Strand Book Store: Lovers of Books, or Greedy Capitalist Snobs?

The other day I was hanging out with some friends around Union Square in the afternoon. We were all saying goodbye and a friend asked me what I was up to now. I said I was meeting some friends later that night, but in the meantime, before I met up with them I was going to spend some time in the Barnes and Noble at Union Square. “Barnes and Noble?” he asked, “Why not hang out in The Strand?” I didn’t know how to answer him at the time, but I have a long and somewhat complicated history with the Strand Book Store.

Where to begin?

Well, first a little history of this famed book store. Founded in 1927 by Benjamin Bass, a first generation son of Lithuanian immigrants, he fell in love with books during his lunch breaks from a fabric store job on a stretch of Fourth Avenue then known as Book Row. One day he decided to make his passion his profession and opened a bookstore. Thirty years later it moved to its current location, on the corner of 12th street and Broadway in 1957.

The Strand always seemed to have sort of a reputation as being better than other book stores. It was bigger, older, somehow better. People would speak of it as if that’s the place where people who really appreciated books went to buy their books. Supposedly the quality and selection of books was better, the prices were better, even the people who worked there were better. Apparently they have to pass some kind of book quiz just to work there. Plus the sign said they had “8 miles of books” whatever that means. I guess it’s supposed to be impressive, but I never really knew where they came up with that number. 

So I’d always felt a bit intimidated by The Strand. Truth be told, I've always felt a little bit intimidated by all bookstores. There’s this conflict between the things you want to read and the things you think you should be reading. So many books, so little time. 

But bookstores were always kind of a haven for me when I first moved to New York. I was way too poor to be able to go out and have any of the kind of fun young people are supposed to have in New York City. But one of my favorite things to do was go to the Barnes and Noble at Union Square and listen to authors talk at the free events they had there. I saw so many great authors there I can’t even remember them all. 

One of the first writers I ever saw there was Frank McCourt. He was talking about his newest book, ‘Tis, the sequel to his Pulitzer Prize winning first memoir, Angela’s Ashes. I guess I could really relate to his tale of coming to New York and being young and poor and lonely. 

There was a question and answer period afterwards and before one woman asked her question she said that she had been one of his high school students during his thirty years as a high school teacher. Before she even asked her question he had a question for her “Was I a good teacher?” He said it in such a deeply, heartfelt, honest way that every single person in that room was moved. Here he was this famous, Pulitzer Prize winning writer and he’s really concerned about whethe he was a god teacher. When she replied “You were a great teacher.” we all burst into applause.

I decided to get ‘Tis for my mom for Christmas that year. But I got her the audiobook because he had read from the book at Barnes and Noble and I thought he had such an interesting Irish accent I really wanted my mom to hear him read it too. 

She really enjoyed the book and later told me she wished she had an interesting accent like his. I said to her “Well, you might not think you have an accent, but to someone like Frank McCourt you do have an accent.” 

Another year I got her the book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, not because I’d read the book, but because I’d seen the movie. And then read the book so I thought she’d appreciate that and she did. 

One time at Barnes and Noble I saw the chef, Mario Batali speak and there was a question and answer period afterward. And someone asked a question about accusations that at his restaurant the owners were stealing tips from the waitstaff. He responded in a very cavalier, dismissive attitude by saying something like, “Well, that’s something our lawyers are looking at.” Then another person asked about accusations that owners were stealing servers’ tips and again he had this sort of arrogant, obnoxious answer. And I knew right then and there that this guy was an asshole. I felt like the best answer would be to say something like, “That’s really serious and our servers work really hard and deserve to be paid for appropriately for their work. I intend to have this fully investigated and if it turns out that anyone is stealing from my employees I’m gonna make it right and make sure they get back all the money they are owed.” 

