Here’s the supersecret method I use to determine if a bookstore is
any good: Find the fiction section, locate the Es, and look for Stanley
Elkin. If a bookstore carries Elkin’s novels, it’s a sign of all-around
quality. Elkin, who died in 1995, was a masterful writer with a playful
love of language that few authors this side of Nabokov could
match—it’s a good bet that almost every literary author you
admire has read and loved Stanley Elkin’s fiction.
But many bookstores don’t carry Elkin’s novels because they’re
obscure and they don’t sell—you’d be lucky to have one stolen
every other year, compared to perennial sellers like Kerouac. Granted,
any bookstore can order Elkin’s books—the nonprofit Dalkey
Archive Press keeps them all in print, supposedly forever—but so
can I, from my laptop, on my couch. A bookstore that carries Stanley
Elkin has more than good taste; it has a commitment to its stock and a
willingness to shelve excellent books that don’t pay for their own real
estate.
There is absolutely no trace of Stanley Elkin in the brand-new,
26,368-square-foot “Concept Borders” that just opened in the new
Westfield Southcenter Mall, a behemoth temple to commerce that finished
extensive remodeling a few weeks ago.
The Concept Borders looks like pretty much any other Borders, only
bigger, and with more stuff. Tim Anderson, Borders’ zone director for
the West Coast, gives me and a reporter from Kent a media tour of the
new store. Anderson says that these Borders, which are supposed to
combine the “online experience with the retail experience,” are “the
future of this company.” Anderson and a team of Borders brass lead the
two of us around the store for about an hour and a half, detailing
their “concepts” and their hope for the future.
Unfortunately, the future for Borders is about five years ago for
everyone else. The concept behind this Concept Borders? Computers, so
customers can customize things: Anderson shows us kiosks where
customers can burn mix CDs from an online database or buy music to
download onto their (non-iPod or Zune) MP3 players. He shows us
computers reserved for looking up and printing recipes, computers for
making travel plans, and computers for composing photo albums on
Shutterfly (although you can’t upload photos onto Borders’ computers).
Basically, it’s a crappy version of the internet, only with a lot of
annoying restrictions.
Borders seems to be banking on the continued computer illiteracy of
its older consumers. As we tour the new electronics section, Anderson
admits that these customizing options are “more appealing to the
baby-boomer demographic” and other people who “need a friendly face” to
help them with technology. At first, this seems like a doomed
proposition, but over the course of the media tour, the reporter from
Kent falls in love. As Anderson introduces the audio-book kiosk, where
customers can download audio books onto their (again, due to licensing
restrictions, non-iPod or Zune) MP3 players, the reporter from Kent
loses her shit: “So, like, you can listen to a book when you’re
driving in your car?”
She has a follow-up question: “Who reads these books? Is it the
author?” It becomes quickly apparent that she believes that Borders has
just invented the concept of an audio book. Nobody disabuses her of
that notion.
All over the store, episodes of “Borders TV” are broadcast on
televisions mounted in each section. Above the cookbook stacks, TV
chefs make Borders-exclusive recipes. Above the wellness section,
new-agey music plays as a well-kept middle-aged woman stretches in
front of a fake beach backdrop. “People can really interact with
Borders TV,” Anderson says, and his crew of Borders upper management
nods and murmurs its agreement. I can’t help but think that the din
caused by the televisions would be distracting if I were trying to, you
know, read a book.
Later, Anderson gives each of us a blank CD and sits us down at the
music computers, telling us we can burn whatever we want onto it. “Oh!
Sugarland!” the lady from Kent enthuses, “I just love Sugarland!” “Who
doesn’t love Sugarland?” chirps a Borders marketing person who has been
silently following us for the last half an hour. The reporter shakes
her head in wonder and gushes, “This place is like a toy store for
adults!”
Not everything in this Borders has to do with overestimating the
stupidity of the American public: There is a large and well-stocked
comic-book section, for instance, and the children’s section is
beautiful. A self-
publishing kiosk partners with Lulu.com to supposedly bring self-published
books to Borders shelves with ease and allow greater visibility for
authors, which seems like an unusually democratic move for an
international corporation. But the books seem pushed aside by the fancy
TVs and computers and connectivity. At the end of the tour, we’re
delivered to the Seattle’s Best Coffee tucked in the corner of the
bookstore for free beverages and cake samples. The reporter from Kent
is still awed, surveying the bookstore. “This is amazing,” she says,
before we all go our separate ways.
It’s enough to make somebody crave a real bookstore: Inner Chapters
Bookstore and Cafe is setting up shop inside one of the few old
buildings in South Lake Union that has survived Paul Allen’s wake. The
shelves aren’t filled with books yet—according to owner Kristina
Barnes, Inner Chapters is going to be primarily a used bookstore,
although it will carry as many new books as customers seem interested
in—but it’s a space intended for reading and leisurely time spent
among books: a good selection of magazines, a cafe counter, a couch and
other comfortable seats, and a large room lined with bookshelves lit by
natural light from a skylight.
After a flurry of buying books and stocking its shelves, Inner
Chapters’ official grand opening is scheduled for August 16. Barnes,
her voice already full with the mixture of hope and worry particular to
bookstore owners in the 21st century, says that the cafe is doing well
and that the locals have stopped by to express how happy they are to
have a bookstore in the neighborhood.
In the fiction section, a copy of Stanley
Elkin’s The Magic
Kingdom leans on a nearly empty shelf. It’s one of his best (and
least read) novels, about a group of Make-A-Wish cancer kids on a
disastrous trip to Disneyland. It’s a little like bumping into an old
friend in a new neighborhood. Once the shelves are filled, this is
going to be a wonderful place to browse. 
Very infomrative and funny.
Stanley Elkin–that’s my criteria in judging a bookstore. Excellent! Most used stores fare fine, but it’s rarer and rarer to see Elkin in a box store or otherwise.