Just got home from a tour of the Pacific Northwest, which, since it is where me and the husband live most of the time, we’ve both been really curious about…but somehow never found the time or the reason to explore, being too frantically busy getting on planes to go to Europe or Latin America or who knows where.
But I’m starting this small publishing business, and I’ve got a firm belief in regionalism being at least one of the answers to the many things spiraling out of control these days, and also a firm belief in the concept that if we don’t hang together we will certainly hang separately. So when Alex — who has come to love the place more and more almost in spite of himself (after years of taking me to one place on the planet after another and saying, “Isn’t this great?” and me saying back, “Yeah, great — but not as great as Oregon,” finally one year, he looked around some place — I don’t remember where…Tokyo? Veracruz? Edinburgh? — and said, “This is nice. But not as nice as Oregon.”), when Alex worked out a tour for his film Searchers 2.0 that took in a bunch of the independent cinemas of the Pacific Northwest, I thought it was a great excuse for me to tag along and find out what was going on with independent booksellers around.
A few names from our new Consortium Pacific Northwest sales rep, Bob Harrison, and I was off. And you know what? It turns out that the independent booksellers in the Pacific Northwest are a particularly vigorous bunch, obviously not just holding ground but gaining it, against all expectation, too, when you think about what the media image is: booksellers in retreat in the face of the Giants, booksellers freaking out because of Amazon.com, etc. Instead, what I found was that the bookstores I visited — Grassroots in Corvallis, Powell’s in Portland, Seattle’s Elliott Bay Books, and (maybe most surprising and even impressive of all) Bellingham’s Village Books — were real centers of their towns, stable and creative, buzzing with energy.
This kind of depressed Alex, who said, “They’re obviously doing better than the cinemas,” all of which were manned and womanned by some terrific people, and most of which seemed to be hanging on by their charming and well meaning fingernails.
I said I thought it might be because what was happening to independent cinema now was what had happened to independent booksellers and publishers in the last ten years — years that were merciless on the independent book scene, when a lot of really hardworking and terrific places went belly up. The places that are left seem to be powering forward now, making alliances, working at being not just sales outlets but community cultural centers as well (and in the case of Powell’s, the community is pretty much world wide).
Powell’s, of course, is the Ur-bookstore, the archetypal one that all members of the species dream of as the place to browse. And Powell’s, let me tell you, is an authentic blast. A city in itself, used and new books cheek to jowl, you have to have a map to get around. There’s a cafe — there may be a couple of cafes, come to think of it — there’s a committed and stable work force who absolutely love what they do, and there is a feel to the place that makes you glad to be a book person. What I mean is: there are people FILLING the store at all hours of the day and night. I know because I stayed a block away, and checked. They’re all reading books. They’re all talking about books. And they all look pretty happy to be doing it, too.
The plan was to have one drink or two with a couple of guys from Powell’s — Gerry Donaghy, who assured me well into the evening that he doesn’t drink at first meeting generally, and Kevin Sampsell, who joined in after a long day of Heading Literary Events — and the unaccustomed head I had the next morning tells me we may have gone a tiny joyous bit over the one or two drink limit (I definitely remember Gerry, at the end of the evening, kindly taking us down the road to show us a park where we could walk our dogs, and I’ve had an email from him since, so I know he got home okay — Portland has terrific public transport, so you don’t even need to worry about those you’ve enticed of an evening). Gerry’s card says he’s the Backlist Tsar of Powell’s, and while I have no clear idea what that is, I like the sound of it. Mainly, I liked sitting on the sidewalk outside a restaurant with a bunch of people and our dogs, talking about books with a bunch of people who actually like them. There’s stuff happening in Portland. There’s definitely stuff happening in Portland. I mean, Kevin Sampsell is Powell’s small press guy, and he doesn’t just commune with small presses, he IS one, too. FUTURE TENSE PRESS. Check it out.
