Evan Friss, THE BOOKSHOP: A History of the American Bookstore
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[0:45]Evan Fris is the author of the bookshop, a history of the American bookstore.
[0:48]Actually, I was on a panel with Evan at the Tucson Festival of Books, I'm sure we will
[0:53]talk about that.
[0:54]Evan is a professor of history at James Madison University.
[0:57]His latest book, The Bookshop, was one of Time Magazine's 100 Mustread Books of 2024,
[1:02]a best book of the year, according to both the Christian Science Monitor and the New Yorker,
[1:07]and the winner of the Goodreads Choice Award.
[1:10]And fun fact, this was my Hanukkah gift from my husband Kyle.
[1:13]Welcome, Evan.
[1:14]Thanks so much for coming on Totally Book to talk about The Bookshop, a history of the
[1:18]American bookstore congrats.
[1:20]Since so much for having me.
[1:22]As we were just quickly discussing, we met on a panel at the Tucson Festival of Books
[1:27]which was lovely.
[1:28]So thank you.
[1:29]That was really fun.
[1:30]Good time.
[1:31]It's pretty self-explanatory from your title and subtitle.
[1:34]Thank you.
[1:35]Spot on.
[1:36]Good job.
[1:37]Talk a little bit about The Book.
[1:38]What made you want to write this book and what can readers expect?
[1:40]Yeah.
[1:41]So it's as the kind of boring, I suggest as a history of the American bookstore.
[1:49]I'm a historian who always liked writing and researching, but struggled with figuring out ideas
[1:59]and in graduate school, everybody seemed to come in with notions of very specific ideas
[2:05]of what they wanted to write about.
[2:08]And I was always more maybe open-minded as a euphemistic way of thinking about it.
[2:14]But I was always interested in writing things that I cared about.
[2:19]And book shops became a passion of mine while I was in graduate school, not just because
[2:26]I was a heavy reader, but because my then-girlfriend, current wife, got a job at three
[2:33]lives in company, a small but mighty book shop in the West Village of New York.
[2:40]And those two interests, my interest in studying history and her experience in book selling
[2:48]kind of created this marriage.
[2:50]I thought you meant you're interested in her.
[2:53]Yes, my interest in her, I mean, admittedly, I was always much more of a book person
[2:59]than I was a bookstore person.
[3:02]So I was a heavy reader, but never was the kind of person who spent hours in bookstores.
[3:09]I felt like a loiterer and sometimes uncomfortable, even though I'd like the experience.
[3:14]But because I would go visit her and hear about what it was like to work in a bookshop,
[3:19]it opened up just a different way of thinking about these spaces and how important they
[3:25]are.
[3:26]And I began to, yeah, fall in love with the spaces and thought it was right for a book.
[3:34]Amazing.
[3:36]And at the panel, you said a lot of bookstores were upset not to have been included or readers
[3:40]who were passionate about their own bookstores, giving like, why didn't you include
[3:43]blah, blah.
[3:44]So how many did you include?
[3:46]Did you even count?
[3:47]I don't know.
[3:48]I don't know.
[3:49]I don't know.
[3:50]I don't know.
[3:51]I don't know.
[3:52]As people have written me lots of notes about my included x bookstore, y bookstore.
[3:59]And they don't those notes don't bother me.
[4:01]I usually read them and agree with them and say, you know, maybe I never heard of this
[4:05]bookstore, sometimes I have heard of the bookshop.
[4:10]Sometimes it was in a first draft and then got cut at some point.
[4:14]So there are lots of cases to be made for including lots of great bookstores that didn't
[4:22]make the final cut.
[4:23]But it's impossible to write a comprehensive history of almost anything, let alone something
[4:29]that has such a rich history is book selling.
[4:32]Well, what you did that I loved is wrote about the bookstore owners or people really
[4:38]affiliated with the store and their backstory.
[4:40]And sometimes even their ancestor story.
