Weathering the Storm

The stereo inside Harvard Book Store on Mass. Ave. is softly playing a live version of “Cowgirl in the Sand” by Neil Young. I’m chatting with the cashiers about what it’s like to work at a bookstore. “It’s wonderful—if for nothing else but the employee discount,” says a man with curly peppered hair, smiling satisfaction, presumably thinking about the bounty of books he comes home to every night. “Being surrounded at work with things I love—what more can I ask?”

Right outside, there’s an older married couple pointing and talking in low tones about the books on display in the window. I introduce myself and make acquaintance with Phil and Sue Millholland, who tell me they’re tourists from the San Francisco area. “We always come to Harvard Book Store when we’re in the neighborhood,” Phil Millholland says. “We love browsing here.” I’m an unabashed bookstore partisan, so I ask what attracts them to the habit. “I like tactile things,” Sue Millholland says. “And intimate places,” her husband adds.

I smile ruefully and nod in agreement. It’s easy to be pessimistic about the future of such delights in Harvard Square. Just this past summer, Globe Corner Bookstore and Curious George Goes to Wordsworth—both longstanding Harvard Square mainstays—closed their storefronts. Among other bookstores in the community that have closed recently are Lame Duck Books, which dealt rare and antiquarian books on Arrow Street for 25 years, and McIntyre & Moore Booksellers, which was located in Porter Square after moving from Harvard Square due to rising rent. It is not necessarily an ill that these stores are disappearing—they are simply being outmoded by more efficient technologies. While it makes sense that Harvard Square bookstore employee Kelly J. Cooper should say “It hurts so bad!” to hear about the steadily declining number of bookstores in Harvard Square, why do I agree? Are we just old fashioned and biased against change? Or is there something unsentimental in bookstores that is worth preserving?

RECOMMENDED FOR YOU

Walk into Grolier Poetry Book Shop on Plympton Street and you’ll find yourself in an unchanged 1927 interior. When Louisa Solano, Grolier’s second owner, was looking to sell the store in 2006, she required that the new owners maintain the old layout and function of Grolier completely. The store is a small, square room, and there’s barely any space to walk. The shelves reach the ceiling and overflow with volumes of poems, arranged by country of origin. Bells ring every time the door opens. When I enter, Carol Menkiti, the owner’s wife, asks me what I’m looking for. I say that I don’t know much about poetry.

“We get that a lot,” Menkiti says. “People come in and ask ‘Can you recommend something?’ Or, ‘I like this poet, could you recommend someone similar that I might like?’ And I try my best. Sometimes they ask who my favorite poet is.” The only staff member other than Menkiti and her husband Ifeany Menkiti—who is a philosophy professor at Wellesley College and a recognized poet himself—is Elizabeth Doran, the book buyer. They all double as human equivalents of Amazon’s “Recommended for You” feature.

As Menkiti talks about the history of Grolier—there’s a scrapbook in a corner of the store with newspaper clippings and photos—a customer walks in and beelines for the register to ask about a Scottish poet. Menkiti looks him up on the computer. “We only have one book by him. Do you recommend him? Should we stock more of his work?”

“I haven’t read him yet, but I’ve heard good things,” the man replies. Menkiti makes a note of it and they part ways cordially. “The people that come in are very interesting. Most of them are very enthusiastic about poetry,” Menkiti says.

COMIC NIGHTLIFE

The bookstores that still exist around Harvard rely on this symbiotic, interactive relationship between patron and store. The Million Year Picnic is a comic book store tucked into a basement space across the street from Peet’s Coffee & Tea. It’s cramped like Grolier, due in part to the criss-crossing big and small pipes that cover the ceiling. The owner of the store, Tony F. Davis ’84, is standing behind the counter. “Hey there, Joe,” Davis says. He is addressing a man in a jacket and dress pants. Joe, a longtime regular, is holding a briefcase and two A4 serial comic books, and he looks to be in his late forties. “This is the best place in the country to buy the type of things they carry,” says Joe.

Tony reaches his hand over the counter and shakes Joe’s hand affectionately.

The Million Year Picnic, which opened in Harvard Square in March 1974, is one of the oldest remaining comic book stores. The whole time I’m talking to Tony, another regular—a real-life version of the stereotypical comic-book nerd—stands around, chirping in about old Harvard Square and all its glory. They go through a short set of commercial obituaries: 24-hour eatery Tasty Sandwich Shop, Cambridge Booksmith, and WordsWorth Bookstore. He and Tony often finish each other’s sentences; each supplies names of stores when the other forgets.

The Million Year Picnic has come to rely on this dependable group of regular clientele as walk-in traffic has decreased. Davis recalls a time when Harvard Square was alive with shoppers and ramblers until late at night. “People would come to Harvard Square to go media shopping—records, books, and videos—in a two-block area, which included Million Year Picnic.” This variety of stores would bring foot traffic, causing people who didn’t know about the store to see the window display at ground level and come in for a look. Now, Davis says, the Square is inundated with service-oriented stores: nail and hair salons, restaurants, and banks. “Because these places have set hours, and usually close around 6 p.m., the streets become dead after dark.”

