by Ronald Rice
From a hotel room in Denver or Minneapolis or Ann Arbor, I can’t remember where, exactly, I telephoned Chuck Robinson, the enlightened owner of Village Books, and asked if he’d mind if I brought along backup singers to the reading I was to do in his store the following week. There was a long pause on the other end. Then, a dry, cautious chuckle. “Go for it,” he said. That’s the kind of guy Chuck is.
My next call was to the salon where I get my hair cut. I pitched the idea to the gorgeous young stylists who work there. Jennifer, Susan, and Michelle are by no means aspiring vocalists, but they’re stand-up, extroverted girls with an appetite for fun, and all three rather quickly agreed. We were able, unfortunately, to manage only one brief rehearsal. Then, it was showtime.
As adept at promotion as it is exhaustive in its inventory, Village Books has always provided big crowds for my events, and that night it was literally SRO. I read a few passages from Wild Ducks, then called for “my backup singers” to join me at the podium. The audience assumed I was joking, but minutes later the girls were undulating and da da dee da-ing behind me as I read lines in that flat, funky voice of mine that sounds so much like a can of cheap dog food if a can of cheap dog food could speak. The crowd seemed quite entertained by the novelty of it all, although I don’t recall many shouts for an encore.
In the end, whatever else it might have meant for me personally, the event proved that Village Books is a store apart, a store with nerve, a store with heart; a three-dimensional literary supercollider where fantasy can fuse with reality at the speed of a turning page.
TOM ROBBINS is the author of nine offbeat but popular novels and a collection of stories, poems, and essays. His books have been published in 22 foreign countries, have topped best-seller lists in Australia, and have been adapted for stage and film. A Southerner by birth, he lives in a small town north of Seattle.
Adam Ross
Parnassus Books, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
It’s an unseasonably warm, early spring evening, and I’m at Nashville’s new independent bookstore, Parnassus, where former Rolling Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys is launching the tour for his memoir, Every Night’s a Saturday Night. Not surprisingly, half the crowd is composed of session players, touring musicians, and songwriters, mostly men in their late forties and early fifties who’ve come out on a Wednesday night to see a legend of the rock ‘n’ roll wars. After a brief introduction by cowriter Bill Ditenhafer, Keyes gets up and, in a style that’s best described as wry, high, and dry, describes his childhood in Texas, his fateful failure as a football player that led to him playing sax in the marching band; he tells a few bawdy anecdotes about Keith and Mick (including the famous bathtub-full-of-champagne incident) and bemoans life as a saxophonist in a country-music town. In short, listening to him is a blast. After the Q&A and signing, I run into several friends I haven’t seen in a while, another of the evening’s pleasures, and one of them is about to go on vacation. She asks for some reading suggestions, so I pull down Edward St. Aubyn’s The Patrick Melrose Novels and James Salter’s Light Years. I’ve heard nothing but great things about the former; the latter rocked my world. She thanks me, promises to report back, and heads to the register.
Nothing out of the ordinary at a great local bookstore; however, on such a night, the ordinary seems extraordinary, because at this time last year, Nashville was a major American city without one.
The coverage attending Parnassus’s opening has been jaw-dropping: stories in The New York Times (on the front page!), Publishers Weekly, Garden & Gun, The Christian Science Monitor, Southern Living, Salon, and USA Today; Time magazine naming co-owner Ann Patchett one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World; her appearances on NPR’s Marketplace and Fresh Air; and then, to top it all off, her guest slot on The Colbert Report—as a bookseller. That’s just a sampling, and even though Patchett’s no stranger to celebrity, hers is literary celebrity, and while she’s enjoyed what she likes to call “media-heavy” moments in the past, the attention focused on her decision to open a 2,500-square-foot bookstore in a Green Hills mall was as colossal as it was unexpected, the sort of heat normally reserved for a star like, well, Nashvillian Nicole Kidman or Taylor Swift. The upshot: Parnassus might be only six months old, but it’s not a stretch to say that it’s currently America’s most famous bookstore.