That’s what someone like Anthony Bourdain would have said. Only he would have said it in a much cooler way, probably would have tossed in a few curse words just for good measure. (This is ironic because Batali and Bourdain were actually freinds in real life). Having worked as a waiter at several fancy and not so fancy New York restaurants I really appreciated Anthony Bourdain’s first book, Kitchen Confidential. I couldn’t afford to buy it so I read it in the Barnes and Noble little by little. I thought “This guy gets it. He pulls no punches and really tells it like it is.” I was so excited to watch him become this international celebrity who never lost that inquisitive, intense edge that made his writing so enjoyable. He was a true authentic human being.

But Batali was just a two faced liar. On tv he played this jovial, family-friendly chef, but in reality he was just a fat, gross sleazebag. I hated the way he just dismissed these people asking about theft like they were liars making it up, like he was right and they were wrong. I followed this story in the papers and it turned out that his restaurants had been stealing from the servers. Years later it also was reported that Mario Batali personally sexually assaulted several women employees at his restaurants. When I read the news about Batali being a sexual predator, I wasn’t surprised in the least. I’d known he was an asshole for years. 

Having worked at restaurants in New York where we would pool the tips, meaning instead of each server getting the tips from his or her tables, all the tips would be pooled and split evenly among the servers and you would get a check at the end of the week. But of course some unscrupulous managers or owners might take a piece for themselves. You’ve been working hard all week seeing what kinds of tips you’re getting and talking about it with your fellow servers and then you’re always surprised when the paycheck is smaller than you thought it would be.

When I read Richard Price’s great novel, Lush Life, about life on the Lower East Side in the early 2000s, a restaurant manager is doing just that in one of the opening scenes. And it wasn’t until I read that book that I realized how common that probably is because Richard Price really researches his books. And I myself had probably been stolen from many times in my waiting career. 

While we’re talking about books about working in restaurants in New York, allow me to recommend Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler. Someone recommended it to me and it was much better than I expected it to be. It’s a story about a young girl who moves to New York and starts working in a fancy restaurant and the people she meets there. I thought it would be kind of girly and about romance and heartbreak and that I’d put it down after two chapters, but to my pleasant surpise it was about romance and heartbreak, but also so much more. I could really relate to it, though my serving years were less drug and alcohol fueled than hers. And I could never really get my mind to memorize all this specific minutia about these fancy foodie dishes when I was walking by homeless people every day on my way to work. Managers expected you to take this stuff so seriously. They wanted this to be your life, but I didn’t want that to be my life. 

This was supposed to be about the Strand bookstore right? Well, I’m getting to that. So speaking of me being broke, poor and miserable, right after graduating from college I was in desperate need of money. I wasn’t like one of these kids I’ve read about who have a job waiting for them before they even graduate.  So I’d seen a sign that said the Strand buys used books. So one desperate day I decided to load all my college books into a duffel bag and bring them to the Strand to sell them hoping to make a couple hundred dollars. I didn’t have any luggage with wheels on it. All I had was a big, black duffel bag that I used for laundry. I got all these books into the duffle bag and put it on my shoulder to bring it on the subway and take the books to the Strand. The weight was tearing the seams of the strap as well as the sinew of my back muscles, digging deep down into my shoulder so painfully that I kept having to stop and switch sides. I trudged to the subway, struggled down the stairs and then up the stairs. The brief couple of blocks from fourteenth street to twelfth street felt like some never ending arduous journey. 

Finally I got to the Strand and asked where do I go to sell used books. A woman points to a wooden counter. I heave my duffel bag onto the counter and a young, tall, thin guy with bushy hair, a beard and glasses is there to go through them. The first book he picks up and goes “No.” Next book: “No”. Next book: “No.” I say “What do you mean no?” And he says “We won’t buy these.” And he proceeds to go through this entire duffel bag full of books summarily dismissing almost each and every one. Occasionally he says “Five dollars” or “Two dollars” And he’s looking at these books as if he thinks they’re worthless pieces of trash. And he keeps saying no in such a condescending manner as if I’ve brought in some trashy, supermarket, paperback, romance novels. 