[4:43]And so you're not just talking about this bookstore was set up on this day and these are
[4:47]the types of books and blah, blah, blah, but you're really like listening to this story
[4:51]about R.J. Julia and how it came to be.
[4:53]And now I will, I like wanted to email Roxanne Cody after I read this.
[4:56]I was like, I had no idea about this backstory.
[4:59]Can I read that like little section about about her?
[5:02]Do you mind?
[5:03]And you do this for so many people, including, and I'll just leave this as a teaser and
[5:07]patch it's virginity, which is the most sort of salacious piece of this whole book that
[5:12]should be like leading the headlines, but that's okay, I'll just throw it out there.
[5:16]Okay, this is called the Grandmother, and you said you wrote, just before the Second World
[5:20]War, a recently widowed Hungarian Jew named Julia insisted that her son finished school.
[5:26]The boy graduated from high school in 1942 and survived the Holocaust.
[5:31]Julia went to a concentration camp.
[5:33]She never returned.
[5:34]The son came to the U.S. and started his own family.
[5:37]His daughter, Roxanne J. Cody, grew up in a house full of books and with a mother who
[5:42]read to her constantly.
[5:43]In 1990, Cody, leaving behind a partnership and an accounting firm, opened an enchanting bookstore
[5:48]in Madison, Connecticut.
[5:50]She named it after the grandmother she never met R.J. Julia.
[5:54]I did not know that.
[5:56]I'm so glad you included that.
[5:58]Yeah, it's a fascinating story in one of many, you know, when I'm writing a history
[6:04]that's a kind of an institutional history, you know, what have bookstores meant over time.
[6:11]But it's really about the people who animate those spaces, first and foremost, the people
[6:16]who start these bookstores, booksellers, people like yourself, and also the customers,
[6:22]the people who work there, as I write about the UPS drivers, they become, you know, these
[6:30]environments that are home to so many different kinds of people.
[6:34]And it's those people who make this space.
[6:37]And R.J. Julia is a great example of a shop that is an anchor of that community.
[6:43]If you walk up and down, you know, the streets of Madison, Connecticut, if that bookstore
[6:48]wasn't there, there would be something missing, I think, palpably avoid.
[6:53]I was there and did walk up and down.
[6:55]And I was like, oh my gosh, this is where R.J. Julia is.
[6:58]I was so excited.
[6:59]It was like finding like a miracle.
[7:01]I was looking at a school with my daughter or something anyway.
[7:04]You also write so beautifully about books and bookstores from a sort of sensory experience.
[7:09]Can I read a little bit more?
[7:10]Is that okay?
[7:11]See, I'm making this so easy on you.
[7:12]Aren't you glad you did this podcast?
[7:13]You're like, I'm just going to kick it.
[7:14]I'm going to check my email, you know, I'm not even going to pay attention.
[7:18]You wrote bookstores also stimulate our senses, being surrounded by books matters.
[7:22]Sociologists have found that just growing up in a home full of books, mere proximity,
[7:26]refers a lifetime of intellectual benefits.
[7:29]Books offer warmth, comfort, and refuge.
[7:31]It's no wonder then that so many social media accounts deal in what might be called book
[7:35]porn, glimpses of book-stuffed bookstores, libraries, and wood paneled dens.
[7:40]At the same time, books are imbued with a near-holy spirit.
[7:43]Many of us wins at the idea of throwing one in the trash.
[7:47]That's part of the reason why entering a bookstore can feel like walking into an old church.
[7:51]And then you also said, more so than bars or coffee shops, they are also places in
[7:56]which to get lost, and by way of the books to escape reality.
[8:00]For every chatty customer, there's another who prefers to be left alone, to be by oneself
[8:05]among others, to feel a book's heft, to smell a paperbacks perfume, to savour, slowed
[8:12]time.
[8:13]Love that.
[8:14]Thanks.
[8:15]And speaking of which, you have a pretty glam background there.
[8:17]I thought I had impressive display of books behind me in my office, but you have the full
[8:24]rainbow effect and lots of books and that confers as I write in the book.