Why that’s the case has something to do with its owner, of course. Timing is everything, so the saying goes, and Patchett’s business venture with partner Karen Hayes coincided with the release of her sixth novel, State of Wonder, considered by many fans and critics the best since her Orange Prize–and PEN/Faulkner Award–winning international best seller Bel Canto. Throw into the mix the turbulent state of publishing, questions about the future of print, the looming specter of Amazon, the rise of e-books, the locavore movement, Occupy Wall Street, the destruction wrought on independent bookstores by both the big-box retail wars and the Great Recession, and so it was that Parnassus, like Batman, became more than just a store: It became a symbol. Of what, exactly, has been mulled over by so many journalists and pundits that any interpretation I’d add to the mix is guaranteed to be redundant.
Still, I’d urge book lovers to keep this in mind: After Nashville’s thirty-year-old quasi-independent bookstore Davis-Kidd Booksellers shuttered its doors in December 2010, and before the news broke that Ann Patchett would be opening Parnassus, ours was a city cut off from America’s literary life—a city of no choices whatsoever when it came to the humane and meaningful pleasures associated with buying books, and that makes for a very grim place indeed. Borders had also closed down, mind you. The nearest Barnes & Noble was twenty miles out of town. Our terrific used bookstores like McKay, Elder’s Bookstore, and BookManBookWoman are wonderful for a certain kind of experience, but they aren’t particularly vital destinations. You don’t take your kids there to play with toys and pick out a book; they’re not on the map as tour stops for widely recognized authors; their staff doesn’t get you excited about what’s coming soon or put in your hand the one book you didn’t know you needed to read until right now.
“I love being able to press books on people,” says Patchett about the thrill of being a bookseller. “I don’t know why I never anticipated what a pleasure it would be to corner people and say, ‘You must read this book.’ I’ve been forcing books on friends and family my whole life, and now my scope of recommending is much wider. It’s a real joy.”
Joy is a great word to associate with Parnassus, because Nashville’s book lovers were without that emotion for a year—our annus mirabilis, a year lost to us, never to be recovered, and hopefully never forgotten. This served as a wake-up call to the Athens of the South, at least in the near term, and Parnassus’s subsequent success (business is booming) demonstrates how grateful our print consumers are that this gaping void has been filled. But our fellow enthusiasts in other cities beware: Unless you protect your local bookstores with your pocketbooks, they could easily suffer a fate similar to what did Davis-Kidd in; and unlike Nashville, those cities might not enjoy such a happy ending.
ADAM ROSS lives in Nashville with his wife and two daughters. His debut novel, Mr. Peanut, a 2010 New York Times Notable Book, was also named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New Republic, and The Economist. Ladies and Gentlemen, his short-story collection, was included in Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2011. His nonfiction has been published in The New York Times Book Review, The Daily Beast, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, and The Nashville Scene. His fiction has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly and FiveChapters.
Carrie Ryan
Park Road Books, CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA
Here’s what I remember about The Open Book, the local independent bookstore in my town growing up: The kids’ section was in the back, where the oddly shaped store narrowed to a point. It was a destination, not a thoroughfare, and so once you found yourself back there, you could settle into the nook between shelves and your world becam
e nothing but books and words. The air smelled like deckled edges, the dust that sometimes collects on old spines, and rhymes. It felt like its own little fort, a secret sort of place filled with promises of undiscovered worlds and adventure.
In my memory, the rest of the store barely exists. There must have been other sections full of adult-minded tomes, but the treasure always lay squeezed into that point in the back. I remember the white metal spin rack with the latest Nancy Drews, the ordered row of Sweet Valley Twins and Highs, the classics nestled among Christopher Pikes and R.L. Stines.
