Company may yet survive the Barnes & Noble competition...
...Barnes & Noble has already opened over 110 such superstores across the country, and with $508 million in recapitalization funds—made possible when Vendex International, a Dutch conglomerate, bought 50 percent of Barnes & Noble stock in 1992—the company is prepared to keep adding more superstores to its chain...
...In many ways, yes...
Vol. 41 • January 1994 • No. 1
