Islands in the Stream: A Walking Tour of New York's Independent Booksellers

"It is no longer intelligence coming from afar, but the information which supplies a handle for what is nearest that gets the readiest hearing." -Walter Benjamin, "The Storyteller." Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn.

When it comes to a reputation for difficulty, the book business is second only to the restaurant business... and no one has yet figured out how to run an online restaurant. The ascendance of e-commerce - along with the consolidation of corporate capital, the real estate bubble, and a host of concurrent factors - has over the last 15 years profoundly altered the reading lives of Americans. The changes are not exclusively for the worse; in the small town where I grew up, for example, it's become a hell of a lot easier for a high-school sophomore to get his hands on a volume of, say, Angela Carter. But, as the recent documentary "Indies Under Fire: The Battle for the American Bookstore" suggests, the mercantile landscape grows increasingly inhospitable for independent booksellers. A recent spate of high-profile bookstore closings underscores the point (via Ed).

Why does this matter? After a Joshua Ferris reading at an independent bookstore the other night, a friend of mine proposed that our cultural lives are forged by a confluence of information and experience. Information - that Rolling Stone gave the album Born to Run five stars, for example - is a perfectly reasonable way to get a handle on a work of art. But to experience "Born to Run" exploding off the Delaware Memorial Bridge at night, in the summer, with the windows down and a person you love in the passenger's seat, is to find it seared forever in one's soul, like Marcel's madeleine.

The corporate book-purveyor, armed with the best market research money can buy, directs information toward consumers. If I want to find out what Barnes & Noble thinks New Yorkers are likely to want to buy, the downstairs tables at the Union Square B & N can't be beat. And there are fine books on those tables. But as Walter Benjamin observes, "The acquisition of books is by no means a matter of money or expert knowledge alone." The experience of the Barnes & Noble - quality controlled, wood-veneered, perfectly odorless - disappears as soon as one is out the door.

A great bookstore, by contrast, is a staging ground for experience. The experience of the zealous clerk. The experience of the comely fellow browser. The experience of seeing Gordon Lish's first book of stories nestled against Eudora Welty's in a teetering pile, and reading the first page of "For Jerome" in situ, and feeling that private excitement of the mind. The experience of entering something larger than oneself... the republic of letters. As public libraries downsize stacks in favor of internet kiosks, this last experience, so important for so many of us, is increasingly the preserve of the independent bookstore.

Here in New York, the indie isn't dead - far from it. Passionate owners and managers and employees understand that they're not just making sales, but making room for an experience. As a way of thanking them, and celebrating the arrival (finally!) of spring - and in the spirit of Walter Benjamin - I herewith offer a highly selective walking tour of my favorite bookstores in New York.

"I have made my most memorable purchases on trips, as a transient. Property and possession belong to the tactical sphere. Collectors are people with a tactical instinct; their experience teaches them that when they capture a strange city, the smallest antique shop can be a fortress, the most remote stationery store a key position. How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!" -Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library," trans. Harry Zohn.

• Stop 1: Gotham Book Mart (16 East 46th between 5th Avenue and Madison Avenue)

• Stop 2: The Strand (828 Broadway at East 12th.)

• Stop 3: St. Mark's Bookshop (31 3rd Avenue at 9th Street).

• Stop 4: The folding tables on W. 4th St. (W. 4th between West Broadway and Mercer)

• Stop 5: Oscar Wilde Books (15 Christopher Street between Greenwich Ave. & Waverly Pl.)

• Stop 6: Unoppressive, Non-Imperialist Books (34 Carmine St. between Bedford and Bleecker Streets)

• Stop 7: Housing Works Used Book Cafe (126 Crosby St. between Prince and Houston)

• Stop 8: McNally Robinson (52 Prince St. between Mulberry and Lafayette)

• Now, across the Brooklyn Bridge to Stop 9: BookCourt (163 Court St. between Pacific and Dean)

• Stop 10: Freebird Books & Goods (123 Columbia St. between Kane & Degraw)

"There's creaking hardwood floors, a pleasant dog on a thrift-store recliner, and the inimitable smell that comes of old comforting books long shelved back to back. It's my favorite used bookstore in New York because it gets everything right: the big plate-glass window, the bell on the door, the enviable view of Manhattan, and the always well-stocked fiction section. Plus, a palpable feeling that you're in a place where books, no matter how old, are alive and well. [...] Open Mic, special guests, and food and drinks, including Moxie soda (oldest in America) and corndogs. Freebird is the kind of place that reminds you of why you read, why you wander New York streets in search of something, and why you know it when you find it." (via TEV)

• Community Bookstore and Cafe of Park Slope (143 7th Avenue Brooklyn, between Carroll and Garfield Streets)
• Spoonbill & Sugartown (218 Bedford Avenue Brooklyn, between North 4th and North 5th Streets)
• Nkiru Books (68 St. Marks Place Brooklyn between 5th and 6th Avenues)

- Garth Risk Hallberg @ 2:51 PM ~ comments: 8 ~ Links to this post

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