« The Fallen Idol | Main | The Weather Man »

Pauper’s Books

Tue., February 21, 2006

A girl I know who lives in Jersey near the Passaic Falls had never heard of William Carlos Williams’ poetic ode to the city they’re in, Paterson, so I offered to lend her my copy. Tonight, while paging through it, I found this bookmark.

A bookmark from Pauper’s Books.

What an awesome bookstore that was. It was located in my college town of Bowling Green, Ohio, on Main Street, sandwiched between a bar frequented by underclassmen and the 24-hour diner they’d stumble to afterhours for alcohol-absorbing hamburgers. As a creative writing and journalism major at BGSU in the early-’90s, and because the Wood County Public Library was located conveniently just across the street, I spent entirely too much time at Pauper’s. I was surprised to learn years later that the place was still whisperingly referred to as an anarchist shop. I’ve been in anarchist bookstores before; they need an anarchist name (“Viva la Books!”), prints of Che hanging all over the place, and a battered card table in the back where subversives can meet, drink too much coffee and write manifestos. Now maybe Pauper’s sold a few rabble-rousing rags, but it had no additional anarchic features other than a sense of organization. We’re talking literally piles of books. That “drive you simply nuts” slogan on the Pauper’s bookmark isn’t only a cheesy clipart pun. Far in the back of the store, there was stack upon toppling stack of boxes and those flat boxes grapes are wholesold in, filled with books and reaching the ceiling.

You can get a small sense of this disarray looking at these photos I took during a trip back to Bowling Green in September 2002, although they don’t represent the store as packed as it once was. That day, as you can see from a sign in one of the photos, the merchandise was 50% off. The store was struggling to stay open then and was to close for good a year later.

Close-up of a bookshelf at Pauper's Books.

The length of Pauper's Books.

A pile of books Pauper's Books.

For a journalism class assignment, I had to write a business-related article and I chose to interview Pauper’s owner, Leo Schifferli, a skinny, gray-bearded fellow with Le Corbusier-like spectacles. He spoke slowly and with care and seemed to know everything about any book. I wasn’t surprised when he told me he didn’t have an inventory management system for his thousands of books. Not only that, he had only recently upgraded to the computerized version of Books in Print from microfilm, although I frequently saw his 386 on but unused and him still squinting at projected pieces of film that he shifted expertly under glass. But he didn’t need an inventory management system. He remembered where everything was in the store and he was willing to go the extra yard to seal a deal. When I asked him for that copy of Paterson he knew there wasn’t one in the store but offered to bring in the spare copy from his home collection, a handsome New Directions paperback edition from 1963.

He’s the one who told me about Amazons, the infamous faux-memoir Don DeLillo wrote pretending to be the first female NHL player. He offered to sell me a hardcover copy for a reasonable sum and I wish now I would have bought it, if not only because it’s been wholly out of print since its original run in 1980 and is considered one of the great contemporary books written under a pseudonym—in fact, Keith Gessen wrote an article about it in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, “In Search of the Great American Hockey Novel.” Leo was a well-read gentleman who could make recommendations of new writers or classics books based solely on the last few books you had read. Learning what I liked, he introduced me to Richard Yates, selling me Eleven Kinds of Loneliness for $4.75. It remains one of my favorite short story collections.

My college roommate Scott and I were surprised to find Leo at the door of our apartment late one night, moonlighting as a deliveryman for our favorite pizza parlor, Pisanello’s. He was wearing the same gray knit watchman’s cap he always wore in his unheated store and was making his way across town for his deliveries on his beat-up 10-speed. Was he delivering pizzas because his store wasn’t making enough money or because he wanted to get out and about more? With Leo, it was probably a bit of both; he had a weird, absent-minded sense of humor. He’s the one who told me, “Pocket Books are called that for a reason” and would sometimes have fire-sales of moldy pulp-fiction paperbacks from a tall metal spinner rack he’d put out on the sidewalk on sunny days. He was kind of hoping people entranced by the cool retro covers would steal them and he wouldn’t have to regret throwing them in the trash.

Tags: Books & Authors, Ohio, Photo, Scan | Comments have been closed.

On February 22, 2006 at 5:22 p.m., Andrea wrote:

Thanks for the BGSU flashbacks. I have to admit I didn't have the proper appreciation for Pauper's back then, but I do have more than one memory of that all night diner! ;)