First of two parts
[Editor’s Note: “I have enjoyed every minute of my life selling books,” says the author, who passes along a note that may have escaped his fellow Santa Monicans. Upon graduation, he was voted “the handsomest boy” at Nottingham High in Syracuse. Last month, he turned 86, which, judging by his zest, may be the new 36.]
[img]776|left|Lawrence Lowery||no_popup[/img]A few years ago, an ad appeared in the Boston Globe:
“Wanted, Book salesman. Must be able to do heavy lifting. $320 a month.”
Over two hundred hopefuls, many with Master’s degrees and doctorates, responded to this chance to work in what Christopher Morley called “the godliest profession.” He would not be pleased now with its gradual desanctification.
My chance came in 1961. An agency sent me to a Beverly Hills store called Martindale’s. Walter Martindale, its founder, began in 1929 selling mostly cigars and racing forms in a tiny alcove on Little Santa Monica Boulevard, between Beverly Drive and Rodeo. Starting with a few cloth-bounds, Martindale’s expanded a full city block to become, over the years, a Beverly Hills landmark through five decades.
He offered, and I accepted, an unmentionable pittance because this book-laden wonderland, in a genteel and glamourous town, seemed an ideal place to spend one’s working hours. I sold cloth-bounds until advised I would take over the Paperback department because the previous manager had been selling perfume on store time.
The paperbacks were near the Children’s section and the library. Librarian Peggy Flinn was a friend of author Richard Condon, who named a barmaid for her in one of his novels. Peggy once suggested we do a window on Irish writers, but she rejected as heretical my choices of Shaw, Behan, O’Neil, Yeats, Joyce and O’Casey.
The Martindale’s staff included struggling writers, actors, painters and poets hoping for contacts. These were bolstered by a few veteran book people like Everett Noonan, co-creator of the “Cavalcade of Books” television show, and Bernard Goldman.
Everett and Bernie displayed stacks to the affluent, who sometimes required volumes with bindings of one color to fit the décor of their dens. One actress bought an expensive art book, only to return it because it did not blend with the color scheme of her bedroom.
The Stars Came Out at Dusk
Celebrities, ideally, could be sighted at sunset, like deer at Yellowstone, just before dining next door at La Scala. Local literary lights Irving and Sylvia Wallace, John and Joan Dunne, Ray Bradbury, Christopher Isherwood and Gwen Davis often dropped by. Ms. Davis told Johnny Carson and the nation that I had dubbed her “the Jane Austen of the jet set.” Aldous Huxley signed copies of his last novel, “Island,” insisting we are not a rational species. Noel Coward kicked cartons down the aisles, filling them with treasure. Hepburn never found enough mysteries for Tracy. Gore Vidal, Jackie Susann, John Fowles and others had booksignings. Henry Miller held what amounted to symposiums on the floor.
Many interesting customers without droppable names or public identities: Peggy Kiskadden, the wonderful mother of Harvard’s president, Derek Bok; the lady who needed a copy of “Call for Lamp,” demanding we check all references before realizing the “book” she wanted was on her list of Things To Do; Demetri and Mary Tsassis; the young man who showed us a first edition of Thoreau’s “A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers,” inscribed by Thoreau with his own marginal notes; the student who needed “Euripedes Wreck.”
For book people, the 1960s were a time of intellectual as well as social ferment. The non-fiction novel, tactile art, absurdist drama, geometric poetry, ecumenical religion, existential philosophy, transactional and gestalt psychology, primatial anthropology, revisionist history, the new math — all of these reflected some of the concerns of that roiling decade.
Books about drugs and revolution sold out. Eastern metaphysics flourished. At last, “Lady Chatterly” and Miller’s “Tropics” were deemed fit for human consumption. We saw the literary renaissance of Jewish writers: I.B. Singer, Saul Bellow, Hannah Arendt, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth.
James Baldwin and LeRoi Jones led a vanguard of black talent. Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan, Kate Millet, Gloria Steinem and many women novelists brought into focus the problems of half of the populace; Rita Mae Brown, John Rechy and others spoke up for 10 percent of it.
Not Seedy, but Selling Like…
Poets James Dickey, Anne Sexton, Rod McKuen, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, sold like sunflower seeds. Brautigan, Vonnegut, Pynchon and Kesey expressed the thoughts and yearnings of a liberated generation. Esoterics Anais Nin, John Hawkes, Robbe-Grillet, Dijuna Barnes, Borges were popular. McLuhan, Marcuse, Toffler, Maslow and Bucky Fuller were controversial.
As war, assassination and riots raged out there, we suffered the petty intrigues and personality clashes the nature of our work seemed to provoke. It was cynically suggested we were victims of modern-day Scrooges, bent on using our love of books as an excuse for low wages and Victorian working conditions. Could it be masochism that compelled us to work so hard for so little? Or was it, as Morley said, the godliness of it; that is, the spell cast by the bound magic we dealt in? Whatever the reason, I could not wait to get to work each morning.
As a paperback buyer, I enjoyed meeting the publishers’ reps who came by seasonally with lists of titles to accept or refuse. One had to remember discounts and return policies. Cartons had to be opened, books shelved, phones answered, customers served.
Among favorites I taped, after hours, for the Foundation for the Junior Blind were the works of E. Nesbitt. Her “Five Children and It” was a precursor for “ET.” The Pssammead, a furry, funny-looking thing with eyes that came out like stalks, was found by children in a sandpit. The children were given one wish a day, but whatever they wished for was certain to fade at sunset, when things went back to normal. Sometimes in quiet moments at the store, I read charmers to the kids, like Sendak’s “Hector Protector.”
In the late ‘60s, I went, for economic reasons, to Hunter’s, across the street. Hunter’s was a cool, sophisticated place with antique books behind glass and an impressive art book collection. Pearl Goldwater, one of the best book people at the time, came out of retirement to manage the store. The owner, Lou Langfeld, lived in San Francisco and was rarely seen.
(To be continued)
Mr. Lowery may be contacted through dianejoyceagate@hotmail.com
