Interview with a Bookstore: City Lights: Lost Ducks, Beatniks, and Sex in the Storeroom
Funmi Tofowomo Okelola
http://lithub.com/interview-with-a-bookstore-city-lights/
Interview with a Bookstore: City Lights
Lost Ducks, Beatniks, and Sex in the Storeroom
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet laureate of Coney Island, cofounder of
perhaps America’s most famous bookstore, wrote of his adopted city: The changing light / at San Francisco / is none of your East Coast light none of your / pearly light of Paris The light of San Francisco / is a sea light / an island light There are moments in the afternoon, when the fickle coastal weather
allows, that the upstairs poetry room at City Lights—the bookstore
Ferlinghetti founded in 1953 with Peter D. Martin—fills with a perfect
San Francisco light. It becomes easy, then, to forget you’re reading at
the epicenter of mid-century counterculture, where the first bullets
were fired in a literary revolution that would change America, the
world. Named for the Charlie Chaplin movie (Martin was a film buff, and
would soon move to New York to open a bookstore specializing in cinema),
City Lights would grow quickly—both as bookstore and press—subsuming
the adjacent flower shop, and then taking over the entire Artigues
building on Columbus Avenue. We had a chance to talk with Executive Director Elaine Katzenberger,
along with several booksellers, about City Lights then and now. Elaine: The idea was to open an all-paperback bookshop,
which was an intentionally democratizing move at a time when most books
were still sold in hardcover only. Quality paperbacks were very new at
the time, and mostly unavailable outside of news racks in New York and
spinners in drugstores here and there. Bookshops in San Francisco at the
time kept banker’s hours, serving a businessman’s downtown clientele,
and the atmosphere wasn’t particularly welcoming for the young writers
and readers who wanted a place to congregate and engage with books—and
with each other. The idea from the beginning was to create a “literary
meetingplace,” which became the City Lights masthead. Elaine: In a nutshell, the writers
of the Beat Generation were responding to the political conservatism
and cultural conformism of mid-century America. The writings and the
lifestyles we associate with the Beats were a conscious attempt to break
out of scripted roles and models for “success.” The desire was for
greater personal authenticity and individual voice, for an expanded
realm of choice and for some form of freedom from the capitalist
treadmill. Of course, a critical part of that ethos was to experiment
with literary forms—both fiction and poetry, and later, non-fiction.
Poetry in particular became a means to vividly interact with the
zeitgeist, and it was a conscious decision to popularize the form, make
it “speak” directly to readers (and sometimes huge live poetry
audiences) in their own vernacular. It was also a time when non-Western
spiritual and cultural influences were finding their way into the
culture, and the literature and practice of Zen Buddhism in particular
played an important role in motivating the desire for an “expanded
consciousness.” Every aspect of those aspirations—the attempts to throw off
oppressive or repressive forces, both external and internal; attempts to
open the mind and to engage politically; the commitment to creativity
as a potent form of revolutionary thinking and action—all of this is
still central to our sense of mission and purpose. Elaine: City Lights was founded as
an attempt to further a robust, informed confrontation with the
realities of the times, and to provide a place for people to engage with
ideas and with each other. Lawrence Ferlinghetti launched his
publishing imprint two years after he co-founded the bookstore, and with
that City Lights was able to grow beyond the physical limitations of
the bookstore itself, creating a network of writers and readers across
the country and, after a while, around the world. Without the publishing
company, City Lights would have been an extraordinary bookstore, but
with it, City Lights began to create its own enduring contribution to
cultural history, and at a certain point, it began to assume mythic
proportions. The bookstore has become a destination as a result, the
physical space where people come to experience something of what they
perceive to be the mission and aesthetics of our project. Andy Bellows, Store Manager: I have a soft spot for our
Surrealism section. It was here before I arrived (over 20 years ago) and
has been surprisingly vibrant over all these years. It not only has the
well-known French texts, but it also incorporates Surrealist
descendants from all over the world. Layla Gibbon: Oulipo or Topographies. Vanessa Martini, Receiving Supervisor: Our fiction sections
are almost too broad to really have those as my answer, so I will go a
little smaller and pick Topographies and Commodity Aesthetics. These two
sections face each other and are the clearest examples, to my mind, of
both academic publishing and bookstores adapting to meet the discourse
around digital culture. Topographies started as a space/place/body
section; it has since expanded to include digital humanities and the
closest City Lights comes to computing books. Commodity Aesthetics can
seem grab-bag at times but includes books ranging from race theory to
critiques of fashion to histories of piracy into the Internet era. I
love shelving them and always discover something rad. Andy: Actually, not having infinite space is a blessing. The
relatively small space allows us to concentrate on carrying only what
we want. Peter Maravelis, Events Coordinator:
For the sake of independent presses everywhere, I’d propose the
creation of a think-tank and design agency whose sole purpose is to
strive to make books more beautiful whilst affordable to produce. Using
the latest in 3-D printing, CNC, laser, and recycling technologies, such
an agency would encourage the exploration of an aesthetic born from a
post-minimalist perspective. The lusciousness of embossed linen covers,
letterpress quality type, stitched binding, and iridescent paper—all in
the service of matching the printed message with a worthy vessel to
carry it. Tân Khánh Cao: Books in French and more room to display art books. Layla: Perhaps more space for art/photography monographs or an escape hatch for when drunks and/or maniacs harass. Vanessa: More gender theory. A nap chair for the staff. What do you do better than any other bookstore? Andy: I think our poetry room is
unrivaled. We’ve dedicated our entire upstairs floor to poetry. It’s a
beautiful space that begs you to grab a book and read bathed in
afternoon light. Tân: Our commitment to issues of
race and class is not only present, but also essential to the way the
store is curated. We also stock an unusually large selection of backlist
titles. Vanessa: My favorite thing is when
someone comes to the counter and says either “I’ve been looking for
this book everywhere and nobody’s had it but you” or “I have never seen
this book anywhere else; never even heard of it, so I’ve got to get it.”