[8:29]I mean, you know, there's a sense of wonder, all those stories and kind of portals
[8:35]that are opened.
[8:36]But it's also just warm as a kind of design feature.
[8:42]And one of the things that I sort of grew about our modern world is, you know, people
[8:50]ask me, is anybody reading anymore?
[8:53]And that's a whole another discussion.
[8:55]But I just like the prominence of books and worry about books disappearing from the landscape
[9:02]as physical objects and libraries have had to reinvent themselves and often do a lot of
[9:08]great community kind of events and help people write resumes and have after-school kind
[9:13]of activities and rent, you know, drills and chainsaws and stuff.
[9:19]But sometimes the books are too hidden.
[9:21]And I think there's a real power of the kind of visibility, the smell, the touch of books
[9:29]that I hope we can sort of appreciate and conserve in some way.
[9:34]I did not know.
[9:35]I could learn how to use chainsaw at my local library, but now I will look up those hours.
[9:40]Yeah.
[9:41]Didn't you call it like bibblyo sumo?
[9:43]What's it called?
[9:44]The smell of books, isn't it?
[9:45]Yeah.
[9:46]There's a debate whether that word exists or not, but my proof reader was cool with it.
[9:52]So we went with it.
[9:53]It was borderline.
[9:54]But yeah, there's a whole, you know, a resting power of the scent.
[10:00]of a book, which was fun to think about.
[10:02]And of course, as part of the allure of a library or a bookshop.
[10:07]I mean, it is crazy that there's an industry where a bookstore can be just a few doors down
[10:14]from a library, where the thing that the store is selling is completely free.
[10:19]I mean, it doesn't make any sense.
[10:21]It would be like a high-end designer clothing store and then all the exact same clothes
[10:26]are free to doors down.
[10:27]Like, why would anyone go to the first store next to rent the runway?
[10:32]Would you still buy the dress if you can rent it?
[10:35]I don't know.
[10:36]Yeah.
[10:37]Well, booksellers assumed the same and when libraries became popular in the late 19th century,
[10:43]the various trade groups of booksellers assumed that this was the demise of their industry.
[10:50]Why would anyone pay for a book that was freely accessible?
[10:55]And it turned out not to be the case for a variety of reasons.
[10:59]But even nowadays, lots of people who come in the bookstores and maybe you experience
[11:03]this at yours, too.
[11:05]A lot of times people will come in and get books that are on hold at the library, you know,
[11:10]new books that they're sort of desperate to read or that they just want to populate their
[11:15]shelves with because they feel like it will give them something even after they read it.
[11:22]Having it there, looking at the title, you know, these books behind me, most of which I've read,
[11:28]I guess at some point when I was in graduate school.
[11:31]But I occasionally would just kind of look up and down and it's like a historical timeline.
[11:38]I remember the classes that I was taking or, you know, something about the book and not to mention
[11:45]that I wrote in the margins and underline stuff, which is not okay with library books.
[11:53]True, very true.
[11:54]Yeah, I wrote a whole memoir about my history with books and like how each one is,
[11:58]like I remembered where I was and it's so linked to a time in my life.
[12:01]Like this was linked to this loss and this was linked to this happy time.
[12:04]And I remember this trip that, you know, because books, when I look around my room and my eye
[12:10]catches on a book, it's not necessarily the book, it's the part of me and my history that gets
[12:17]activated and the people I was with and there's signals of, it's like photo albums that I like
[12:22]also love having photo albums around which, you know.
[12:26]And I think the fact that libraries and booksellers are no longer enemies and in fact often
[12:33]collaborate, you know, speak to what is really underline the kind of shared mission of these two
[12:39]different institutions, which is, you know, to evangelize the reading and the benefit of books.
