Years ago I started to write a memoir about a young fellow who wanted to be a book dealer and how he made out. I tore it up when I discovered the subject had already been covered by a humorist named Will Cuppy in a book called, How to Become Extinct.
Now I’m not so sure. I’m still around in my middle-aged obsolescence and all about us the young are withering on the vine. Civilization may beat me yet in achieving the state of the dodo. The tragedy is that so few seem to know or really believe it. Maybe there just isn’t enough innocence left to join with the howl of the stricken book dealer upon barging into the trap. Not just a howl of self-pity, but the yap of the human spirit determined to assert itself no matter what. There’s some juice in that spirit yet, or there would be no point in submitting the following pages as supporting evidence—hopefully, or bitterly, or both.
Let there be no doubt about my original qualifications for the role of Candide. With three hundred dollars worth of books (barely enough to fill five shelves), a used record player, and some old recordings (left in my apartment when I went into the army and still there upon my return), I opened the Seven Stairs Book and Record Shop on the Near North Side of Chicago.
The shop was located in one of the old brownstone, converted residences still remaining on Rush Street—a fashionable townhouse district in the era after the Great Chicago Fire, now the kind of a district into which fashionable townhouses inevitably decline. One had to climb a short flight of stairs above an English basement (I thought there were seven steps—in reality there were eight), pass through a short, dark hall, and unlock a door with a dime store skeleton key before entering finally into the prospective shop. It was mid-August of 1946 when I first stood there in the barren room. The sun had beaten in all day and I gasped for air; and gasping, I stood wondering if this was to be the beginning of a new life and an end to the hit-or-miss of neither success nor failure that summed up my career to the moment.
It all fitted my mood perfectly: the holes in the plaster, the ripped molding, the 1890 light fixture that hung by blackened chains from the ceiling, the wood-burning fireplace, the worn floor, the general air of decay lurking in every corner. Long before the scene registered fully upon my mind, it had entered into my emotions. I saw everything and forgave everything. It could all be repaired, painted, cleaned—set right with a little work. I saw the little room filled with books and records, a fire going, and myself in a velvet jacket, seated behind a desk, being charming and gracious to everyone who came in.
I saw success, excitement, adventure, in the world I loved—the world of books and music. I saw fine people coming and going—beautiful women and handsome men. I saw myself surrounded by warmth, friendship and good feeling, playing my favorite recordings all day, telling my favorite stories, finding myself.
I ran my fingers over the mantelpiece. “I want this room,” I said to myself. “I want it.”
I built shelves to the ceiling and bought all the books I could buy. There was no money left to buy the velvet jacket. Every morning I opened the store bright and early. Every night I closed very late. And no one came to visit me. Morning, noon, and night it was the same. I was alone with my books and my music. Everything was so bright, so shiny, so clean. And the books! There were not very many, but they were all so good! Still nobody came.
How do you go about getting people to buy books? I didn’t know. I had been a teacher before the war. My father was not a business man either, nor his father. No one in my family knew anything about business. I knew the very least.
Every morning I walked into the shop freshly determined: today I will sell a book! I hurried with my housekeeping. And then, what to do? Phone a friend or a relative. I couldn’t think of a relative who read or a friend who wouldn’t see through the thin disguise of my casual greeting and understand the ulterior purpose of my call.