And I just have to pathetically stand there as this tall, scrawny, bushy haired, weak-bearded, four-eyed nerd acts like he’s somehow better than me and my pathetic books. But these were not some pathetic books. These were books I bought over the course of four years of studying, paid for with my own money. My parents didn’t pay for one penny of my college education. I paid for all of it myself, through hard work, scholarships and loans. And these were quality books I’d hoped to hold onto for the rest of my life and go back to them and reacquaint myself with the knowledge within: novels, plays, books on sociology, literature, culture, New York City, art, history, politics, religion, psychology, philosophy, theater, film.

And as I stood there poor, miserable and lonely I thought maybe these are worthless. What was the point? None of these are books on money, or business, or how to make a living. Maybe I’d wasted the last four years of my life. My parents, neither of whom had graduated from college, had been so happy and proud when I graduated. But what was the point?

As I watched this low wage worm rifle through my books with his long, greasy fingers I thought: “Where does this guy get off determining what these books are, or aren’t worth? And what is the Strand going to do with the books he’s saying no to? Are they just going to throw them in the trash? Donate them to Goodwill? No, they’re probably gonna sell them anyway. And it’s not like these people are such arbiters of taste. They have shelves and shelves of books out in front of the store that they sell for less than a dollar. Are you telling me they’re not gonna sell these books for something?”

All told the books had cost me hundreds of dollars and they were in excellent condition. I had been hoping to get about two hundred dollars out of them all and ultimately I walked away with just thirty two dollars in cash, barely enough to cover a week of groceries. I stepped outside into a bright, hot summer day. The weight of the duffle bag had gone, but the weight in my heart had gotten heavier. I slunk back down into the subway and sat on a seat as I rode back to my sad apartment questioning my very existence and vowing to never set foot in the Strand again... Until years later.

Years later I was working with a nice young guy named James. One day he mentioned that after work he was going to the Strand to see the author David Foster Wallace read from his latest book, Consider the Lobster. “David Foster who?” I said. “Oh he’s this really famous writer. He’s pretty cool. I think you’ll like it.” “How much?” I asked. “Oh it’s totally free.” I, having nothing going on in my  life at the time, had nothing better to do so I said sure. James was a pretty cool guy and I thought if he thinks this Foster Wallace guy is cool, I’ll give it a shot. I would later come to discover that David Foster Wallace was considered by many to be the greatest writer of his generation. Many even consider him a genius. 

James really underplayed how famous this guy was. But when I said I didn’t know who David Foster Wallace was he didn’t act like I was some uncultured idiot for not knowing, the way some snobs do. “Oh you’ve never heard of such and such artist? Oh he’s famous! How could you not have heard of him?! Oh you’ve never read this book?! It’s a classic!? You’ve never seen this film?!” Yeah, sorry I haven’t read every book, nor seen every film, or know every famous person who’s ever existed. James just acted like this was something fun to do that I might also enjoy, like when you’re a teenager and a friend finds out about a band they really like and they want to share it with you, before you move to New York and all these hipsters mention these bands you’ve never heard of and act like you’re some kind of uncool loser who doesn’t speak the language if you’ve never heard of some random obscure band. Like they’re in some secret club and you’re not invited.

Whenever I mention a book, or a film that I’ve read and someone hasn’t seen it, or read it they sometimes seem to feel a little embarrassed, but I don’t look down on them. I just think, “Oh man, this is so cool. I’m so glad I got to turn you on to this.” 

So James and I went to see David Foster Wallace read and speak and answer some questions. This David Foster Wallace guy was surprisingly big and burly for a writer, he had long, dark brown hair and spoke with a soft, gentle voice. It wasn’t a very big room, but it was packed with about a hundred people there to see him and I thought, Wow this guy is pretty well known. (This was before smartphones kids so I couldn’t just whip out my phone and google David Foster Wallace). There were also a lot of really cute girls in the audience and I thought, “Man, this guy must be doing something right.”