That’s the best feeling. Layla: Providing a different point
of view by not selling books that are available everywhere, focusing
instead on literature from non-Western perspectives and smaller presses,
and on subjects people don’t necessarily know they are looking for like
Surrealism, small press poetry, people’s history, stolen continents,
critical theory, and so on… Andy: We recently received a
letter from a young woman who wanted us to know, and hoped we wouldn’t
be mortified by the fact, that she had surreptitiously placed her
father’s ashes in various nooks and crannies throughout our poetry room.
She said it was her father’s favorite place in the world and she was
comforted in knowing he was there. He’s now a regular. Tân: I don’t want to talk about
him as the “weirdest” because he is brilliant and fascinating and sweet.
He is more marvelously strange than weird. Layla: Maybe the endless stream of
frustrated business people who are furious that we do not stock books
about leadership/the 40-hour workweek, etc. Vanessa: Regular customers tend
not to be so outlandishly weird. Weird regular visitors, though, we get a
lot of. It feels a bit wrong to describe most of them though as they’re
usually people who’ve been screwed over by the shameful lack of mental
health care in this country. I guess, by extension, Reagan is the
weirdest regular. Andy: We once had a customer
complain that someone was smoking in the basement. When we went down to
check it out we discovered a woman “servicing” a man who then complained
to the woman, “I told you not to smoke!” As if that was the only
problem. Tân: For a while there was a woman
who used to sneak in a staff door, and slide down the wooden chute into
the room we receive books in. She made herself a bed out of bubble wrap
at the bottom of the chute and was found asleep several times. Layla: We are open from 10AM to
midnight and I tend to work night shifts, so some of the “crazy
situations” I have had to deal with aren’t that fun to recount. Not sure
if these are “crazy” enough, but since working at City Lights I have
had a curse put on me by a European “count,” befriended one of the
cinematographers on Boris Karloff’s last movie, found out the ladies who
worked at the Lusty Lady peepshow (RIP) staged a photo-shoot in the
Poetry Room, and listened to a guy explain to his kids that “that Jack
Carroway guy was born here.” Vanessa: Definitely the duck. I
can’t see the floor of the entrance when at the counter and some German
tourists said “Excuse me, did you know there is a duck in here?” No, no I
did not know. To make a long-ish story short, the duck came, saw,
freaked out, flew around, waddled out, was eventually caught by some
good Samaritans, and for all I know is paddling around Golden Gate Park
now. I’ll never forget the sound of its quacks drifting up from the
basement, though. Tân: Best. After cashing my first paycheck at 15, I came to City Lights. Browsing, I found Giovanni’s Room
by James Baldwin. Dell pocket edition. I had never heard of James
Baldwin. I came back after every paycheck for another until I had read
them all. Vanessa: Being overwhelmed by all the books and being told I could only choose one. Still a problem. Tân: I’ve been in a bookstore for most of almost two decades. I have no idea. Layla: Finding other ways to frustrate businessmen. Peter: Booksellers will more fully
occupy their role as guardian of the long narrative and extended
attention span. As texting and tweeting fragment language into a patois
of bourgeois jingoism, the booksellers shall arise to their rightful
place as protectors of critical thinking, humanism, and democracy. They
will encourage the citizenry to go against the grain. Book Clubs will
emerge where members memorize entire novels in one sitting (shades of
Ray Bradbury). Giordano Bruno will dance happily inside his tomb. SLIDESHOW: City Lights Staff Recommendations
Why did Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin open City Lights?
How is the legacy of the Beats reflected in the store today?
How intimate has been the relationship between City Lights the bookstore, and City Lights the publisher?
What’s your favorite section in the store?
If you had infinite space what would you add?
Who’s your weirdest regular?
What’s the craziest situation you’ve ever had to deal with in the store?
What’s your earliest/best memory about visiting a bookstore as a child?
If you weren’t running/working at a bookstore what would you be doing?
What’s the future of bookselling?
Funmi Tofowomo Okelola
-In the absence of greatness, mediocrity thrives.