Bookselling
Staff -- 7/17/00
To Russia With Love | The Western States Book Awards
Where There's Smoke
To Russia With Love
Mary Duncan's "carry on" inventory keeps her Moscow store, Shakespeare & Co., stocked
 | Mary Duncan has nothing to
declare--at Customs. |
Mary Arrives Tomorrow" reads the hastily scribbled sign on the bookstore door, and everybody knows what that means. Diminutive Mary Duncan is flying into Moscow with three large valises chock full of books--some 210 pounds worth of American goodies, some on special order, most of them simply her choices among the best the U.S. has to offer. She has picked the friendly airline that lets her by with three heavy bags on each of her six to eight yearly flights, and once again Russian Customs will let her walk boldly through the nothing-to-declare green line.
Meet Mary Duncan, whose Shakespeare & Company bookshop is now the Russian capital's best choice for American books and, consequently, a favorite with Russian writers and intellectuals as well as simple citizens who want to keep up with the American version of the world language. The saga of this native of San Diego, a professor at San Diego State University, began a dozen years ago, when she was invited to the old U.S.S.R. as a specialist on children and war to co-chair a Soviet-American conference on terrorism. There she met Yuri, a handsome young architect whom she married a year later. That's how the commuting began.
She would always carry her own new books to read for pleasure or work--and found that her little bundle of books from the U.S. was the only game in town. At first she'd trade titles with her guests at their Moscow dinner parties; that led to the idea of opening a bookstore. With a translator-aide she visited all the existing shops carrying foreign-language books, hoping to take one of them over. From the start she had a name--Shakespeare & Co., borrowed from James Joyce's publisher Sylvia Beach, via Paris bookseller George Whitman.
Eventually she was lured into what she calls "a rat-infested basement" in a large residential complex a little more than a mile from the Kremlin on Novokuznetsky Pereulok, just around the corner from Ad-Marginum Books, owned by her escort, Alexander (Sacha) Ivanov, also in a spot that was once a rat-infested basement. She opened on April 1, 1996--"on April Fool's Day, because everybody said we were fools to do it," Duncan told PW. But "everybody" showed up at the launching party, including members of the diplomatic corps. At the time, the chief competition was the large Zwemmers store. Another book retailer had lasted only two months because the local mafia wouldn't let them open their café without paying unaffordable tribute. The previous store's misfortune was Mary's fortune; she was able to take the entire stock of books--amounting to some $30,000 at list price--on consignment, plus more than 1,000 used books.
Today the competition includes the former Zwemmers, now called English Books, most of whose stock is of British origin. Similarly--and appropriately--the store called Anglia specializes in British titles. An American bookstore opened in 1998 but closed soon after, with the collapse of the ruble.
Mary Duncan's Shakespeare & Co. offers a little more than 500 square feet of selling space, another 325 square feet for the obligatory lounge with comfortable sofas and a refrigerator stocked with wine, vodka and soft drinks. There is also a New Yorker corner, with current issues she has hand-carried in (as well as recent copies of the New York Review of Books). She also manages to tote at least 10 pounds of Starbucks coffee on each journey. "Theoretically we charge a buck a cup, but often it's free to our friends like Yevgeny Yevtushenko." (The peripatetic p t Yevtushenko mostly browses, but he has also given one of his famed recitals to the store's patrons.)
Shakespeare & Co. is an informal store. Although it stocks approximately 10,000 books, the staff d sn't use a computer and there isn't even a cash register (just an adding machine and a drawer for coins and bills). Overhead? Rent, plus salaries for her four to five part-timers, come to $18 a day. (Sacha, from his shop round the corner, also watches over Shakespeare & Co. for her.)
While American classics and even Russian classics that have been translated into English can be gotten from some local Moscow distributors--Mary knows three good ones--all the latest and best books are the ones she brings over herself. "No one in Russia has the books we have!" she proudly stated. While there is a strong demand for the latest Don DeLillo, there is also a great interest in backlist Kurt Vonnegut--a true favorite among Russian readers. Backlist titles by John Fowles, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Doris Lessing, John le Carre and Charles Bukowski are also favorites.
She gets her new books from Ingram. "We're small, but they treat us like kings," she said, "with a special nod to Terrence Heeney of Ingram International." Up to a third of her business comes from special orders--and sometimes they are very special indeed. Some of the orders reach her while she's back home teaching at San Diego State--via e-mail. She also scours local resources in San Diego, even if the result brings no profit. When her shop opened, about one customer in four was Russian; now Russians outnumber native English speakers.
Her pricing system is highly unusual--a markup of 20%-25% over the cover price, according to weight (since weight is a major consideration to this frequent flyer). If she had to ship her books via normal channels, she would have to charge double the original list. Another consideration: the competition's prices. Her staff scouts other stores to make sure her prices remain lower than theirs.
She gives much care to her stock of used books; hers is the only English-language store that carries them. She's been profitable from the first day (thanks to the bonanza of those books on consignment, and the fact that there are no middlemen in her business).
According to partner Sacha, it has been "a typical mom-and-pop operation." And mom--Professor Mary R. Duncan, Ph.D., that is--is sorely missed when she's not around. After weeks of the anxious question, "When is Mary coming?" Mary arrives, and it's a celebration. Someone brings a bottle of wine, or vodka, "to the only store in the world where you can get tipsy while browsing," she told PW.
There have been no censorship problems, even when she displays a book criticizing, say, Russian policy on Chechnya. She even brought in 25 copies of a single title, Lies, Sex and Libel in the New Russia by Mark Ames and Matt Tabbai (Grove). Nor have there been problems with the local mafia. But she actually has a volunteer protector--a courtly, apparently powerful gentleman who adores Vonnegut and who told her how much he admires what she is doing. "Have you had any problems?" he asked her. "No," she replied. "Well, if anybody d s bother you--show him one of these," he said, giving her a pack of his business cards. So far she has given out three of them.
--Herbert R. Lottman
The Western States Book Awards were presented June 13 in San Francisco. Winners, pictured left to right, were: Lawrence Coates, whose The Blossom Festival (Univ. of Nevada Press) won the fiction award; Primus St. John, who received the award in p try for Communion (Copper Canyon); Simon Ortiz, p t and storyteller, who was given the Lifetime Achievement Award; and nonfiction winner William Debuys, for Salt Dreams (Univ, of New Mexico Press). WESTAF, dedicated to preserving and advancing the arts in the West, has presented awards since 1984 for books written and published in the West.
Where There's Smoke...
Sidewalk traffic was diverted by the fire truck
Where there are smokejumpers, there's sure to be a fire truck, or so we are led to believe. Bookselling's latest alarming publicity bid appeared with bells and whistles at 23rd Avenue Books, Portland, Ore., on June 19. The book Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir of Fighting Wildfire (Harcourt) got a creative tour sendoff by its author, Murry A. Taylor. Of course, Taylor, a veteran smokejumper, fights forest fires by parachuting in, and so would never actually use a fire truck in his work, but details... details.
Taylor d s have friends who fight fire on the ground, and they offered the truck. A large group of local forest fire-fighters was also on hand to cheer Taylor on, create a spectacle and buy his book. Taylor is completing a tour of the West Coast that will end at Fairbanks, Alaska, the location of a smokejumpers' headquarters.
--Barbara R ther
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