It turned out he was really interesting and cool and a really good writer. James was right. We both wanted to meet him afterwards. He was signing books, but neither one of us could afford one. So I did what I used to do at Barnes and Noble when I wanted to meet an author at a signing, but couldn’t afford one of their books. I just took one of his books off a nearby table and we got in line. After he signed it we just put it back. Then whoever buys that book will be pleasantly surprised. When we met him he seemed really nice and humble and we told him how much we appreciated his work, James more than me of course cause he actually knew who the guy was before that night. But I had become a fan and have since gone on to read a lot of his works. Though like many, I have never finished Infinite Jest, his famous, second novel.

I’d now had a positive experience at the Strand. They had redeemed themselves in my eyes. So what if  there was some creepy asshole who couldn’t appreciate my books.  They had given me the opportunity to discover a great new writer. And isn’t that the best thing a bookstore can do? I had a newfound appreciation for the Strand Book Store. They had redeemed themselves in my eyes... Until a few years later. 

I was walking by the Strand one day and I saw that one of my favorite living authors, David Sedaris, was going to be there reading from his latest book. I had been a big fan of his ever since reading his book Me Talk Pretty One Day. He is simply one of the funniest and most interesting writers working today. So I was so excited to go and see him talk and read from his latest book. Then, I discovered you couldn’t get in to see him unless you bought his book first. I’m pretty sure this is something the Strand came up with. It seemed rather greedy of them to me. It felt like they were trying to be gatekeepers to make people buy a book to see David Sedaris. Why not just let people in for free to see him? And if they really enjoy it then they’ll buy a book. And when you’ve got them in the store even if they don’t buy one of his books maybe they’ll buy something else. 

If this had always been the policy at the Strand that would be one thing. Or if it was a performance space where people would buy tickets to see David Sedaris that would be another thing. But it upset me so much because I had really enjoyed seeing David Foster Wallace for free there and became a lifelong fan of his work. And I’d seen so many great authors for free at Barnes and Noble. To make people have to buy a book to see David Sedaris just seemed so restrictive. And I think a books store should be about increasing people’s exposure to authors and books, not trying to squeeze more money out of them. 

I was in the Strand recently and saw a sign that said “Experience the Rare Book Room in a Novel Way… ON A GUIDED TOUR.” The cost: $250. That seems like a hell of a lot of money to look at some old books. Maybe there’s some young, poor kid who’s really into old books, but he can’t afford a tour like that. Meanwhile there’s some rich kid who’s always had everything handed to him his entire life and his parents get him that tour and he doesn’t even fully appreciate it because it’sjust another thing that’s given to him. 

It made me think of how the rich stay rich and their kids stay rich and their kids stay rich and it’s so incredibly hard in America for people to claw their way out of poverty. Everywhere, everywhere in this country we’re force-fed this lie that if you just work hard enough some day you’ll be rich. Anyone can be rich! You just have to go get it. It’s everywhere, in social media, on Tik Tok, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, television. All these incredible success stories. And no one ever talks about the generations after generations of families that struggle in poverty, that never claw their way out of those horrible neighborhoods. They’re never given those opportunities that so many rich people have, never meet those people to give them connections that rich people have. 

The fact is that there are these gatekeepers who perpetuate poverty in this country. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. They say “Knowledge is power”. They say “Get an education”. People sort of scoff at a big bookstore chain like Barnes and Noble and they praise a place like the Strand. But at Barnes and Noble I could go and sit and read books for free for hours. There is no place to sit and read in the Strand. Sometimes I couldn’t find a chair to sit in at Barnes and Noble and I would just sit on the floor in an aisle and read. And then someone would come along and tell me I can’t sit there and I’d go and sit somewhere else. And sometimes I’d go and see people sitting on the floor reading and think, “Hey! Why is no one telling them they can’t sit there?!” In recent years they seem to have lightened up on their no sitting on the floor policy. 

