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One of the good things that came out of the
turmoil of the 1960s and early- 1970s was the large number of "alternative"
bookshops that opened up. You'll know the kind I mean, with their stocks of
poetry, left-wing papers, and feminist, gay, and other publications. You
could, in the best of them, find all kinds of little magazines and small
press books, together with imports from the USA, local ephemera, and all
sorts of odds and ends. The shops admittedly varied in quality and some of
the smaller ones, started by dreamy hopefuls in the provinces, didn't carry
big stocks nor did they always last very long. But they were all part of a
healthy movement that meant to get away from the domination of a few big
publishers and distributors. And they were, large or small, long-lived or
doomed to close within a year or two, a godsend to anyone who wanted to read
something not produced by the same old writers and publishers.
The sad news is that many of these shops
(the ones that lasted) have now closed, the most recent being Compendium
(opened in 1968) in London and Frontline (opened as Grass Roots in 1973) in
Manchester. There may be a few other outlets for them in London but I doubt
that you can buy an anarchist or Trotskyist magazine in Manchester these
days. You may not want to buy either, but that isn’t the point. The shops
sold more than that and generally tried to provide something the bigger
bookshops didn't, namely an "alternative" service. But, say those who shrug
complacently when told of another bookshop closure, the concerns that the
"alternative* shops represented are now part of the mainstream. And it could
be argued that they are, in a sense, the victims of their own success, in
that the markets for Beat writing, feminist literature, gay studies, what
have you, which they opened up, are now catered for by places like
Waterstone's and Border's. It's true that those shops often do have
feminist, gay, black and similar sections and that they are superior to the
bookshops that existed in the 1960s when it was thought necessary to open up
alternatives. Anyone around then will know how difficult it was to obtain
anything unusual outside London and one or two major university centres.
Still, Waterstone's and Border's may be better than the big bookshops of
forty years ago but they have their limitations, and even if they do seem to
cater for minority or specialised interests they often do so by only
stocking relevant material from largely mainstream publishers. You will find
little unusual if you inspect the poetry section of Waterstone's in
Manchester (reputed to be one of the best of their shops) and they will not
even bother to try to obtain publications from small presses if you enquire
about them. "Write direct to the Press," a friend was curtly told when she
tried to order a small press poetry book. And though you may find the New
Statesman in Border's you will not be able to pick up a copy of Freedom or
Workers' Liberty.
Now I'm not naive and I don't expect big
bookshops to be charitable organisations dedicated to serving those of us
with tastes that run to the obscure or forgotten or unpopular. The fact that
they do sometimes have on their shelves books mat come into one or other of
those categories is to their credit, or at least to the credit of an
employee with a little imagination. Whether this situation will last is
another matter. Accountants are increasingly dominant and there have been
recent signs that Waterstone's, in particular, are under pressure to pull
back from anything experimental or esoteric and focus instead on what sells
quickly and in large quantities. I hope you can see what is happening? It's
working in the same way as public transport, where a large company like
Stagecoach moves in, drives smaller companies out of business, and then
itself cuts back on the services or even pulls out of the routes altogether
on the grounds that it's uneconomic to cover them. Border's and Waterstone's
put the smaller shops out of business by initially stocking what those shops
used to specialise in and then stop stocking it themselves because, they
say, it doesn't sell.
The problem is that there isn't an easy
answer to all this. At the end of the day bookshops, large or small, need to
make a profit or at least break even. And if the market isn't mere for
specialised materials then no shops can afford to stock too much of it. I've
talked to enough booksellers over the years to know that poetry, for
example, sells very little and most poetry magazines will remain on the
shelves. The fault would seem to lie with the customers who, even though
they claim to be interested in poetry steadfastly refuse to buy magazines
or, for that matter, most poetry books. There are thousands of people
writing poetry, entering competitions, and trying to get their work
published, but not many of them want to lay out a few pounds for a poetry
magazine or a slim volume. But that's another story and I don't want to get
locked into it here.
Going back to bookshops, it strikes me that
what has happened is that the audience for the 'alternative' shops has
largely disappeared. As I said at the beginning of this piece, the shops
arose out of the turmoil of the I960s,when students were active, there were
various movements afoot in the arts, the Left in its infinite varieties
seemed to be on the move, and hippies and others offered alternative
lifestyles. There was a general feeling that things could be different. You
couldn't say the same now and for all its surface turbulence this is
essentially a conservative age
Students are at their dullest for years,
interested only in getting good degrees and jobs and beyond that, lifestyle,
football, and pop music. The Left has almost totally collapsed and it
doesn't look like it will ever recover, the arts are mostly concerned with
entertainment, and everything is so fragmented that it simply has no
meaning. But ifs all now in the mainstream, the argument runs, but it isn't
really true. There are more drugs around and sexual behaviour is looser, the
pubs are open longer, and more people, willingly or not, don't work nine to
five. Not much of a revolution, when you think about it, and what it has
actually led to is a dumbed-down morass of self-indulgence. The system
hasn't changed and the same old people are still in control.
