The esteemed and deeply generous owner of The Word bookstore in Montreal told us that he once moved a section (history, we think) from one spot of his tiny shop to another and received deep protest from his regular history customers. If you’ve never been, The Word is, in our opinion, one of the best damned used bookstores in Canada. It is smaller than ours. It is over 40 years old. It is a model of contributive antiquarian bookselling and, unlike ours, it is woven so deeply into the fabric of that city’s cultural life that a whole section of the city could not exist without it. So we suppose it makes sense that, in the strange existence where shops become “cultural institutions,” moving a shelf of books from one bookcase to another might inflame a segment of the population as if you painted the Statue of David.
With this in mind, as well as an honest admission that we are in no way The Word, we thought we’d heed Adrian’s cautionary tale and share that we too have moved a few sections around. This has already caused some alarm with our regulars. It caused a great deal of confusion for some. One occultist stood before the old occult section staring blankly, wondering, we presume, whether the section had become transparent and was now only accessible to the ghostly plane. “Where did the Occult section go?” he asked. We paused, second-guessing his skills at sensing the numinous. “Read the signs,” we said, exhausted from moving books all day. Some guidance from us finally led him to the True Path, to the new occult section, on the wall behind him.
As you are shop members, we felt it was important to warn you of these changes. We empathize with the need for consistency. A sequenced life is an ordered life. Embodied dismay is the customer who, chained to routine, finds a misfiled title in fiction, a book shelved in S when it should be in Y. For bookish fans like you, we know we have to keep things in order particularly well. You are meticulous. Besides, it makes sense retail-wise to have things be where the should be. The organization of a bookstore tells a story, offers a dimension even, a true illusion of depth, to have things placed in perceivable harmony. Blame Spring. We had a sunny day here and the shelves looked boring. We desired colour. We desired face-out books. The Art section was plugging up the damned place. A new harmony was sought. A Song of Spring, where the Art section was 1 bookcase not 2, and covers were liberated from their slumber and allowed to shine, face-out, on the north wall. We put a lot of thought into this.
We sound apologetic, even guilty. It comes honestly. You have to bathe a cat from time to time, despite how much it might hate you. And there is an art to cultural retail as there is an art to bathing a cat. We don’t have loads of SKUs to crunch. We have the basic, 500 year old “algorithm” of books put on a shelf beside one another. It can be studied. One can build theories. No one knows, exactly, why this works and why that doesn’t except that it WORKS. The occult section yearned to be at eye-level. Religious history longed to journey from that dark north wall corner to the south wall. Zines are now beautifully displayed right as you come in the door, as they should be.
Please be kind. Trust in the mysterious, if unprovable, skills of your local bookseller. We’ve spent so much time doing these things. Ours is the Tiny Home of bookselling, where, like in tiny homes, you could spend an hour deciding where a SIMPLE PLANT should go. It isn’t privilege. It is madness, but the results can be beautiful.
Much love,
Jason and Vanessa
