dedalus_1947 | All Things Pass Away (Reply)

Sunrise doesn’t last all morning.
A cloudburst doesn’t last all day.
Seems my love is up, and has left you with no warning.
It’s not always going to be this grey.

All things must pass.
All things must pass away.

Now the darkness only stays the nighttime.
In the morning it will fade away.
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time.
It’s not always going to be this grey.

All things must pass.
All things must pass away.
(All Things Must Pass: George Harrison – 1969)

I thought I had become immune to the fearful talk and doomsday forecasts from journalists, authors, and publishers about the future of print. I was aware of the paradigm shift going on throughout the media, and how newspapers, magazines, and book publishers were struggling to find new advertising and market strategies, while competing with digital online providers like Amazon and iTunes. But I’d become satisfied just watching this contest from the sidelines, waiting for the confusion to end, the dust to settle, and a winner (or winners) being declared. The struggle reminded me a little of the brief videotape wars of the 1980’s, when VHS and Betamax battled for video supremacy, only to both become obsolete with the appearance of optical disc storage (DVD) players. Then, of course, there was the drawn out music wars that began in the 1960’s with single and long play vinyl records battling audiotapes of various types for control of the business. Eventually both formats were vanquished by the development of compact disc (CD) players in the 1980’s, which replaced them with digitized music that could be heard on many different devices – like computers, MP3 players, iPods, iPads, and Smart Phones. Yet all of these enterprises seemed lightweight and trivial when compared to the print media, because they primarily provided visual and audio entertainment, and not vital educational, intellectual, historical, and cultural content and information. I suppose I always believed that despite these constant digital incursions, nothing could ever replace the printed page. We would always need books, magazines, textbooks, and newspapers. Well this last Christmas season, I was once again slapped awake to the transitory nature of all things.

I was getting in some last minute shopping for Kathleen on Christmas Eve when I dropped by Barnes & Noble in Woodland Hills. As I walked in the wood framed, glass entrance of the bookstore, I thought I could rest there for a while with a cup of coffee to review my shopping list before searching for a gift. However, instead of the cozy embraces of the bookstore café, decorated in gentle forest colors, and surrounded with wall posters of famous authors and neat racks of glossy magazine covers, I was greeted with devastation. I had entered what appeared to be the pillaged remains of a ransacked warehouse. It was a husk of a store with half-filled shelves, strewn with books in no particular order, or piled up in the corners. Sagging, gaudy signs draped across the walls and shelves announced 50% discounts and declarations that “All Must Go!” It took me a few minutes to realize that our only local bookstore, the last surviving, big chain bookstore in Woodland Hills and Canoga Park was closing, and it would be gone by Christmas.

For a long time I hadn’t much cared for nationwide, chain bookstores like Crown, B. Dalton, Brentano’s, Borders, and Barnes & Noble. Those national conglomerates had driven practically all of the independent bookstores that once decorated the literary landscape of Los Angeles and Southern California out of business with their cutthroat shipping and pricing tactics. But book buyers are fickle and memories are short, and anger at their harsh business practices quickly faded with the ease of shopping they provided – especially as many chains adopted the people-friendly strategies of legendary bookstores like The Earthling in Santa Barbara, or Book Soup in West Hollywood. Soon Borders and Barnes & Noble Bookstores were offering cafés with coffee house environments where readers and writers could drink, chat, read, and work. Some stores even offered the extensive selections of published material that once could only be found in college bookstores, and the convenience of having music and film material in the same building made them popular with the non-readers as well. Up until two years ago, two nationwide bookstores, Borders and Barnes & Noble Booksellers serviced Woodland Hills and Canoga Park, in the West San Fernando Valley. Now there are none. So, sulking in a somewhat depressed and nostalgic mood at the end of the year, I concocted a plan as Kathleen and I talked about going someplace on New Year’s Eve. We were looking for a friendly and scenic locale where we could window-shop, meet and mingle with lots of people, and enjoy a late lunch before bidding the old year goodbye. When we decided to go to Santa Monica and walk around the 3^rd Street Promenade, I wondered if the huge, three-story Barnes & Noble on Wilshire Blvd. was still in business. If it was, I decided to make a pilgrimage to one of the last surviving chain bookstores in Southern California.