But complaining In this way is perhaps just
another form of self-indulgence, and if the customers are no longer there
then there is no reason for "alternative" shops to continue They served
their purpose and when the energy and interest ran out they disappeared.
Bookshops have always done that, coming and going in response to the level
of commitment from their owners and customers. You could argue that they are
no different than little magazines and small presses which, with only a few
exceptions, continue in existence according to the degree of dedication
shown by editors, writers, and readers. So why worry too much? Something
else will come along shortly. But not if the parallel I drew with public
transport is anything to go by. You can wait for a tong time for a bus that
doesn't run anymore and isn't likely to ever again.
It's worth mentioning at this point that it
isn't only the 'alternative' shops that have closed. Friends across the
country tell me of other sorts of independent bookshops either struggling or
closing down. And my own experiences tell me that second-hand bookshops are
suffering. I go to a small town where there used to be two and there's now
one and that isn't doing too well. I hear of another one in Manchester
calling it a day. In Liverpool, where there used to be six or seven within
walking distance of Lime Street Station, there are now just three. Is it
relevant, too, to add that even in the more commercial field of magazine and
newspaper selling there are moves afoot to centralise distribution around a
couple of big suppliers and some supermarket chains. The result could be
that many small newsagents will be driven out of business. This may not seem
too important. The supermarkets may at the moment have a better range of
magazines than the local shop can afford to carry, but what of the future
when the supermarket has the monopoly and they decide that certain
publications just don't sell enough? And it's unlikely that they'll want to
be bothered with ordering individual copies.
The commercial market isn't my main concern
but it's easy to see that there is generally a move towards a more
homogenised culture where only mass market material will be easily available
and the rest, if it exists, will be driven to the edges. It will also be a
culture where the pleasure provided by a range of bookshops will be reduced.
Browsing through a selection of political papers in the 'alternative' shop,
getting dusty in a second-hand place, and then having a look at what's
available in a big bookshop, could be reduced to hoping that the big
bookshop has something more than the latest best-sellers The wonderful
elements of chance which made book-shopping a pleasure in the past might not
apply in the future. The internet ? Well, yes, ifs useful and it can be
remarkably easy to locate books, order them, and have them delivered
quickly. But it realty requires you to know what you want in advance. Where
is the joy of discovering something that you didn't even know existed? The
human spirit shrivels if the sense of exploration and discovery dies I see
the Internet as fine for the academic anxious to track down an item so he
can finish his book, but what of those of us who simply love the excitement
of hunting through shelves of ageing books and finding things that, old as
they are, may be new to us? There is something to be said for travelling
around and finding things for yourself that sitting at home and tapping
enquiries into a machine can never replace.
There are those who will not think that the
decline of bookshops, and the consequent impact on literature, is of any
importance. Border's and Waterstone's will supply whatever they need. But I
expect that readers of little magazines are, or ought to be, more committed
to writing that offers something beyond the ordinary and fashionable. And it
seems to me that little magazines, for all their problems, are a way of
providing us with a system of exchanging ideas and information about the
overlooked and the unusual. Isaac Rosenfeld once said of little magazines
that they were outlets for "a small but vigorous and very vital, active and
conscious group which knew fairly well the sort of thing it stood for even
if it had no specific programme and whether or not it had any political
allegiance." He also said that one of the characteristics of a conservative
age is "the shrinkage of extremes" and he added: "I am used to thinking,
because of my upbringing, of the writer standing at one extreme from
society; I mean, of course, the serious writer, the conscious writer, the
one who regards his writing as an art...I am used to thinking of the writer,
then, as a man who stands at a certain extreme, at a certain remove from
society. He stands over against the commercial culture, the business
enterprise, that whole fantastic make-believe world which some people would
like us to believe is the real world. Of course it can’t be that for the
writer."
Rosenfeld’s words from almost fifty years
ago still have meaning and his belief in the rote of tittle magazines is
just as relevant. In fact, bearing in mind what has been said in this
article about the general situation with bookshops, it may be that taking
note of him is even more important. You may not have an "alternative" or any
kind of independent bookshop near you anymore and you may have to travel to
find a secondhand one that's still open. The local Border's or Waterstone's
may not be quite as wide-ranging as you once thought. And the Internet
perhaps won’t fulfill all your requirements. So, a few little magazines,
arriving as and when resources allow, could provide the variety missing
elsewhere. And they may also re-assure you that there are still a few other
dissidents put there who haven't surrendered to the notion that big
publishers and big bookshops, and the massmarkets they imply, can supply
everything the imagination needs to keep it alive and alert to the work
around it.
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