Seattle left me a little dazed, in fact, there were so many bookstores downtown, all of them bustling — not just Elliott Bay, which is like a fantasy big town bookstore, something out of a fairy tale. Later, when I was talking this over with some people at a video store, they said that it was Seattle’s policy not to let big box stores into city neighborhoods — Barnes and Noble and Borders are exiled to the suburbs. People in Seattle, I was told by Seattle-ites, love their neighborhoods and rarely venture out of them…so that every neighborhood NEEDS a good bookstore. Also a good cinema, which the Grand Illusion cinema is, a jewel box of a place, around the corner from an array of cheap and great restaurants — also a pub that insisted we bring the dogs inside. One of my heroes, Bruce Rutledge of CHIN MUSIC PRESS (devoted to making the most beautiful books imaginable, mainly about Japan, the most recent one a really good eyeopener about what’s going on in Japan these days), came to watch the movie and say hi. And, of all people, DANBERT NOBACON of Chumbawamba. Now, I almost hadn’t believed Alice Nutter when she told me Danbert and Laura had moved to Twisp, a tiny rural community about four hours outside of Seattle. As Danbert himself says, “I’ve lived in three towns in my life: Burnley, Leeds, and Twisp.” And if you know any of those places, you know how mindboggling that is. This made me wildly happy, to see Danbert and talk about our mutual rural problems of getting the wood in for winter, growing something more than turnips in a bad year, putting snow tires on the Subaru, etc. etc. etc. The last time I saw him, I was miserably unhappy, producing Revengers Tragedy with too little money in a too dour English town, and he was lounging in his extra’s costume atop, I believe, a piano, while an awestruck production slavey pointed at him and whispered to a colleague “That’s DANBERT NOBACON. He threw the bucket of water on John Prescott!” This would mean nothing to the good people of Seattle, but it still makes me glow with admiration, and it makes me laugh, too, especially to wonder if Twisp knows what it’s got. And there he was, sitting quietly after the film having a pint with us, looking as urban as ever, and talking about how he and Laura had just gotten this place, the kids love it, “It’s not like I thought it would be, living in America!” And it turns out Laura crafts handmade books, too.
Next day, on the way to Bellingham, we played his new CD. And my mind started revolving with pleasure around the fact that my concept of regionalism in the Pacific Northwest gets to include Dan and Laura, too. I looked at THAT one from all angles, and figured maybe I was onto something here.
Even more when we got to Village Books, in the Fairhaven section of Bellingham. A beautiful, lovingly tended, enormous light filled barn of a place. There’s a big sign on the door that says, “DOGS WELCOME: WE HAVE TREATS INSIDE!” Well, we didn’t quite believe them. But then we got inside, and met Robert, who didn’t just assure us it was true, but expressed an earnest desire to meet our dogs, and I had a chat with Rem Ryals, the independent press buyer, and we ended up buying a couple of books, having lunch in the upstairs cafe with the dogs (much admired by waitresses and all passersby) at our feet, reading the Village Books magazine, which reports on the Village Books Radio Show, the Village Books Book Clubs (there seem to be half a dozen), the Village Books Authors’ Readings, the Village Books…it goes on…I mean, it leaves you breathless, anyway, it left me breathless, thinking how much care and attention goes into the whole.
Days later, coming down the Washington and Oregon coasts, and Alex and I had a lazy talk over dinner in some beach pub, and one or the other of us asked, “So what was the most memorable place?” And both of us said, simultaneously, “That bookstore in Bellingham!” Because, I think, it was the last thing we thought we’d find — a bookstore being the obviously prosperous heart of the community, and a bookstore that has as its first exhibit as you walk through the door a selection of “Banned Books” for sale…and upstairs, shelves dedicated to the favorite books of all the staff members. Real books, ones you haven’t read but you’ve wondered about, eccentric choices, above all, INTERESTING, personal choices. Come to think of it, that was what was most impressive about Village Books. The personal stamp on it. The obvious fact that a clearly understood set of values underlies all the choices made by the store, and that those values are benevolent, progressive, community oriented. It was a whole package, is what I guess I’m saying. And the package makes you feel good, like a nice Christmas morning, too.
Since I’ve been home, I’ve been thinking a lot about those places, and how heartening they are — and I’ve been thinking about my publishing mentors, TWO DOLLAR RADIO, Eric and Eliza Obenauf, who keep thinking about moving their act to New York because that’s where the independent press action is. And I’m saying now, Eric and Eliza, don’t do it! Get out here to Portland! We need you out here…and PDX is a shorthop skip and a jump to Manhattan any day. Come on out, and I’ll drive up, and we’ll go to Village Books together! And then we’ll drive back and have another drink with the guys from Powell’s…
First the Pacific Northwest…then…the world.
It could happen.