THE JABBERING HUB

It’s not only lack of neighboring stores that is causing problems for bookstores in Harvard Square. “People sometimes come in the store and browse, find something they like and go online to buy it,” says Heather Gain, marketing manager of Harvard Book Store. “We’re currently doing a campaign—you can see the big signs at the window of the store by the entrance—‘Find it here, buy it here, keep us here.’ We want to really send out the message before the situation gets too dire.” Online companies with warehouse storage spaces can offer cheaper prices, driving sales away from local bookstores.

This shift in conceptions of leisure is the chief force harming bookstores. “Browsing in bookstores is a leisure time activity, in the same way going to a café is,” says Sandra A. Naddaff ’75, the Director of Studies in Literature. “There was something about the way you interacted with Harvard Square [when I was a student] that had you going to bookstores and roaming the shelves and perusing the books there.”

Davis had a similar undergraduate experience—he thought that student life engaged the whole surrounding community. “Now, leisure time for students is more centered around the computer.” Without interest in the literary jabbering hub of bookstores, students see no reason not to get their reading material from online sources. At the same time, bookstores lose their most precious asset: sympathetic, learned listeners.

SELLING EXPERTISE

Any bookstore lover has to admit at least that ordering online is more convenient than going to a bookstore. “I have to confess there are times it’s a lot easier for me to order the 12 books I need online. Because there they are, and they’re discounted,” Naddaff says. “It’s not even so much the money that you save, but the convenience. Being able to—at three in the morning—to get that book.” Independent bookstores like Harvard Book Store and Schoenhof’s Foreign Books have been able to react to this need for speed by setting up online stores of their own.

It’s clear, though, that independent bookstores can’t—or shouldn’t—just be playing catch-up with the Internet. When I ask Eleni Sacre, store manager of Schoenhof’s, why people should come to the store instead of shopping online, she asks back, “Why not do both?” She is confident that the store presents an enduring worthwhile experience.

I walk down the spiral staircase to Schoenhof’s basement location and Sacre begins showing another Harvard student the variety of French-language literature books they have. Sacre’s first language is French, and she tells me that the other staff members, who proudly call themselves booksellers, speak from three to eight languages. “You can come here to talk and build relationships with booksellers, who know about books,” Sacre says, “who know how to research them.”

This expertise of all the booksellers of Schoenhof’s makes an impact on their selection. “You may find a lot of our books online, but you may not find all of them,” Sacre says. “Because some we really special order ourselves from specific editors and publishers that the public here doesn’t necessarily have access to.” Because Schoenhof’s stocks books that can be purchased only from publishers, foreign language literature professors at Harvard often set aside course books at Schoenhof’s rather than the Harvard Coop. Countless stacks of books labeled by class litter the floors of the store.

Gain brags that Harvard Book Store actually has a larger selection of books than online because of their new “book-making robot,” Paige M. Gutenborg. “Say you need ‘Hamlet’ by Shakespeare for a class that day,” Gain muses. “You can’t order it online because it won’t get to you in time, but all the stores are out of stock. Well, [Harvard Book Store] can just print one for you on the spot.” Gutenborg also provides access to books that are now out of print, as Harvard Book Store has access to databases of old editions.

SOCIETY SOPHISTICATES

These broad and expertly chosen selections may one day find themselves on the Internet. Yet the spontaneity and tradition of bookstore communities is inimitable.

Schoenhof’s, for instance, hosts foreign language events. “We had a Cambodian event not too long ago. It’s very diverse. There’s an interaction with a much broader public,” Sacre says. She even hosts “French Cafés” in the store Monday evenings at 6:30 p.m. where people from the neighborhood can get together and converse in French while drinking wine, coffee, tea, and juice. “There’s an energy [about Schoenhof’s]—it’s really an unusual place,” she says.

Harvard Book Store has an author talk practically every weekday evening, and Grolier often hosts poetry readings despite their small space. Last Saturday evening Grolier was brightly lit as both Ifeany and Carol Menkiti were mingling with a small group of patrons there to see Peter Dale Scott, a Canadian poet. Grolier radiated a warm glow, despite its having been a chilly fall day. As for The Million Year Picnic, Art Spiegelman and Craig Thompson, both critically acclaimed graphic novelists, have frequented the store for signings—and also just to check out some comics.

ABOVE RETAIL

The bookstores in the Square are assembled with the utmost care, and each are satisfying an unfulfilled need—without losing their histories and personalities. “It’s unfair to compare an independent bookstore to something like Amazon,” Sacre says. “It’s like an orange and a grapefruit. They’re both fruit, sure, but they’re very different and serve different purposes.” Bookstores aren’t just retail spaces that happen to stock books; they are neighborhood establishments that aspire to extricate passersby from their daily routines and deposit them in the world of ideas.

—Staff writer Susie Y. Kim can be reached at yedenkim@fas.harvard.edu.