On Saturday mornings, this was my home and I could spend hours sliding through the pages before choosing one or two or three to take with me to keep me company late into the weekend nights. I’m sure if I’d have asked, one of the booksellers would have helped me narrow my selections by pointing out the new arrivals, but I chose to discover these things myself. It was like an Easter egg hunt, finding the latest releases among the old familiars.
And to me, every book on the shelf eventually became an old familiar. Whether I’d read them or not, I spent enough time among them to recognize spines and covers the same way I would later, as an adult, learn to recognize faces waiting at the elevator banks for work every morning.
The thing I came to learn as I grew older is that I wasn’t the only girl who found dreams tucked away on the shelves at The Open Book. It was a place of connection for many people, the booksellers knew us by name, and when a book came in they thought one of us would love, they’d set it aside, knowing they’d see us in a week or two.
This was what I missed when I left for college and moved from town to town. What I never realized is that, while I rarely asked a bookseller at The Open Book for suggestions, they were curating a selection for me regardless. Every time they placed an order, they were keeping me, and all their other readers, in mind. Not as nameless droves, but as individuals whose tastes they knew by heart.
There was no corporate office telling them what to buy and how to shelve it. There was no one asking them to push a certain book because the corporation or publisher had decreed it become a “make book.” They stocked titles because they loved them and they knew their customers would as well.
This is what I often fear we’ve lost over the years: the bookseller who knows her customers by name. Who can tell you their reading history and who can, almost at a glance, pick a title from a catalogue and say, “You know who would love this?” The bookseller who is involved in the community in a deep and personal way—who is a part of the community in ways few of us would ever realize until it’s gone.
That’s what happened to The Open Book. That nook where I fell in love with reading… is gone. The owners who shaped the literary lives of my community are no longer behind the counter. I’d already moved to a new city but still I felt its loss, like hearing a friend you’ve gone to school with, but subsequently lost touch with, has passed away.
By then I’d found a new indie, Park Road Books in Charlotte, North Carolina, that welcomed me to the community with open arms. Every time I step inside, someone behind the counter smiles and says, “Hey, Carrie!” Not a visit goes by when we don’t discuss the latest releases or what’s coming out in the next season. I stand at the counter and swap stories as other patrons get called by name, get asked how their families are, have books recommended to them.
There are algorithms that can predict what books we might enjoy, what brand of cereal we’re likely to buy, what kind of music we want to listen to. There are stores built like warehouses with wide aisles and anonymous cashiers. But how can that replace what it’s like to walk into a store like Park Road Books and have Yola, the store dog, greet you with tail wagging? To have Sally Brewster, owner and bookseller, lean across the counter with a wide smile and say, “You know what I just read that I think you’ll love?” To hear the customer ahead in line chat about a recent review in the local paper and wonder if her book club would like it (and Sally would know!). To have Sherri Smith, kids’-book buyer, call up to say a fan just ordered a book and if I’ll come down and sign it, they’ll take care of shipping it out.
Independent bookstores like Park Road Books are so much more than a place to buy books. They’re a place for gathering, for sharing, for learning, for meeting new people. They are a home. There have been times I’ve been far away traveling and I’ve become homesick and walked into an independent bookstore because that’s something they all have in common: a feeling of coming home.
This is how I fell in love with reading: sitting in that narrow point, tucked away from everything, deciding what worlds I wanted to explore. And when my first novel came out, this is where I held my release party: at The Open Book, where I saw my own book tucked among the others. I wondered if any other young girls like I had been would find it there one day, take it home, and build dreams on those foundations.
Now, every time I run down the street to Park Road Books I sneak back to the kids’ section. Sometimes it’s just to see what’s new on the shelves, sometimes it’s to close my eyes and remember the smell and feel of being a kid. But most often it’s because I’m able to catch glimpses of readers, ones like I used to be, trailing fingers over spines and wondering which world they’ll take home with them today.
