"We want the neighbors to read."
Locating book-mavens Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone at the labyrinthine Strand used bookstore on 12th Street in Manhattan is a snap -- the slender, energetic and well-coiffed couple stand out from the solitary oddballs and tweedy bibliomaniacs prowling the aisles.
"People have this image of book collectors -- very wealthy, walrus mustaches," says Nancy. The Goldstones, who recently moved from Pittsfield, Mass., a dying industrial town, to tony Westport, Conn., are the perfect foil to the eccentricities of the used and rare book trade, a world that comes hilariously to life in their two memoirs of book collecting, Used and Rare (St. Martin's, 1997) and Slightly Chipped: Footnotes in Booklore (St. Martin's).
To see the Goldstones in action, PW has arranged to start at the Strand, move on to the Morgan Library and then visit two book dealers profiled in Slightly Chipped. Covering an auction at Sotheby's, the Edgar awards and a pilgrimage to the home of A.S.W. Rosenbach, the century's greatest dealer, Slightly Chipped is also a high-spirited inquiry into the issues raised by the books its authors encounter, from the culture of rebel slaves in 19th-century Jamaica to the bedroom-hopping antics of Bloomsbury authors.
As we ascend the stairs to the rare books room, Larry and Nancy are already taking turns setting each other up for punch lines with the ease of a seasoned vaudeville team. But once we get into the shop, it becomes clear that Larry is the one who, according to Used and Rare, "talks all the time." Nancy intervenes with commentary, only occasionally directing the conversation.
The Goldstones came to the world of used and rare books relatively recently, giving them the advantage of a fresh perspective. Neither considered collecting until, as documented in Used and Rare, Nancy went all out several years ago to find a perfect copy of War and Peace for Larry's birthday.
They blush and demur when asked how they got together, but admit that when they met, both worked on Wall Street. Even then, they harbored ambitions to break into print. The career transition was no walk in the park. "When I was sending my first book out," says Larry, "I got a call from an editor at a major house, asking if I would be free for lunch. I met him at an upscale restaurant, and his first questions was, 'What did you do before you started writing?' I told him I'd been in academia and worked on Wall Street. He said, 'Why don't you try them again?' I retorted, 'Maybe you don't like my book, but art is subjective.' But he had the last word: 'No, your book is objectively bad.'" Larry later heard a rumor that the editor was testing him to see if he had the stuff to make it.
The novel, Rights, a satire on cynical self-promotion in New York City racial politics was eventually published by Martin Shepard at the Permanent Press in 1994 and went on to win a New American Writing award.
As the author of what he terms "social novels," Larry feels at a particular disadvantage in today's market-conscious publishing industry. "One editor -- whose work I generally respect -- told me that they couldn't sell my novel unless I put rich people in it. I asked her, 'What would you tell Steinbeck if he came in here with Grapes of Wrath?'" The editor shot back: "I'd tell him to put rich people in it."
Nancy's first book, a memoir explaining how she came to be the head of foreign exchange options trading for Marine Midland Bank on Wall Street by age 27, was easier to place. Having wangled an appointment with an editor, she brought in the first 80 pages. "I said, 'This is about a woman trading on Wall Street' -- she looks completely blank, but I'm prepared -- 'trading, like Ivan B sky' -- blank -- 'oh, c'mon, you've heard of Ivan B sky, he's the number one thing in the paper, they've fined him $200 million.' So then I said, 'Well, this is about a woman making it in business' and I walked out, thinking, 'This is over,' and she called the next day and bought the book." Trading Up: Surviving Success as a Woman Trader on Wall Street was published by Dutton in 1988.
Nancy went on to author Bad Business, a satirical novel about a young woman working on an ad campaign for the U.S. Treasury Department and getting tangled up in finance and politics (Faber &Faber, 1990), and two mysteries, Mommy and the Money (1997) and Mommy and the Murder (1995). Both were published by HarperCollins. Larry's second novel, Offline, a dystopian cyber-thriller set in 2020, came out from St. Martin's last year, and his third, based on his observations, in Pittsfield, of the fate of a company town when the company closes down, is under contract to Hungry Mind Press.
Although the Goldstones may not have attained the disheveled, bleary-eyed look of inveterate bookhounds, there's no denying that they're committed collectors. "This one's only $12," says Nancy holding up a copy of The Twenties by Edmund Wilson. "And which of these should I get?" she asks Larry, holding up two copies of an Elizabeth Bowen story collection. "This one has a great spine, it'll look better on the shelf. But this one has a much nicer cover... " Larry ponders this dilemma, and then heads off to find an old edition of a Eugene O'Neill play.
After they make their purchases, we take a brisk walk uptown to view exhibits on the history of book binding and on Edgar Allan P at the Morgan Library. Lunching at the library's restaurant, the Goldstones describe their collaborative methods. Before their coauthored books, they edited for each other, and, says Larry, "we learned to be merciless." For their collaborations, they don't alternate chapters, or have one person draft and the other edit. Instead, they actually sit down together in front of a computer. One dictates while the other types and revises simultaneously. Their writing sessions -- which begin when their young daughter leaves for school -- can be contentious; Larry once threatened to hurl a computer at Nancy. Still, they can always find common ground; as Larry puts it, they share a "serious, passionate vision."
