The Bibliomaniacs of Book Row

No discussion of late, great American bookstores would be complete without bringing up New York's Book Row.

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It was far more than a single bookstore. It was New York’s ‘book district’—six blocks in lower Manhattan that contained over 36 bookstores. Today, Book Row is long gone. Only one store remains from its heyday (Strand Books, founded in 1927).

Back when it was crowded with booksellers, Book Row would have attracted anyone who loved reading. But it was irresistible to bibliophiles and bibliomanics. A bibliophile is anyone who loves the look, feel, and scent of books as much as their contents. Bibliomanics, however, are obsessed by books. They are fanatic hunters and compulsive buyers, usually purchasing more books than they can read in their lifetime.

In his 1944 article, “Book Row,” Don Samson gives a brief history of a bibliomaniac who haunted the area.

A shoe clerk from Brooklyn wandered into one of the secondhand bookshops on Book Row. He had never bought a book in his life, but picking up a musty volume, he liked the feel of it and bought it. The more he handled it, the more he liked it. He began buying books, and after a year his modest apartment was filled with them. Finally, his wife couldn’t take a bath because the tub was full of books. “You love your books more than you do me,” she wept, and threatened to go home to mother unless he got rid of them. He did. But within two weeks he was buying books again. His wife? She went home to mother.

There is something about books that provokes fascination and the odd compulsions that Samson saw in Book Row’s regulars:

A regular cash customer is the lady of the evening who collects the works of Marcel Proust. There is the Bowery bum who panhandles to buy books containing the word” hell,” books which he burns” to destroy the devil.” And there is the lawyer, internationally known, who collects books with uncut pages. “Virgin books,” he calls them.

Some people buy anything. Others, like the editor who has seventy-five copies of South Wind, will buy only copies of a single title. A collector who has all the dealers mystified is a banker who buys books in one series, Burt’s Home Library of popular classics. He tears the covers off and has the books and the covers restitched, switching titles and covers so that no book has the right title. Thus Alice in Wonderland becomes Black Beauty; The Divine Comedy, The Last Days of Pompeii, and so on. He boasts to the dealers, “You should see my library. It’s wonderful!”

The hangout for lovers of the unusual is a shop that specializes in strange books. Many are first attracted to the shop by the huge, black, plaster-of-Paris cat that crouches menacingly in the window; others are led here by their “vibrations.” An old German woman used to come regularly to buy books on the occult. One day she bought a book entitled “How to Make Yourself Invisible.”

“And she never came back,” says the dealer. “At least, we never saw her again.”

Book smellers are common. But they are hard to detect because, while running the nose along the bindings, they appear to be short-sightedly browsing. One smeller, a college professor, collects old, odoriferous volumes and wears the badge of his fraternity—a redrubbed nose. A well-known actress, a confessed smeller who never buys a book, is allowed the run of the shops because of the trade she attracts.

There are also book dusters. A good one can dust as many as fifty books in a single visit. He picks up a book, looks at the price marked in it, snaps it shut and, with a mighty huff and puff, blows the dust off before easing it back into place. Ironically, more men than women are dusters.

Odd behavior, I’ll grant you. An electronic book would never excite such mania, or even a semblance of this fascination. E-books will never hold the sensual appeal of what, for many Americans, is the “real thing”: a clean, hard-bound, octavo with clear, dark type on bright, clean pages. And books have several practical benefits. In a recent New York Times article, Sam Grobart wrote about the technical gadgets we won’t need in the future: desktop computers, digital cameras, and iPods. But he advised readers to keep their books. Compared to e-books, the real thing has “a terrific, high-resolution display,” durability, greater water-resistance, and “tremendous battery life.”

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Comments

  1. Hello from the future. Well, I adore old indi bookstores, and stumbled here during my browsing through articles. I belive that there is nothing like paper books, they simply dilever the right feeling. But sadly sometimes I don’t find the book I want in paper and be compalled to buy it on my devise ( e.g. Dovlatov’s books that I just wish to find them, and Apple Book app only afford three of them!).
    However it was lovely to know about such a place and about such people.

  2. I have always loved books, even before I could read. My mom and grandma would read little golden books to me all the time. So, even to this day, a trip to the store requires the purchase of a book or two as a reward for being a “good girl”! Reading is truly a pleasure. The look, the feel and the story can transport one to never imagined adventures and destinations. Once I own a book, I can never part with it. My idea of heaven is to have my very own large library with a cozy fireplace and a really cushy leather wingback chair or two in which to curl up and read as long as I want! An electronic book will never take the place of a really good hard back. What would I do if my batteries went dead and I’m hundreds of miles from a store? A good book in hand will never let you down.

  3. I will say that having a few books on my ipad when I travel really lightens my carry-on bag, but I love a well stocked library and the comfort of being surrounded by my favorite books. While a book audio book or an ebook is nice for travel, my first choice will always be a lovely hardback, thank you.

  4. Thanks for your comments, and the reminder of how deeply people are attached to their books.
    I’ve never met anyone who enjoyed reading who couldn’t name at least one, special book in his or her life. They can recall the days they spent reading it, and how it made them feel.
    When they talk about their favorite books, they usually mention a novel they read as an adult, but a surprising number tell of a book they had as a child, when they first felt the thrill of holding an entire world in their hands as they searched for a secluded place of escape. I wish I had those books still. And no, I’m not interested in an electronic version.

  5. I too, am a bibliophile. My mother and grandmother got me started. Mom gave me a book entitled, “Clara Barton, Army Wac” and Grandmother Laura gave me about 4 or 5 books from “Emilie Loring”. I spent many years collecting all 50 of her stories and just recently purchased the last elusive one. I found all of them in used book stores and then websites. I could not give up a good book for an e-reader for anything. The feel and smell are part of the whole experience of reading a book. Don’t ever stop producing books. I will always enjoy a good book to read.

  6. Yes, I am a bibliophile.
    Books are the true love of my life.
    I found this out after a while
    Of being married to my wife,
    Who did not understand at all,
    And whined to her mother of it.
    Momma in law then came to call.
    Both of them drove me to a fit.
    Time passes. A policeman comes.
    Where might my wife and her mom be?
    I say my wife is at her mum’s,
    But I don’t think he believes me.

    The closer the policeman looks,
    He finds both buried ‘neath my books.

  7. Book collectors are special. I know because I am one. I have just about (using a rough count based on the average number per shelf) 950 books shelved. Along with having haunted bookstores (and raised in NYC I remember book row and the Strand Book Store) since early childhood. Having taken old books that my parents had (they had stacks !!) and I belong to every book club available (I have my introductory specials from the Science Fiction Book Club dated 1952). I have bought old books on Ebay that I remembered from long ago and I have my mothers set of Mark Twain that was a special deal from the NY Times sometime in the 1930’s at about 15 cents a volume … one at a time. I could go on … but this article was one I truly related to. But I do NOT want ebooks. I love my computer and I have been messing with these since before Windows was born … but they are NOT BOOKS !!

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