Barnes and Noble remains the largest bookseller in the United States. The company still has 18 viable stores in the Southern California area – from Santa Ana, in Orange County, to Calabasas, near the border of Ventura County. Rather than sitting idly by, waiting for obsolescence, Barnes & Noble has boldly charged into the digital publishing arena and the e-reader battles against Amazon and Apple. According to David Carnoy of CNET, Barnes & Noble currently controls 25% of the e-book market, and looking to expand it. I own a Nook e-reader myself, and I’m planning on buying an Apple iPad Mini in the near future. I love the convenience of the e-reader and its immediate access to literature. Instead of having to travel to a brick and mortar store to buy a book, I can download one on any impulse or whimsy (as long as I have a Wi-Fi connection). I can read a review or an article about an interesting book or author, and immediately download the book on a trial basis. I can explore earlier works by an author I discover, or trace other writers of the same genre. My e-reader actually stimulates more reading and purchasing than when I went to bookstores. And yet I love bookstores. I loved browsing the shelves, scanning the titles and authors, handling a book, and paging through its leaves. Every time I find myself in a bookstore, I reconnect with memories of other times, in other places, and in other parts of the city when I was young with lots of time on my hands and very little money. I remember my dad taking me to explore the used bookstores around McArthur Park in Los Angeles, and the area around Sawtelle and Santa Monica Blvd in West L.A. He would give me a couple of bucks to spend and leave me to the wonderfully tireless task of choosing, eliminating, and buying my own novels. I remember when my Uncle Charlie first took me to Pickwick Bookshop on Hollywood Blvd to buy Christmas gifts when I was in high school. I recall spending hours roaming through the seemingly endless bookshelves of Martindale’s Books in Santa Monica when I was in college, and visiting Dutton’s in North Hollywood with Kathleen when we were dating. With those memories in mind, I entered the only remaining bookstore on the 3^rd Street Promenade on December 31, 2012.

As I walked around the store I was immediately attracted to enticing displays of fabulous books and memories of times spent reading them. Two tables held the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and George Martin, highlighting the books that were the current inspiration for movie and television screenplays (The Hobbit, and The Game of Thrones). A turntable rack hung with bookmarks of all styles and genres caught my amused attention with their depictions of superheroes, cartoon figures, and fairy tales. How much longer would bookmarks be practical? I asked myself, thinking how necessary they seemed when I was a child. The store abounded with classical literature. There were paperback works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Bronte on sale, at 50% off their listed prices. Even leather bound versions of To Kill a Mockingbird, The Sun Also Rises, and Huckleberry Finn were marked down. The store also offered a music and video department on the 2^nd Floor that was tastefully decorated with poster-sized prints of iconic musicians and artists. The last section I inspected were the shelves dedicated to Literature Studies and Poetry. This was the place where one could spend hours pulling books and reading portions of essays and poems. After a while I couldn’t take any more. I wasn’t going to buy anything. I was still trying to get rid of the countless books I’d collected over the years, trying to free up more space on my bookshelves and cabinets. I didn’t need one more volume added to the multitude I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet. At this point in my life new books would have to fit in the digital library of my e-book, and not on a shelf. Luckily it was about that time that my daughter Teresa arrived with her husband and daughter Sarah to join us for lunch. Sarah’s boundless energy for watching and mimicking street performers, and touching everything she saw in stores, quickly dispelled all thoughts of bookstores and print. Shepherding her around the promenade and mall kept us all busy for the rest of the day.

At the end of our visit to Santa Monica, in the fading light of day, we walked by one store that caught everyone’s notice. A huge, white apple glowed from a three-story, glass façade, and it seemed to beckon all to enter. Beyond that crystal entrance laid a vast enclosure of electronic and digital wonders, enticing people to walk in and peruse the treasures. Within that gleaming cavern lay the future. Paper publishing and print media will go the way of cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and papyrus. Those methods of communication, learning, and entertainment will soon wither, become archaic, and die. We are at such a turning point in our culture right now, and we are watching the slow death of the old giving way to the new. It is sad but inevitable, because all thing pass.

While writing this elegy about bookstores I started a list of neighborhood shops that have closed or disappeared. I’d invite you to share your own favorite old bookstore, new or used, and where it was located. I remembered the following: