I was in the mood for book buying when I walked into University Bookstore in Madison on Spring Break. I did not have a book in mind, but that was my typical modus on such trips. As I browse the aisles and sale tables, I wait for the book to call to me, rather than me searching for it. I do keep a list of titles on Amazon for Kindle reading and there are monthly book club book selections, but I don't access those lists when I walk into a real live bookstore. That would seem like cheating. The adventure in the bookstore is in the tracking, chase, discovery and capture of words.
I have two other bookstore shopping rules: one, I can only purchase one volume from a single store area (like 20th Century Austrian Nature Writing, or Wall Street Autobiographies from the One-Percent, or Fiction from Authors with the first name of Stephen and the last name of King). One selection from one area and I must move to another section of the store.
My second rule is that I must buy a book from every bookstore that I enter. As a reader and a writer, I think it is important to support the book business. When I buy from brick and mortar bookstores, I am also buying from the distributor, publisher, cover artist and designer, paper maker and ink supplier, editor, agent, writer, and most important, the local bookstore owner. A published book is a noble and honored collaborative profession and the reader and the bookstore are the final links in the chain.
As I said, I was in a book-buying mood when I walked up to the main floor of the University Bookstore, a favorite bookstore in past years, but instead of books, saw a sea of red and white clothing. Shelves, racks, displays, even the college-age cashiers and their managers displayed the latest UW Bucky-wear, dozens of variations of t-shirts, sweat shirts, hoodies, flip-flops, swim suits, long-sleeve and short sleeve polo shirts, running pants, running shorts, golf pants, and pajama bottoms. After wandering aimlessly in the jersey section looking for a printed word that was not silk screened in three-inch letters, I saw floor decals pointing the way toward books, new and used. Ahh, finally the main feature of a bookstore. The floor decal arrows led me down to a sad-looking, lifeless lower level with picked-over shelves labeled for college courses. Been there, done that, have the red and white diploma.
Just as I was about to leave red and white land, I saw a series of shelves sticking up behind a rack of red and white door posters. Across the store, back in the corner, the entire non-textbook inventory of books were crowded on a short stack of shelves not much larger than those I have at home. Even though the books looked at me hopefully looking for a home, I broke rule number two and did not make a purchase. I averted my eyes and walked out.
Fortunately, three other non-UW privately-owned bookstores were within an easy walk of the campus, so I returned from Madison with a bag of books to keep me a happy reader. But, thinking about the book-less University Bookstore, I recall a line from Mark Twain who said there is little difference between a person who cannot read and a person who will not read. Neither one, he said, is functionally literate. Both are rather sad. Along the same line of reasoning, when we surrender college bookstore shelf space to red and white paraphernalia, is that a sign of school pride or the warning of something else? If a college bookstore does not carry books, does it stop being a bookstore? And if it is not a bookstore, what does it become?
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