The City of Books

Sometimes, going somewhere once is enough, or, if not enough, must suffice: The Principal’s office, the transmission repair shop and Florida all come to mind. After all, whether time is linearly infinite or circular or has some weird quantum quality we cannot understand, our limited run wears out after a while, and we must quit the scene. However much we relish the fresh loaves at that bakery in Provence or the sunset salute at Key West or the view of the Grand Canyon, we can’t always return, because our limited lifespan hems us in with ironclad (although undefined) boundaries. We can’t go home again: Our rooms are inhabited by strangers or Mom’s doll collection. People we once knew have moved or passed beyond our knowing. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, never will we see that face in god’s sweet world again. And, even if we have the opportunity, will we return somewhere or will we decide to see something new in this world of almost limitless wonder?

Still, when we can, most of us return to some favorite haunt. How many more times will I see Chaco Canyon, the vast skies of New Mexico or any other scenes under these western skies? How many more times will I see the people who mean more than any of the places on the planet?

Last year The Counselor and I flew north, returning to Oregon after a five year absence. On our trip we saw new swaths of stunning scenery along the coast and in the mountains and we visited people I’ve known, literally, my entire lifetime. And in downtown Portland, at the corner of Burnside and 10th, we returned to Powell’s City of Books, reputedly the world’s largest bookstore.

What an excellent name. Not the World or Galaxy or Universe of Books — too grandiose — but a city with its own labyrinthine streets and corridors and alleys: Powell’s occupies an entire city block, containing room upon room stacked four floors high, maybe a mile or more of shelves, and PACKED with people: reading, browsing, searching. How many books on those shelves? More than a million. Yes, you can probably go online to Amazon and find nearly every book that Powell’s has on its shelves and buy it. But you can’t visit Amazon. You can’t stroll down endless corridors lined with hundreds of thousands of books and page through them. Amazon isn’t a place. Powell’s City of Books is real, and you can become a citizen of the City of Books (although you can also shop online from them).

Like Amazon’s virtual world, but unlike many other real places, Powell’s shelves are stocked with new AND used copies of books, side by side. Do you want a used paperback of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, or do you want to buy a new edition? Go to the Blue Room (literature, classics, drama, poetry, etc.) and check the shelves. You can flip through the used copies and decide if you want the paperback with the inane notes in ballpoint from some college freshman, the well-worn but unmarked copy, or a pristine new hardcover edition. This, friends, is as close as one comes to the bibliophilic heaven. It’s not infinite (as we assume heaven’s own bookstore must be), but it’s as good as it gets. Powell’s falls short of infinitude. I was unable to find the copy of A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary they listed on their website when I checked the shelves.

While quantity doesn’t equal quality, Powell’s has a large staff of professionals who know their way around the complex passages of this vast city. They will take you to the book you’re seeking. Do you want the illustrated version of Watership Down? No, it’s not in children’s books (Rose Room); it’s in fantasy (Gold Room). The staff know this sort of arcana off the top of their heads. Good libraries have librarians with this degree of familiarity with the collection, but it’s rare to find it in a retail establishment on this scale.

Where do all these books come from? The new books, of course, come from publishers, and Powell’s stocks hundreds of thousands (hundreds of thousands!) of new books, and not just best sellers. There are new editions of books on art, history, philosophy, science and fiction on a scale that’s hard to compare with any store you’ve ever visited. Next to them, on the same shelf, are used copies that Powell’s has acquired. On an average day, Powell’s buys about 3,000 used books. They buy, inventory, price  and shelve them, as described above in my Virginia Woolf example. It’s a massive enterprise.

Thinking about those 3,000 used books streaming into the place every day made me think about something. Knowing, as we do, some longtime Powell’s employees, I asked if some of those books aren’t likely from some string of regulars who haunt thrift stores, yard sales, antique malls and so forth, looking for hard-to-find books they know they can turn a profit on by reselling to Powell’s. Absolutely, I learned. There is, indeed, a pool of regulars who show up again and again. In Powell’s lingo they’re referred to as “scouts.” I can imagine the allure: Could one scan through the endless shelves of books at Goodwill or the Our Lady of Perpetual Redemption thrift store fast enough, knowledgeably enough, to pluck out the few books priced at fifty cents or a dollar that would fetch some worthwhile multiple of that price from the Powell’s buyer? It could be a hobby, a way to occupy one’s retirement, or it could become an obsession. Could one seek out previously untouched caches, say in Spokane or Boise or Eureka, load them into the van (you’d need a van, at least) and drive them to Portland, realizing enough money to cover the cost of gas? As I said: obsession. Someone probably does it, but they have to be extremely good at it. I don’t know what percentage of the original retail price Powell’s pays, but there would be some harsh economic realities to reckon with.

No, I’m happy to have been to Powell’s twice, and my luggage was certainly heavier coming home thanks to the treasure I found there on both my visits. Will I return? There’s a lot to see elsewhere under western skies, but there’s still that elusive copy of the Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary out there, somewhere.

© copyright Brad Nixon 2015, 2017