New York, N.Y.

I loved Jessica Teich's piece about the closing of Dutton's. She managed to articulate what so many of us are feeling. It's as if we're all mourning the death of a beloved family friend.

I grew up at Dutton's. I retreated from the popular blond surfer types of my hometown to the shelves of the school and public libraries and, always, to the shelves of Dutton's. Whether I was 8 or 38, there was always a kind soul there to help me find yet another riveting book.

I've lived in New York City for nineteen years now, but I went to Dutton's every time I returned to LA. It was a tradition for me to finish up my Christmas shopping there every year on Christmas Eve Day. I never found another store that could match their eclectic selection of books, cards and stocking stuffers. Little did I know when I was there this past year that it would be my last such trip.

Earlier this year, when we started scheduling readings for an anthology that I have a piece in, I knew I had to make my childhood dream of reading at Dutton's come true, and had the pleasant experience of setting up a reading there. Sadly, that reading, like so many others, will never take place at Dutton's.

I've mourned the closing of the uptown Shakespeare & Co. and Endicott Booksellers and the 57th Street Coliseum here in New York, but I grew up with Dutton's and, truly, nothing can every replace it.

Katherine Wessling
03/21/2008 @ 7:02pm

Chicago, Ill.

I have loved bookstores and libraries almost since I knew they existed; as my academic career took me around the country, I grew to appreciate the "independent" store: provocative, high-brow titles on the front tables, with smart stock on the shelves. I grew older, but not less pretentious; I loved having a chat last year with the folks behind the counter at the Harvard Bookstore about when, exactly, the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace would come out. And I think any adolescent in the Boston area who wanted to be a poet and didn't go to Grolier's--even just to look about and be scolded by Louisa--should probably fall under default suspicion.

But some uncomfortable facts need to be faced. First, there is the financial aspect: I have two stores within walking distance right now (the Seminary Co-op, and 57th St. Books) that are fantastically stocked. Yet I can get every single book they have, in two days guaranteed (I paid for "Prime"), with a single click from amazon.com, and it's at least $10 cheaper and often far more. (When the difference is less than $5, I do go over to the co-op, just because I'm a sentimentalist.)

Second, there is the question of knowledge. No matter how wise your staff is, amazon's customers are wiser. Perhaps if you're shopping for Dan Brown books, not. But if you are looking for a book about Chomskyian linguistics, LISP, Virgina Woolf, anarchism, cosmological physics, the history of contact between analytic and continental philosophy (recent searches in 2007-2008), amazon's reviewers are smarter, and will point you in the right direction. If you want to compare translations (as I wanted to do recently with Goethe's Faust), amazon does better--there are at least two Goethe geeks competing to see who can be more enlightening. I've contributed my own reviews in my field of expertise, and they've sometimes floated to the top (very often there are only one or two, but there are rarely zero.)

Third, there is the question of stock. Seminary Co-op is pretty good at anticipating my desires, but when I was living in Putney, Vermont, it was hard to expect to find more than, e.g., the latest or most famous biography of even a major historical figure. (Rest in peace Heartstone books--I loved you as best I could.) A small town without a massive dork reservoir like UChicago cannot spare the shelf space. Forget out of print; a second-hand store is good for a bargain-browse, but if you know roughly what you need, amazon's reviews will guide to you the seller in Minnesota who can provide it. The only thing indies excel amazon in is stocking literary journals and zines.

Every month there is another news report about a store's closing. Those not supported by faculty members at a nearby college who get their textbooks there are going to die soon. We have to face facts: the independent bookstore is not going to survive as it stands. It is going to die. The question is what it can evolve into in order to survive as what it often is: the undisputed capital of a community's intellectual community.

Independent bookstore managers: I love what you do. Do not hate me. But think further into the future, because your problems can only get worse. Think, think really hard, about how you can change. Can you cut 50 percent of your stock and focus on what amazon can't do?--e.g., stocking local zines and journals? Leaving the rest of the space to serve as a café? Can you merge with an arts organization? Can you refit as a non-profit and provide community services in the arts and education? Could you run reading series and art/film showings that grow into a revenue source and not a loss-leader?

I don't know what the answers are. I've thought a lot about this over the years--about how a bookstore can change without losing its soul. I don't have answers. But I think we need to stop counting the dead so much and ask how the living can survive. It will take evolution, guesswork, guts. Perhaps The Nation can do a report on the experiments people have tried.

Simon DeDeo
03/13/2008 @ 4:48pm