What makes you good at your job?
Tenacity, patience and attention to detail.
After a week of work, are there times when a book is the last thing you want to look at?
After a week of work the last thing I want to look at is a spreadsheet. A book is always welcome.
Have you ever bought a book from Amazon?
No.
Have you ever folded over the corner of a page to keep your place?
In 65 years of being a reader, I must have at some point folded over the corner of a page. It is a practice I deplore.
Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
Reading Henry Threadgill’s “Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music” was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I created for myself. Threadgill, a composer and multi-instrumentalist, is one of the most significant musical creators of the past 40 years. As I read his memoir I listened in chronological order to the nearly 40 albums that he has recorded since 1975. This took about 12 weeks. The interaction between reading and listening gave me a much deeper appreciation of the writer, musician and the music.
What books are on your night stand?
“Dark Soil,” edited by Angie Sijun Lou, with stories by Karen Tei Yamashita; “Exhibit,” R.O. Kwon; “Weird Black Girls,” Elwin Cotman; “Colored Television,” Danzy Senna; “Lost Writings: Two Novels,” Mina Loy; “Any Day Now: Toward a Black Aesthetic,” Larry Neal; “The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America,” Sara B. Franklin; “The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore,” Evan Friss; “No Edges: Swahili Stories”; “American Abductions,” Mauro Javier Cárdenas; “Catalina,” Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.
What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?
Joseph Tom Burgess’ “Knots, Ties and Splices.” One of the skills I never mastered as a Boy Scout.
What kind of reader were you as a child?
Enthusiastic, undisciplined. My favorite book was Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows.”
What’s the last great book you read?
Hari Kunzru is one of my favorite writers. His most recent novel, “Blue Ruin,” is the concluding book in a series that began with “White Tears,” followed by “Red Pill.” Kunzru’s explorations of race, class, artistic creation and privilege in contemporary society are deeply enthralling.
Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time?
“Divine Days,” by Leon Forrest, is an extraordinary polyphonic novel often compared to Joyce’s “Ulysses.” In my mind the more accurate comparison is to Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts, conducted by Butch Morris (a performance that never actually occurred, but if I could create my own ideal performances it would be No. 1 on my list).
In “Reading the Room” you write that the shelving at City Lights is meant to encourage a “shimmering conversation.” How?
In some cases, it is very intentional and sometimes it is by serendipity. Intentionality is reflected in unique section categories, such as commodity aesthetics, topographies and somologistics.
Serendipity is reflected in alphabetical coincidence. In one of our contemporary literature sections, Julie Otsuka, Helen Oyeyemi and Ruth Ozeki find themselves immediately adjacent to each other. We take advantage of that by facing their titles out.
What’s the one change you’ve made at the store that you’d consider your crowning achievement?
The introduction of hardcovers. As a paperback-only store, we were not able to feature the early work of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Don DeLillo, Salman Rushdie, Edward Said and others in hardcover. We had to wait typically 12 months before a paperback edition arrived. I argued that we were following and not shaping literary culture in the same way that City Lights publishing was doing. So we started carrying hardbacks. The impact was immediate.
You write that “this is one of the richest and most rewarding times to be a reader of literature.” Why?
In the past two decades we have seen the emergence of a brilliant cohort of authors: Colson Whitehead, Victor LaValle, Ayana Mathis, Elaine Castillo, Tommy Orange. And the literary progeny of Ishmael Reed, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Joy Harjo, Ana Castillo, Jessica Hagedorn, Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany, to name a few.
Parallel to this we have seen a litany of exciting international literature being translated and published by presses like Dalkey Archive, Open Letter, Deep Vellum, Two Lines and Dorothy, a publishing project. The last two Nobel Prizes in Literature have been published in the United States by independent presses: Seven Stories (Annie Ernaux) and Transit Books (Jon Fosse). Literary riches await curious readers in their local independent bookstore.
Why, then, do so many people say books don’t matter the way they once did?
My response is very parochial. At City Lights we see a growing enthusiasm, particularly among younger readers (from my perspective, anyone under 40), for printed matter.
You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers do you invite?
I would invite editor/publishers whose work helped shape City Lights: Blanche Knopf, Drenka Willen, Glenn Thompson, Toni Morrison (in her role as editor) and Sonny Mehta.
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