The Strand used to have a sign that said “8 miles of Books” then “10 miles of Books” then “12 miles of Books” now it’s “18 miles of books”. Apparently the 18 miles is from a renovation that increased the size of the store. But what about when it became 10 miles then 12 miles? Why was 8 miles not good enough? And where do they even get that number 8 miles or 18 miles? I recently had a long discussion with a friend about that. We couldn’t come to a conclusion. And what even is the significance?

What does it matter if you have 8 miles of books, or 18 miles of books? What if the books are all overpriced and poorly written? At the Strand they have a section where they sell tote bags with little phrases on them. One of them has the famous John Waters quote “If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ‘em.” Pretty funny and true. (P.S. that’s why I always tried to have at least a couple books on view in my apartment.)  But what if you’re a woman and you go home with a guy and he has books, but all his books are about picking up women and seduction. Is that a red flag? Is that a turn off? Asking for a friend. But wouldn’t that be kind of creepy?

They also have a tote that says “A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.” I guess that’s supposed to be some sort of women empowerment thing, but is it really empowering to refer to a woman as a creature? I don’t know. I always found it weird when I would read a celebrity interview in a magazine that if the celebrity mentions like three books in an interview the writer would be falling all over themselves over how well-read this person is. I wonder if that’s something celebrities are told to do in their media training. “Mention three books and they’ll be eating out of the palm of your hand.”  

Whenever I go over to someone’s apartment I always look at the books they have and I always feel instantly inferior. Like I should have read this book and that book and that book. God, they’re so much more cultured than me. And then later I have to tell myself “Well, maybe they didn’t read all those books. Maybe they just bought them because they seemed cool. Or they bought them and never finished them.” I know I’ve got books like that. I’ve got a book called “Overcoming Procrastination” that I still haven’t finished. True Story. 

When my mom died I had to go over to her apartment and clean out all her stuff and I was surprised to see all the books she had. Why had I never noticed all her books before? Books and books and books going back decades and decades. Books on Chrisitanity, faith and spirituality, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Surving Soul (She had beaten cancer three times) The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran,  Thoughts and Meditations by Kahlil Gibran, Beloved Prophet The Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskel, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, How to be Awake & Alive, The Poetry of Robert Frost, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thoreau’s Walden and Other Stories, books on eating healthy and nutrition, novels by Charles Dickens, Earnest Hemingway, Charlotte Bronte and Toni Morrison, books on yoga (my mom was into yoga back in the 70s, decades before it gained such widespread popularity, before there even was such a thing as yoga pants. How did anyone ever do yoga in regular loose fitting clothes, not yoga pants? People today act like you need to have the tightest, most revealing pants ever created in order to do yoga, but obviously you don’t. Yoga goes back thousands of years. The word first appeared in the Katha Apanishad which was written sometime between the fifth and third century BCE. I’ve practiced yoga and never once thought to myself “If only I was wearing really tight stretchy pants!” Yoga pants, what a joke. They just want to show off their bodies. Just admit it.)

My mom’s high school senior year photo

But as I packed up my mom’s books I began to feel like I knew her like I’d never known her before. I understood her as I’d never understood her when she was alive. I don’t know if my mom ever read all those books, but I think the fact that she got them, that she had them and kept them for so many years revealed something about her that I never really knew. She was a woman who, for her whole adult life, was constantly searching for answers. Trying to improve herself. Trying to understand herself and her place in the world. Some might dismiss some of her books as self-help books. But they weren’t just self-help. I felt like she was a woman who was suffering and trying to get out of that suffering. Trying to find a way out. Whether it was through God (she had several Bibles) or some other way. She wasn’t satisfied. She was searching, trying to be the best version of herself. And I don’t know if she ever found that happiness she was looking for. I felt like for the first time in my life I could relate to her in a way I never could when she was alive. And it made me sad. We were so much more alike than I ever really knew. Both messed up, both struggling, both looking for answers.  But maybe that’s just life for some of us. Always searching, trying, hoping, looking for answers. And some of us try to find those answers in a book.