[12:46]And I don't know, maybe some authors are just trying to be polite, but when I speak with other
[12:52]authors or go to these festivals, I think we're all happy for readers to find our books however
[12:58]they do. And I know I'm grateful when people check out my book from the library and libraries
[13:05]and booksellers I think appreciate the role of libraries for people who don't want to or can't
[13:11]afford to spend books. And I think there's an ecosystem in which they both benefit one another
[13:18]and we see that probably today more than ever before as the kind of threats to reading and assaults
[13:27]on books make them common defenders and champions of literature. Interesting, very true. Wow.
[13:36]So everybody always asks me and by the way, as a publisher, a big percent, not a majority percent,
[13:44]but a percent of all our sales of every book we publish comes from libraries and aggregate,
[13:48]by the way. So I think authors are happy that people are reading them in the libraries because
[13:53]if they weren't, they would lose all those library sales too. So even though it's not one-on-one,
[13:58]it makes up for the individual sales school. Anyway, you know all this. People are always asking me
[14:03]when I say I have a bookstore. They're like, well, why would you have a bookstore? Can you even make
[14:08]money? It's not profitable. It's a losing business. Like, aren't books on the decline. Why would
[14:14]you go there? But in reading the book, like so many people are just really doubling down or they
[14:20]feel like the bookstore in the part with Ann Patchit is that she didn't even want to live in a
[14:25]place without a bookstore. So you have to like put a bookstore in Nashville and indie bookstores. So
[14:30]what do you think about all that? Yeah, it's confusing when I first started this book. I was worried
[14:37]about striking the right tone and being also historically accurate about the great decimation of
[14:46]bookstores, which in on the one hand is very true. Just the number of book shops that we have
[14:51]today is a fraction of what there was a generation ago. And on a per capita basis, even even smaller
[15:00]than much of the 20th century and even 19th century. So I think that's important. But there are also
[15:07]much more optimistic notes that are also true and that the kind of great decline seems to have
[15:14]ceased that there are many bookstores that are doing very well. But it is also true. People don't
[15:21]get into book selling as a way to get rich or at least they shouldn't. And it is often a project
[15:29]of passion and you know, Ann Patchit's bookstore is certainly like that. And I suspect yours is
[15:36]also and not that these entities don't want to make money. But that there is at least a secondary,
[15:44]if not primary motivation, which is more than the bottom line. And that's always been the case.
[15:50]And as I write in the book, if there is one theme of book selling, it's that it's a precarious
[15:56]industry on the verge of death essentially since the very beginning. And that's been a theme
[16:03]embraced by outsiders, but also to some degree by insiders. And there have been very good reasons
[16:09]for that. So we could look at it like there are roles of a few bookstores today, which is true.
[16:16]But on the other hand, it's kind of a miracle that there are as many as there are when everyone
[16:21]walking into your bookstore knows that they can get the same product delivered to their house
[16:27]in a day at the same price and oftentimes cheaper than you're selling it for.
[16:32]So for just snapping their fingers and it like appears the sound is in their ears.
[16:37]Like exactly you can get it on your devices almost instantaneously.
[16:44]So, you know, people are choosing deliberately to support these institutions. And I hope that that
[16:52]you know, suggests, which I think it does, it's just a kind of valuing of these spaces that hopefully
[17:00]will ensure their long-term survivability. But as I write in the book, if you know, they're on the
[17:08]endangered species list. And so we can celebrate the success and there are many doing well and
[17:14]their people keep opening them. But we also need to appreciate the precarity of the business.
[17:20]And hopefully continue to, you know, find ways to ensure their legacy and sort of ongoing
[17:28]practical ability to survive. We are the polar bears of the calm of the retail space,
[17:36]is that it? Polar bear. Much beloved. Oh, great. And people love them. But if we don't
[17:44]actively support them, yeah, they're certainly endangered.
[17:50]Sad. Okay. Well, I'm happy to be a defender of the endangered species of the book world.
[17:57]Wait, tell me about you started talking about your new book when we were on the panel about
[18:01]lists. And then I saw you sold it for some like at auction or there was some really exciting
[18:06]news. Tell me all about that. Yeah. So I said I can never come over the good idea for a book.
