A call to promiscuous readers: support your local bookseller

I had the great pleasure of visiting two independent booksellers that I claim as mine this week: Magers & Quinn in Uptown and Amazing Alonzo Paperback Exchange in Duluth. Before the holidays I made a trip to a retail behemoth that shall remain unnamed. As I searched in vain for something lovely, I shuddered as I walked through the children’s section: toys as far as the eye could see. Miles away from such aberrations, Magers & Quinn and Amazing Alonzo offer a respite from retail stores masquerading as booksellers to the masses.

Magers & Quinn is the largest independent bookseller in Minneapolis (as per their blog) and sell mostly used texts and new releases. Their staff is knowledgeable, unobtrusive, and congenial. The location is in trendy Uptown but don’t let this deter you: it is a space of genuine value to the community. The atmosphere within is one that could easily accommodate any bibliophile or promiscuous reader: good lighting, high shelves, narrow passages, and ample poetry and children’s sections (among others, these happen to be of particular interest to your author).

Last week my mother and I visited with no real aim but to find a treasure. I wanted something used, something carefully worn, something classic. I found Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. The edition is thin and not altogether pretty, but the sonnets are punctuated with letters between Elizabeth and her husband, poet Robert Browning. When I finish reading Emily Dickinson’s collected works I’ll start this. It’s nice to be reading poetry alongside whatever else I am reading; plus poetry looks so lovely on a nightstand.

The other text I found was a true treasure: a copy of Longfellow’s collected works including “Paul Revere’s Ride” which sparked an intense love of history in my ten-year-old soul many years ago. The book is hardcover with sparse illustrations and has a little open-sided box to protect it (which itself is rather worse for the wear). Inside the front cover is scripted: June 1946 Happy Birthday Harley Love Aunt Flora. This was an intensely satisfying find and I would have bought it for that inscription alone had I not also wanted the book for my own shelf. (Detour: I encourage readers to explore the Forgotten Bookmarks blog.)

The next day I had the great joy of traveling to Duluth for a weekend with friends. This is an annual trip to our old college haunt and for the past couple years has been the only trip to Duluth that we make. I make a point of always stopping at Amazing Alonzo Paperback Exchange. This gem is on 19^th and Superior Street and is run by Barb Plumb who always remembers my name and asks after my family. Barb offers all her used books at 90% of their cover price with the exception of hardcovers which all sell for $3. Exchanged books gain you credit for 90% of their worth, which can be used toward 60% of any books you purchase. If it sounds complicated (or if I have it wrong) don’t worry about it, Barb will handle the arithmetic and you’ll get quality used books at a fantastic price.

Alonzo’s is deceptively delightful. It is a sunny cavern that meanders from the front room full of novels, biographies, westerns and classics, through a narrow hall lined with comedic and political texts, around a literarily congested corner full of how-to insights and spiritually inclined authors, into the back room, its shelves positively bursting with romance novels that sell by the grocery bag ($5). I found Louise Erdrich’s Antelope Wife and Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s Of Love and Other Demons. I haven’t read either but I plan to try loving them both. (Who couldn’t try to love anything written by the authors of The Master Butchers Singing Club and One Hundred Years of Solitude after all?)

The lesson is this: find yourself an independent bookseller or two and support them. Go to their events, exchange your books with them, buy your books from them, and treasure them as you would a dear friend. They do great service to the communities they inhabit simply by existing. Some are highly motivated and involved like Magers & Quinn, supporting book clubs, hosting speakers and events, and have an intense internet presence; others like Amazing Alonzo Paperback Exchange are hidden, belonging to their community alone, loved by as many people as their proprietor can accommodate, not inclined to stretch because they don’t need to, but comforting and sunny.

Supporting your local independent bookseller ensures that your community will maintain a house of value for bibliophiles and promiscuous readers. They tend to nurture well-informed and unabashedly open-minded folks who treasure even the worst sort of writing (thank you for that!) and the least important text with unadulterated joy. There is no pretense or judgment, read what you like and cherish it. Lest the behemoth bookstores squeeze out classic booksellers, save yourself and find a literary home in your community. Then tell me about it.

The Master Butchers Singing Club

Previous to reading The Master Butchers Singing Club by Minnesota author Louise Erdrich, I had read Love Medicine, Tracks, and The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse.However, it wasn’t until reading The Master Butcher that I understood Erdrich’s style in a way that allowed me to appreciate the weight of her story, as well as the telling. Truth be told, I think Love Medicine and Tracks went way over my head and will have to give them another go around.

The Master Butchers Singing Club is the gripping story of Delphine Watzka, a rural North Dakota townie and Fidelis Waldvogel, a German immigrant. Following World War I, Fidelis immigrates to the US in the hopes of getting to Seattle, though he only gets as far as Argus, North Dakota. He settles there, opening a butcher shop and raising his four sons with his wife, Eva, who is absolutely a brilliant force in the book. Weaving stories of murder, a threatening sheriff, the delightful Waldvogel family, and Delphine’s relationships with the endearing Cyprian and lovely Roy, Erdrich brings us a truly bittersweet story of human relationships.

So much happens in the book that each chapter is thrilling to read even on its own. The challenge to the reader may be keeping a pulse on Delphine and Fidelis’ relationship throughout the story. We travel with Delphine through her desire for the very sexy Cyprian, the resulting disillusionment and nontraditional relationship, her affection for Eva and loyalty to Eva’s sons, and the polar strength that both she and Fidelis summon to stay apart. We endure the insufferable Tante, the delightful Clarisse, the brooding Sheriff Hoch, and Delphine’s very drunk, very loveable and pitiable father, Roy. Each character and story line is drawn with such depth and cautious detail that the tale could go in any direction and I admire Erdrich for being able to stick with the story she’s chosen. It is clear that the story of the master butcher of Argus is just one of many that could come out of this fictional town.

Erdrich has previously written about the Anishinabeg communities in North Dakota and Minnesota and one theme of The Master Butchers Singing Club is the interaction of the native peoples of the plains with the white settlers. Specifically, Erdrich weaves in the Battle at Wounded Knee in an out-of-the-blue though not irrelevant way. The character of Step-and-a-Half absolutely fascinates and, though a very peripheral character, she had almost exactly the role I was expecting. "Almost" is the key word here; I would have been disappointed if I had been able to guess it.

Above all, Erdrich’s writing style makes this book so wonderful to read. Whether she is telling a tragedy or describing something amusing, she makes it count. She writes sentences like: “The light pouring through the curtains made a liquid sound, he thought, an emotional and female sound as it moved across the ivory wall.” I had to read that a couple times to really understand the air and sound behind an observation like that, but once I was there in the room I thought yes, I know that kind of light. The thought from the book that stuck with me most when I had finished was observed by Step-and-a-Half as she closed the story: “Our songs travel the earth…Not a single note is ever lost and no song is original. They all come from the same place and go back to a time when only the stones howled.” What imagery! What grace! What connection to the ancestors!

**If you decide this isn’t enough to make you want to read the book, go see the show at the Guthrie Theatre. It is showing until November 6th and is absolutely outstanding.