CARRIE RYAN is the New York Times best-selling author of the critically acclaimed Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy and Infinity Ring: Divide and Conquer, the second book in Scholastic’s new multi-author/multi-platform series for middle grade readers. She is also the editor of the anthology Foretold: 14 Tales of Prophecy and Prediction. A former litigator, she now writes full time from her home in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she lives with her writer-lawyer husband, two fat cats, and one rather large rescue mutt. You can find her online at www.carrieryan.com.
Lisa See
Vroman’s Bookstore, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA
When my first book, On Gold Mountain, came out in 1995, I had two launch parties. One was at Dutton’s Bookstore very near where I live in Los Angeles; the other was at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. Both parties would have cheese, crackers, and wine. At both parties I would read. That’s where the similarities ended. The party at Dutton’s was outside on a patio; the party at Vroman’s was inside and upstairs. The party at Dutton’s was for friends; the one at Vroman’s was for family. (I didn’t have fans back then, so I didn’t factor them into the equation when I made my plans.) For some authors of first books a family party might not have been a big deal, but On Gold Mountain was about the Chinese side of my family, so that event seemed daunting—a potential disaster.
For On Gold Mountain, I spent five years interviewing my family’s business associates, friends, and enemies. I went to the home village in South China, where my great-grandfather was from. I found over 500 pages of interrogations, boarding passes, health certificates, and photographs concerning my family at the National Archives. I also weeded through my relatives’ closets, basements, attics, and garages, looking for anything that would help me tell the story of the Chinese in America and my family in particular. Most important, I got my relatives to talk. This isn’t easy to do in any circumstance, but I was asking my parents, grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins to relive moments of great sorrow, embarrassment, shame, and sadness. No one wants to go over the details of being kidnapped, finding out your husband was fooling around, experiencing different forms of racism, or losing a beloved parent, child, or other loved one. They also weren’t too keen on talking about things that were either borderline illegal or full-on, out-there illegal, such as multiple marriages (known in this country as bigamy), smuggling, circumventing miscegenation laws, and the like. I knew that getting people to talk about these things would be difficult, and it was, but somehow I had the sense—even though it was my first book—to get everyone to sign releases. I believe my relatives signed them because they never thought I would actually write the book.
While On Gold Mountain wasn’t a memoir in the sense that those weren’t my memories,
it was a memoir of my family. Memoirs, as we all know, are fraught. There are things that people don’t want to remember, things they remember differently, and things they’d rather keep a secret. And at some point the book is going to come out, and those people are going to read it.
I don’t know if my great-grandparents knew the Vromans, but it wouldn’t surprise me if their paths had crossed at some point. In 1895, a year after Adam Clark Vroman opened his bookstore on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, my great-grandparents arrived in Los Angeles and opened a Chinese antiques store called the F. Suie One Company. In 1901, my great-grandparents opened a branch of the store not far from Vroman’s. My family then had a presence in Pasadena on and off over the next eighty years. In 1981, the F. Suie One Company moved permanently to Colorado Boulevard just east of Vroman’s. Today Vroman’s and the F. Suie One Company are two of the oldest independently owned family businesses not only in Pasadena but in the state. Having my launch party at Vroman’s was not a matter of convenience or a business decision based on the fact that the store reported its sales to The New York Times. (Believe me, I absolutely wasn’t thinking about the latter. Reporting store? What was that?) Rather, it just felt right—like circling the wagons. I knew I would feel protected and safe.
Although I was a nervous wreck, everyone at the store made me feel welcome. There were huge stacks of books—more than could ever be sold—but they told me not to worry about it, because they could keep some and return the rest. They suggested that they write down people’s names before they came through the signing line, in case I happened to get brain freeze and forget the name of one of my 400 relatives (whose names are hard to spell even on a good day). They suggested I just talk instead of read—something I’ve continued to do to this day. So I spoke for a bit, and I’ll admit it, I cried. Then people got in line to buy a book. Let me say this: My relatives were not what you’d call book buyers or readers. Some of them may not have read a book since high school, but they were good sports and they love me so they dutifully did their duty.