[18:12]And all of these ideas seem zany to me. But I was writing this bookshop book and I was finishing
[18:19]it up at this amazing residency at McDowell, which maybe you've heard of is in the new
[18:26]picture. I was surrounded by all these genius people and filmmakers and sculptors and poets. And
[18:33]I don't know what I was doing there. I think I got in. It was a mistake. But it was amazing. And
[18:38]I was almost done this project. And my agent said, why don't you spend a day
[18:44]figuring out the next book? And I'm like walking around the woods, waiting for ideas to sort of,
[18:49]you know, lightning bolted me. And nothing's happening. But then I give this talk about the bookshop.
[18:57]And I read from part of it. And the part that I read has this very kind of listing narrative
[19:04]style. And there's there are several actual lists in the book. And this guy comes up to me after
[19:09]the reading and says, he's a Kenyan novelist. He says, you really love lists. And I said, you know,
[19:16]what I do. And we started trading back and forth kind of text about our favorite lists and
[19:24]literature and history. And it seemed like a wild idea. I said, what if I write a history of the list
[19:32]and the essential premise of the book is that we as humans created fire, the wheel and the list,
[19:39]like if you want to understand humanity and our psychology, our competitiveness are
[19:45]various cultures over time that lists are the lens. And I thought it was crazy. But I
[19:51]started reading into people and people seem to like it, including eventually, you know,
[19:58]editors and such.
[20:00]Oh, yes, I have a contract for the book, but I have to still write the book.
[20:06]I'm working on it, but it's a very vast subject and, um, which is fun, but also challenging
[20:14]to try to wrap my head around.
[20:16]When's that do?
[20:17]Um, I don't really want to say.
[20:23]I'll just say, you know, I'm a one of the things I ride myself on.
[20:28]Is, you know, I like to think of myself as a quote, real historian.
[20:32]You know, I'm a professor at university and the book will be well researched.
[20:38]I hope or I think so.
[20:39]It takes me a long time because I like to enjoy the research, but there's a lot of digging,
[20:45]a lot of reading and learning.
[20:47]And I'm not an expert on, you know, ancient, you know, Babylonia, but there are lists and
[20:55]I have to try and learn as much as I can.
[20:57]So I'm working on it.
[21:00]Yeah, my to-do list is a disaster.
[21:03]I like scribble it on the back of things and I throw it in my purse and then I put that into my
[21:08]backpack and then I can't find it and I don't know.
[21:11]Do you have a to-do list?
[21:13]I do have various lists and I think most of us do.
[21:17]That's part of what makes the subject appealing is that it's sort of in plain sight
[21:21]and part of our daily lives, but most of us haven't given it too much thought.
[21:26]And then of course, even publishing, you know, there are the kind of lists and you know,
[21:32]A-list authors and you know, your lists and bestseller lists and all the rest.
[21:40]So there's some continuity and I think of lists as texts and literature.
[21:45]So it's kind of related to book shops in a way.
[21:49]Love it.
[21:50]So tell me about what you're teaching right now.
[21:54]On teaching, I teach a couple of different courses here.
[21:57]I teach surveys of American history.
[22:00]I teach courses on oral history, which is essentially interviewing people
[22:05]about their own lives and experiences.
[22:08]And I teach really a course that I came up with a few years ago called The History of Today,
[22:14]where we essentially contextualize the news.
[22:17]So I'm not teaching it this semester, but if I was, we might read about, you know,
[22:24]tariff policies, you know, we're back in the 1920s, things that get kind of talked about
[22:31]in the news.
[22:32]But that honestly, most students don't have a lot of historical context about what's going on.
[22:39]You know, why are the United States and China have this kind of economic war?
[22:45]What is the history of that relationship?
[22:47]So it's not really meant to be a contentious class where the students are debating,
[22:52]but it's really providing some basic background for hot button issues, which I think is
[23:00]useful, and the students seem to enjoy.