The Goldstones see book collecting primarily as a way to surround oneself with ideas. Both regret the absence of libraries from their childhood homes, and see their collection as a legacy for -- and, they hope, a formative influence on -- their daughter. And they proselytize happily, declaring, "We want the neighbors to read!" Their zestful anecdotes about bizarre bookshop encounters, they concede, may sometimes seem "goofy." But by keeping things light, they hope to intrigue people about books they've loved -- Evan S. Connell's Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge, say, or Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt.
Their next project, more openly serious, resulted from their volunteer work leading children's reading groups at their local library. Prompted by teachers they consulted to rely on "Goosebumps or Slime," they were "appalled." So they selected serious children's books, even one on Lincoln that included the text of the Gettysburg address. "The response was overwhelming," says Nancy. In their book, the Goldstones will argue that children develop into lifelong readers -- and careful, critically minded ones -- when they are made to think by reading assignments.
They are also planning a third book on their adventures in the book trade, to be called Boxed Set. They will make trips to London, and to Texas to investigate the collections of the Harry Ransom Library at the University of Texas at Austin and the gigantic store, Booked Up, that Larry McMurtry has made the cornerstone of a "book-town" like Hay-on-Wye in his hometown, Arthur City.
Rating the Booksellers
The Goldstones began Used and Rare thinking that an article on book collecting might cover the costs of a book-shopping spree. Circumstances have improved, and they clearly relish giving deserving book shops much-needed publicity. Recently, Larry recalls, a dealer, normally curt with his customers, took them out to dinner. They tried to split the bill, but he would hear nothing of it. However, he afterwards told Larry, sotto voce, "Consider this a bribe."
We wrap up our day with visits to two bookshops profiled in Slightly Chipped. The first, catering to high-end collectors and Hollywood celebrities, is James Cummins Bookseller, an oasis of beautifully bound books on sun-dappled shelves seven floors above Madison Avenue. As we head up to the shop, Nancy and Larry repeatedly assure each other that they won't be buying anything; the prices, though fair, are simply too high. Nonetheless, once inside, Larry quite reluctantly returns an illustrated copy of Alice in Wonderland, tagged at $500, to the shelf. Nancy enthuses: "Look at this place! It's amazing. Collectors need places like this, just so they can see how a library should be."
In Slightly Chipped, the Goldstones warn that the Internet could easily destroy book collecting. As Internet dealing becomes cheaper and cheaper, the overhead required to run a shop will simply become untenable. As shops close down, they suggest, fewer and fewer people will be drawn into collecting, because they won't learn the lore of the book trade or experience the physical pleasures of the books. Joining us on the couches in the middle of his shop, Jim Cummins disagrees, noting that the Net has increased his business by 60%, and brought in a whole new group of customers. He argues that there will always be libraries to serve as training grounds for budding young collectors.
Behind schedule, we rush off to meet Otto Penzler, founder of the Mysterious Bookshop (and the Mysterious Press). It's a small, cavelike boutique filled with pocket-size paperbacks. But Nancy and Larry hurry to the spiral staircase in the back of the room. As befits a mystery shop, the virtues of the store are not immediately apparent. Upstairs, a middle-aged woman sits in the back of the room, calmly signing piles of books. "Hey," Nancy whispers, poking her interviewer in the ribs. "That's Anne Perry. The writer who killed her mom." Our sense of the macabre increases, even if the mom in question actually belonged to Perry's best friend.
When an employee understands that we have an appointment with Penzler, doors swing open for us and we find ourselves entering a shrine. Penzler's office, appointed in tastefully noirish tones, is huge, and every inch of wall space is covered with shelves of first edition mysteries.
Penzler, a small, dapper man with white hair, a neat beard and intense, melancholy eyes, enters the room. It holds only a fraction of his collection, he says. He has collected every mystery published in the U.S. since the '60s, and many other choice volumes. Partly because storage space has become a headache, he plans to quit collecting in 2000.
Larry fingers a protective library box labeled "Dickens, Bleak House." "Is it?" he asks. Nodding, Penzler confirms, "Yes, Bleak House in parts," adding, "It is a mystery, after all." The original serial publication of their favorite Dickens is the subject of longstanding collector's lust for the Goldstones. Their most expensive purchase to date has been $700 for a later, two-volume illustrated edition of Bleak House. They both let out little sighs.
On the way out, the Goldstones, unable to resist, purchase one of Penzler's famed collector's reprints, muttering to each other about what a good deal it is. Despite protestations that their real passion is for ideas, it is hard to imagine two people more inspired by books as physical objects and objects of desire. (They nod in agreement when Penzler opines that a collector has to be a reader -- but shouldn't read his "best copy" of a book.) Slightly Chipped stands out for capturing the magic of book collecting, the thin line between the pleasure of acquiring books and the pleasure of reading them.
Boulukos will begin teaching English at Oberlin College in the fall.
