WISE MEN FISHED THERE

When I went to work in New York City in the 1980s, my office was only a short walk from the Gotham Book Mart. Since that time, I've never been far from it for long.

At first glance, the Gotham Book Mart didn't look very different from other successful used book stores: It was dim and a little dingy and stuffed with books, books, books.

It was in the details that the bookstore came alive for me and the many visitors I brought there: the sign that said Wise Men Fish Here; the shelves devoted to Henry Miller and Beat writers; the illustrated envelopes and other Edward Gorey curiosities displayed upstairs; the photographs of the many literary greats with some connection to the bookstore; the handouts about the history of the bookstore and its founder, Frances Steloff, who bravely sold Miller's novels when they were banned in the United States. And of course there were the finds, such as my copy of The Tibetan Book of the Dead stamped "From the Library of ANAIS NIN AND IAN HUGO" and marked down from $6.95 to $3.00. And then there was the possibility that Steloff herself might be there, or that one might bump into an author. In the later years of the bookstore it was home to a cat named Pynchon; perhaps, during one of my visits, I rubbed elbows with another cat named Pynchon.

Around the same period that Coliseum Books relocated to the Bryant Park area before meeting its demise, the Gotham Book Mart moved from 47th Street to an attractive new home on 46th Street. But it was only a waystation to oblivion courtesy of cosmetics billionaire Leonard Lauder and real estate developer Edmondo Schwartz, who have apparently been very secretive about "saving" the bookstore, closing it down due to non-payment of rent, and then taking possession of its books through a sudden auction that seems to have been rigged in their favor. At first, Gotham Book Mart owner Andreas Brown seemed grateful to Lauder and Schwartz for providing the store with a fancy new home, but at the moment and from a distance, Lauder and Schwartz seem to have been pretty ruthless in this dealing. Brown reportedly left the auction early, with tears in his eyes.

The debacle makes me think of a poem called "The Host" from Samuel Menashe's collection The Niche Narrows.

I am haunted
Out of my house
Gaunt, dispossessed
By the homeless dead
These ghosts, guests
Have bled me white
No marrow is left
In the bone they bite

I know this poem because of the Gotham Book Mart. One of the last times I was there I had finally snagged a hard-to-find book about Luis Buñuel when I got into a conversation with a lovely saleswoman and Menashe, who told me about serving in World War II and gave me a personal reading from The Niche Narrows in a successful effort to sell it to me. I admit I love the prices at Amazon, but it's no substitute for that type of bookstore encounter, which is an increasingly rare experience.