

The Gotham Incident


I can’t wait to get the whole story on this one. It already sounds like one of the worst bookstore endings on record.

Here are the gorey details of the court-ordered Gotham Book Mart auction:

-It cost $1000 just for the right to attend
-The auction started an hour late
-There was no catalog of the items
-There were no lot numbers
-Prospective buyers had less than an hour to look through a bookstore that has been around since 1920!”You buy them blind,” is how one of auctioneer employees put it
-Right before the auction began most of the prime material was pulled from the sale
-Finally, the landlord of the building, the man who is owed all the money that began this mess was the highest bidder.

This sounds like an absolute horror show. Book Noir. I wouldn’t be surprised if the attendees file a class action lawsuit citing biblio-abuse against the auctioneer and the city.

It is hard to believe it came to this. The real tragedy here is that the ending might become as legendary as the beginning for this literary landmark.

In many respects the Gotham Book Mart was our version of the legendary Shakespeare & Company of Paris, a hub and a safety net for the greatest writers of the day. A place were the banned literature was allowed to live and prosper. Ideas could roam free.

What do we take away from this maddening event?

How can we protect these literary establishments?

How about when a legendary bookshop changes hands and keeps the same name, whether it is purchased by a family member or not, it is in the sale agreement that there is a review every 5 years to see if it has kept up. Have the review board be made up of the customers, employees, fellow booksellers, and writers who are intimately familiar with the store. If they don’t make the cut they have to change the name of the shop. Of course once anything changes hands it is altered but a determination of whether the spirit of the shop remains can still be made.

How often to we have to see these bookshops that were once so vibrant and so crucial to the communities they serve change hands and simply survive off their legend. In the end it is an injustice to the proprietors who gave their all to make these places happen and when it was time for them to move on it is hard to imagine that they simply took the money and ran with no regard for what they left behind.

Scott Brown at the Fine Books blog has in-depth coverage
New York Times piece on the auction Wall-to-Wall Books and All of Them for the Landlord
The New York Post take Shelf-Destruct

Categories: bookselling, Bookstores
Michael Lieberman