People 'Will Miss This': Another Book Store Closes

It's always been impossible for me to be depressed once I'm inside a bookstore. Even if the titles they always put near the entrance should come with a free supply of Abilify and Klonopin.

You know, the latest memoirs from egregiously-unnecessary folks like Tatum O'Neal, Chelsea Handler and Glenn Beck, whose latest book seems to have all the subtlety and patriotic sentiments of "The Turner Diaries."

But despite these challenges to my usually sunny nature (kidding!), I've always loved the bookstore. The literature, the calendars, the magazines that publish my work. Just recently, I was able to go to one of these joints and buy a copy of Inked Magazine, with a half-naked picture of Kat Von D on the cover. I proudly told the clerk: 'It's okay. I have a piece in here!' 

Even if I drooled over the photos for a fortnight until I actually read it.

But yesterday, I was at Waldenbooks, at the Rye Ridge Shopping Center and my heart grew very heavy. After a stay-of-execution, they are going out of business. Where will I find my work now? Aside from, say, The Romantic Depot, in Nyack?

And what about you?

The images tell it all. Stickers pasted to books that say "20% off." Signs that read "All Sales Final." Old people, with not much to do, looking around at one less place where they can kill time. Yes, I include myself among them. Pretty soon, there will be no place around here to buy a copy of Dante's "Inferno," or "Huckleberry Finn." Or that also has a cool comic rack where you can find out what kind of fix The Dark Knight is in this month.

"We got killed by Amazon," said a young bespectacled man behind the counter. "They lowball us all the time. Okay, so people can buy books cheaper over The Net. I understand. But they'll miss this."

He nodded at people standing together, laughing, discussing, arguing. It's something we use to call 'human interaction' before life went from actual to virtual. 

This remarkably cheerful kid (who's probably got his own stash of Abilify) also reminded me that this was happening, because Waldenbooks was owned by Borders, which itself has gone bankrupt. Taking Waldenbooks down with it. 

Then, the young man added the chilling words:

"It's all in the hands of a liquidation company now."

This brought up frightening images of Berlin in the '30s, so I decided not to pursue the topic.

Instead, I did what I do so well. I milled around. Grabbed myself a copy of "David Copperfield," bought a SPIN Magazine (I have a review in there), looked at the generic reading glasses. Read strange little titles like "More Sex Is Safer Sex." Thumbed through picture books of rock stars, movie stars, athletes.

In other words, a typically-aimless, lovely afternoon at Waldenbooks.

Mom's wandered in with their Y.A.-loving kids, also looking understandably distraught. They knew that telling their little ones to 'Go look it up and order it,' just won't have the same ring as 'Who wants to go the bookstore?'

Okay, so there's a great place to buy your books in Rye. And if you're on a summer vacation, you'll undoubtedly drive through some nondescript little town with a good bookstore, too. That has happened to me. And it's sweet. But forgive me if I feel like an old gunfighter in a Sam Peckinpah movie. You know, who's just ridden into town on a his palomino, gets off it and is nearly run down by that newfangled invention: the 'horseless carriage.'

Okay, the landscape I love is changing. Change is at the heart of life. Ask the Dalai Lama or David Bowie. I agree. Doesn't mean I have to like it, though.

Of course, as I looked at a row of new titles on my way out, I felt a spark of optimism. You would, too, if you saw the latest reads by Ashley Judd and Bristol Palin, who just entered the Guinness Book of Records as the first girl to write a book without actually having read one. When they close Waldenbooks, that will mean one less place where I'll have to hear about how some celeb blames hip hop for society's troubles, or what a dang cool thing it is to become pregnant at 18.

Or some gal trying to rationalize why they were stupid enough to marry Charlie Sheen. That one is in three volumes, I think.

I held the door for a sad-looking young mom and her little daughter. 

"Welcome to the end of the world," I said, walking out. "But at least no more work from Jenna Jameson."

"Well, that's something, anyway," she said.

I got in my car and drove away.