[23:02]And they'll often admit, you know, that they really don't know a whole lot about the backstory
[23:08]of whatever's happening in regards to American politics, elections, or what's happening in
[23:15]Israel, or what's happening with China, or what's happening with Ukraine and Russian, all the rest.
[23:21]So amazing.
[23:22]So what's the last book that you bought in a bookstore?
[23:25]I just bought twist by column and can't, which is really enjoying it about underwater
[23:33]cables that are breaking terrifying now a little bit, right?
[23:38]I left a little unsettled by the whole thing.
[23:40]And he loves lists also and uses them in his writing.
[23:44]So that had some nice kind of synergy.
[23:48]Yes, synergy.
[23:49]And yeah, that's the book I'm currently reading.
[23:52]I read orbital this year, which I really like Samantha Harvey's book.
[23:57]I read Stoner, which is this book about a middle-aged English professor, so somebody recommended
[24:03]that it's kind of, you know, melancholy and sad life of being a middle-aged man who's a
[24:11]professor so that it might strike a chord with me.
[24:16]Now uplifting.
[24:18]Do you see any new trends that are like really exciting?
[24:22]I mean, I feel like there's the niche bookstore is in popularizing and popularity now.
[24:29]There's like the rom-com store, the LGBTQ store.
[24:32]Like I know you write about this, but like specialty stores that have a particular niche.
[24:37]But do you, in your research or now, like do you see anything else on the horizon or what do you think?
[24:43]I think booksellers have found creative ways to engage with broader audience
[24:48]is in a variety of ways.
[24:50]And I see many shops doing things beyond just a typical kind of author talk.
[24:56]So some are having kind of literary tours of, you know, the neighborhood or the cities that
[25:02]they're in and kind of just creative ways of enticing different kind of customers.
[25:08]The specialty shops, as you mentioned, their whole spate of romance bookstores that have cropped up
[25:14]in the last couple of years, those tend to be very difficult as businesses because they're catering
[25:21]to some, you know, more niche audience.
[25:23]And during the great decline of bookstores in the 80s and more so in the 90s,
[25:30]those shops often struggle the most, but so I hope that's not the case.
[25:34]But I think it's exciting to see different kinds of people entering the bookselling space
[25:41]and we, we continue to see that and that's exciting.
[25:45]But it's up to, you know, people like you have these shops to try and think about and kind of
[25:51]continually reinvent these spaces, which I think has been happening and drawing in different kind of
[25:58]audiences.
[25:59]Amazing.
[26:00]Well, Evan, thank you for highlighting the bookshop bookstores or one of my favorite places on
[26:06]earth.
[26:07]I am a lawyer.
[26:08]I am not afraid.
[26:09]If I have ever have time, I could spend through all day there, but yeah, I think being surrounded
[26:14]by books is like the ultimate anti-anxiety medication.
[26:18]Yes.
[26:19]And Lorder when paired with an actual anti-anxiety medication, but still okay on its own.
[26:24]Yes.
[26:25]And today more than ever, if you can, and I see people doing this, because I occasionally
[26:29]pick up a shift at my wife's bookshop, like people would just put their phone away and
[26:35]spend 15, 20, 25 minutes walking around the store, picking up a book, reading a sentence
[26:43]here and there.
[26:44]And it's, I think, such a kind of powerful and restorative experience.
[26:51]Very true.
[26:53]Thanks for highlighting it.
[26:54]All right.
[26:55]Yeah.
[26:56]Thanks for coming me on and for all you do for books and literature and book shops and
[27:01]all the rest.
[27:02]Thank you.
[27:03]Appreciate it.
[27:04]All right.
[27:05]Take care, Evan.
[27:06]Thank you.
[27:07]Bye.
[27:08]Bye.
[27:09]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi, formerly Momstone, I have time to read
[27:12]books.
[27:13]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[27:18]and spread the word.
[27:20]Thanks so much.
[27:21]Go and buy the books.