{"id":24490,"date":"2016-12-27T17:19:15","date_gmt":"2016-12-27T22:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=24490"},"modified":"2016-12-28T08:22:20","modified_gmt":"2016-12-28T13:22:20","slug":"bookstores-in-their-anecdotage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2016\/12\/bookstores-in-their-anecdotage.html","title":{"rendered":"Bookstores in Their Anecdotage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Garrison Keillor, who owns a bookstore in St. Paul, Minnesota, called Common Good Books, writes in a foreword to FOOTNOTES* from the WORLD’S GREAT BOOKSTORES: *True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers<\/a><\/em> that “the little independent bookstore is dying out, they say. Too bad. Someday mine will, too.”<\/p>\n

\"'FOONOTES*<\/a><\/p>\n

The author of the book, New Yorker <\/em>cartoonist Bob Eckstein<\/a>, hopes not. He spent two years collecting more than 300 bookstore stories from around the world, narrowing his selection down to 75 and pairing them with his own illustrations. Eckstein made sure to start with a bang. Here are the first two:<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Scribner’s Bookstore [1913-1989], New York City
Click to enlarge.<\/a><\/p><\/div> “Scribner’s top guy had his office above the store. Hemingway was turning in his new novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls,<\/em> and the C.E.O. was unhappy with a certain word in the manuscript. ‘What word?’ Hem asked. The C.E.O. couldn’t bring himself to utter it, so he wrote it down on his desk calendar. Hem agreed to take it out. The following morning, the office secretary wondered why her boss had written under ‘Things To Do Today,’ ‘Fuck’.”
— Leon Freilich<\/strong>,
The Poet Laureate of Park Slope<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>

City Lights Bookstore [1953-Present], San Francisco
Click to enlarge.<\/a><\/p><\/div> “We once received a letter from a young woman who wanted us to know, and hoped we wouldn’t be mortified by the fact, that she had surreptitiously placed her father’s ashes in various nooks and crannies throughout our poetry room. She said it was her father’s favorite place in the world and she was comforted knowing he was there.”
— Stacey Lewis<\/strong>,
City Lights<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Garrison Keillor, who owns a bookstore in St. Paul, Minnesota, called Common Good Books, writes in a foreword to FOOTNOTES* from the WORLD’S GREAT BOOKSTORES: *True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers that “the little independent bookstore is dying out, they say. Too bad. Someday mine will, too.” The author […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,18,4,20,23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-literature","9":"category-main","10":"category-media","11":"category-news","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/FOOTNOTES-cover-560.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-6n0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24490"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24536,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24490\/revisions\/24536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}