The Bookshop, Evan Friss. Viking (ISBN: 9780593299920) 2024.
Summary: A history of bookstores in America through the lens of fourteen bookstores or bookselling venues.
As a bibliophile, I love books on books, reading, and bookstores. In The Bookshop, Evan Friss offers a history of bookshops in America through the lens of fourteen bookshops or bookselling venues. Friss tells us he prefers the term “shop” at the outset. “Stores” sound too commercial. While there is a necessity to make enough to keep bookshops afloat (always a challenge throughout their history), a theme here is the unique bond booksellers build (or don’t build, in one case) with their customers.
Friss establishes that ethos in his Introduction, profiling the small Three Lives & Company shop in New York’s West Village. From Toby the owner to “the regulars” to Miriam, who listens well to customers, one has the sense that, like “Cheers,” this is a place where everyone knows, or wants to know, your name. After this, and each following chapter, there is a vignette on bookshop life–the UPS driver, the smell of books, the store buyer, and the ubiquitous bookstore cat among them.
From the Introduction, Friss takes us on a journey in time and geography from Ben Franklin’s shop in Philadelphia to Ann Patchett’s Parnassus books in Nashville. Along the way we learn Franklin didn’t call it a bookstore. He was a printer, and that led to printing and selling a number of books, including his own Almanac. His first big hit was the preacher, George Whitefield, selling his journals and sermons. Meanwhile, in another cradle of the Revolution, also a cradle of bookselling, we are introduced to the Old Corner bookshop. It was the hangout for the likes of Emerson, Holmes, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Longfellow. Behind it was the partnership of William D. Ticknor and a clerk, James D. Fields, who rose to become a partner.
Friss introduces us to some legendary stores. Having worked in a department store, I was fascinated by the sheer magnificence of the Marshall Field book department in Chicago, especially under Marcella Hahner. Another woman-run store was the Gotham Book Mart. Frances Steloff maintained an office in this rambling store with books piled everywhere until she was over one hundred. She found a way to sell the books that were banned. And then there was the Strand, once on Booksellers Row before it moved a few blocks. A Bass family member still manages it.
By contrast, there are the niche stores. One of those was the Aryan Book Store, selling, you guessed it, Nazi literature. Friss notes similar shops around the country for workers and the Communist Party. Then there is the Oscar Wilde, a pathbreaker in the sale of LGBTQ+ literature. Finally, the Drum & Spear represents Black bookseller, on the rise with Black Lives Matter.
Friss also chronicles the booksellers who don’t sell from brick and mortar shops. Parnassus on Wheels from the early 1900’s represents the booksellers who sold books from wagons and later bookmobiles. Then there are the sidewalk booksellers in New York City and other places, following the precedent of the bouquinistes selling books along the West Bank of the Seine in Paris. In New York, we learn of the hassles they face from the city, even while building their own community of clientele. Finally, there is the story of online bookselling typified by Amazon, the behemoth. Friss also covers their misbegotten venture into brick and mortar stores, and their failure to embrace a bookselling ethos.
The book concludes with the two major players in the bookshop world of today. There are the big box chains, represented by Barnes and Noble. And there are the thousands of indies, represented by Ann Patchett’s Parnassus Books. The chapters devoted to each trace their birth and growth. For Barnes and Noble, it is a longer story, from a single New York store, to Leonard Riggio’s pivotal role in building the chain, to James Daunt’s role as rescuer, teaching booksellers to think like indies. On the other hand, the story of Parnassus is one where an accomplished author and a publisher’s sales rep team up when Nashville’s beloved Davis-Kidd store closed. and we learn how Barnes and Noble and the indies, once rivals, have learned to see each other as allies in the effort to keep bookselling personal and a presence in every community.
Of course, there are thousands of stories that go untold. Places like Austin’s BookPeople and Powell’s only have cameo appearances. Not one of the many great bookshops in my home state were mentioned. But no matter. The various expressions of bookselling were there and the stores featured are kin. Friss captures both the hard work behind bookselling and the wonder of these special “third places.” Whether the street stand, a corner shop, the indies I know of that create events and comfortable spaces in small towns, or my local Barnes and Noble, all are celebrated in Friss’ account. And because of that, I appreciate even more the gift all of these are to the common good.
