Banyen Books and Sound presents:
Free Livestream Discussion with
Stephen Jenkinson on his new book
Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart’s Work.
Wednesday Sept. 10th
12 noon PT (60 mins)
Broadcast from Vancouver, BC
Life is rarely better than when there’s a little money in the pocket, a little time at hand, and an afternoon in a small independent book store. Okay, maybe all of that in a used bookstore. Maybe it’s a draw. But together they are a steep standard by which to live out those moments of leisure granted you by faulty planning or by fate.
It’s an acreage of wonder and mystification. There are all of those unsuspected considerations, adorations, contentions, exhortations on the shelves. But that’s not all. This is what some people are doing with their retail convictions! That is the stuff of awe.
I go at once to the poetry section. Not every book store has one, but most throw the poets a bone. It’s often the only place the poets make an appearance in the marketplace. I hold an unknown, unsuspected, slim book of poetry, then carry it around for a while, waiting to see whether it stakes a claim upon me. It often does. A book that slim doesn’t have time or space for arguing. It has to get to the holy business pretty quickly.
Upon cashing out, the clerk will often give me a nod of affirmation for spending time and money in the poetry section, knowing there are plenty of section contenders promising more bang. We’re a bit of a confederation.
When my first book came out I happened to be in Montreal, a city with a lot of street cool. I trolled the place until I found a bookstore. I didn’t know how the industry worked then. I figured your book ended up almost everywhere, by magic. So I walked in and started scanning the place for Money and the Soul’s Desires. Ah, the naivety of the moment. I cringe now. Unable to locate the thing, I took myself to the counter and asked after it. The woman looked it up, then said, “Nope. We don’t have it. We could order it for you.” Which I gather now is code for “Won’t be carrying it.” I and my love for bookstores survived that course correction, and we’re doing well.
The only thing I can imagine being somehow more compelling than all of this is walking into that kind of bookstore and seeing a small stack of a book with my name on it, a painfully expensive limited run of hand cranked letterpress books. It’s wildly self-congratulatory and as wildly unlikely, and I won’t mind much if it doesn’t happen. But that would be something: a small, grainy, tough little allegation.
I was on tour with Nights of Grief and Mystery. We had a rare off day, and in my wanderings in town found a small book store, new and used. Up to the poetry section I went. Wow. There was a copy of Seamus Heaney’s Wintering Out, which I didn’t have. Checked the price: five dollars. A bonus day. Later that evening in the hotel room, trying to come down from the show, I remembered the book. Opened to the title page. Couldn’t believe my eyes. Seamus Heaney’s signature in beautiful fountain pen script. A bookstore treasure.
It might be that bookstores are going the way of the dodo. A lot of people find reading to be a lot of work, or would rather be listening, or multitasking. The odds may not favour this old institution.
For now, then, here’s to those breathing the old air of small independent bookstores, the owners and workers and patrons. They’re doing our jittery democracies a huge service. And most of our writers get a quiet amen from them, and something like camaraderie, and reasons to work.
Stephen Jenkinson
Founder of Orphan Wisdom
