Editors' note: The following is the first of several excerpts Shelf Awareness is pleased to run in the next few weeks from An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the Business of Books
by Wendy Werris (Carroll & Graf, $15.95, 078671817X), which will be
published November 5. A former bookseller and longtime sales rep,
Werris also works as a freelance author escort and photographer in the
Los Angeles area. For more information about her and the book, go to her Web site.
In 1970, at the age of 19, Werris began working at the renowned Pickwick Bookshop in Los Angeles.
I've always thought it was my weird genetic goulash that pushed me into
the book business, but it happened with such a gale force that I've
been unable to leave--even after several complicated decades now. Who
the hell knows which chromosome it was? It burst open like a sweet,
ripe melon that day I strolled into Pickwick. I entered through the
doors to buy a copy of Fire Station by Charles Bukowski, and
two hours later walked out with a job. I swear to God, this wasn't
intentional! It was a hot day; the Santa Ana winds had kicked up the
night before and the temperature hovered at around ninety degrees.
Seeking relief in the air-conditioned store, I stalled for time by
talking to the clerk who rang up my sale in the lovely chilled air.
Then I noticed the "Help Wanted" sign by the cash register, and on a
whim inquired about the position. It had never occurred to me
that I wanted to work in a bookstore, that I might actually be hired on
the spot, or that if I'd waited just a short while longer I could have
gotten the employee discount on the book I'd just paid my last three
dollars for. Being the unrefined girl that I was, the concept of
serendipity was still unfamiliar to me.
It only took a couple of minutes to fill out the job application,
leaning against the front counter as I did. When you're nineteen
years old, your history is achingly brief. Mine included two
part-time jobs--the first selling popcorn at a movie theatre; the next
answering phones at a hardware store--and a minor degree in English
from a community college. On paper my life showed little of merit.
I was directed up two flights of stairs to the administrative offices
and before I knew it was sitting across from Pickwick's personnel
manager.
"I see you have no bookstore experience. Why do you want to work
here, Miss Werris?" Shirley Arnold crossed her long legs and
thrust the spike heel on her left foot in my general direction. I
swallowed. She examined her fingernails, each an inch long and
painted bright red. I stared at Shirley as she pushed her black
hair back behind one ear, took a deep breath and finally rested her
hands in her lap.
"You see," I stammered, "I really love literature and I read quite a
lot so I'm prettyknowledgeableaboutbooks." My words ran together
in a fit of nerves. "And I spend so much time shopping in here
anyway thatitalmostfeelslikehometome.
"And I know how to make change!" Now my brains were falling out of my mouth. Oh, God!
But Shirley understood; good old Shirley, with her blue eye shadow,
high heels, and uncanny intuition about people that would later make me
go running to her whenever I was in trouble at the store. Sparing
me further humiliation, she smiled and said, "The most I can pay you is
minimum wage--a dollar sixty an hour. We need someone to work on
the sales floor, and eventually manage the children's department
upstairs. I like you. You can start on Monday if you're
interested." There was a subtle shifting of her hips in the swivel
chair she occupied so gracefully.
"Oh boy, thank you so much. I really appreciate it! Yes, I
do. Thanks!" I got up from my chair to shake Shirley's
hand, dropping the bag with Fire Station on the floor at the same
time. "Oh. I guess I'll see you on Monday. And you'll
see me on Monday. Wow! Thanks!"
Shirley bent to pick up my bag, and handed it to me. She was
trying to keep a straight face, but it was difficult. "Be here at
8:30," she announced, "and you'll begin your training. You get
off at six, and have an hour for lunch." She finally burst out
laughing. "Listen, you've gotta relax! I can tell you're a
natural for this job." From your mouth to God's ears, I thought.
It was love at first sight when Werris began working at Pickwick:
Pickwick Bookshop was known in all the literary, educated circles as
the best bookstore west of the Mississippi. It had opened in 1938
and was an enormous three-story structure on Hollywood Boulevard that
prided itself on the depth of its stock and almost supernaturally
astute staff. Affectionately referred to as "The Big Bookshop,"
it was the place to browse, schmooze and find books that no one else in
town carried. Many of its customers were writers, artists,
academics and celebrities from all walks of life who knew that when
they came to Pickwick they would be treated with the utmost discretion
and civility. Despite the crappy wage, I considered myself a
lucky girl to be working at such an extraordinary place.
I loved it from the very first morning, when the staff gradually
welcomed me from every corner of the store, emerging from behind
bookcases and the rolling ladders attached to the walls for access to
stock on the uppermost shelves. Some slid around from behind the
long sales counter to greet me before counting the money in the cash
drawers they'd just slipped into the registers. To a soul,
everyone was friendly and, to varying degrees, seemed to hold the
potential for madness.
That day I met the kind of people I'd been subconsciously waiting for
all my life. Mad poets. Gay men. Hilarious
alcoholics. Old queens and struggling actors; street hustlers and
college drop-outs. I shook hands with frustrated novelists and
capricious astrologers. They all worked at Pickwick and would
soon become my extended family. Until this time my
circle of friends had been made up of the high school chums I'd known
practically all my life. We all lived in the same neighborhood, a
protective enclave of single family dwellings in Los Angeles with no
ethnic diversity and only a handful of people who could claim Semitic
immunity. This was a world of white, heterosexual Jews and their
ingenuous kids. My relationships with them were enjoyable, but
lacked the intrigue and challenge I was ready to experience.
. . .
For the first six months there I was a sales clerk behind the front
counter, and also floated between book sections managing the
stock. Each day I took inventory of "my" books in the crafts,
sports and biography aisles, and submitted yellow re-order slips to the
buyers. We were never out of a title for very long. These
slips of paper went into a tray on the desk of the backlist buyer,
where they were then sorted and filed by publisher. Pickwick was
a high-volume bookstore, so within a day or two there were usually
enough books needed from one publisher to generate an order with an
acceptable wholesale discount.
Computers weren't around back then, and we were blissfully unaware of
the speed and efficiency they would later bring to inventory control
and ordering. However, thanks to the system then in use at
Pickwick I became familiar with the hundreds of publishers whose books
we stocked. It didn't take long before I made the important leap
to connect particular titles and authors with their respective
publishers, an essential skill for booksellers.
I learned, for instance, that it was Dodd, Mead who published the
Agatha Christie mysteries. Van Nostrand Reinhold specialized in
art books, as did Dover and Abrams. Llewellyn published books on
the occult, and we ordered The Joy of Cooking from Bobbs Merrill (its
original publisher). I had an excellent memory for such details,
and learned quickly. From the start, I made a good impression on
the management at Pickwick.
Within a month or two I picked up on the rhythm of life at the
bookstore. When we opened in the morning on a blank easel of a
day, I was ready for anything. The breeze from Hollywood
Boulevard carried a thousand scenes into Pickwick and dumped situations
at our front door that I couldn't make up if I tried. The street
was always washed out in the early morning light, not quite nine
o'clock, too early for the Hare Krishna folks, bag ladies strolling
their turf that would steal rolls of toilet paper from our bathrooms,
the Jews For Jesus, and the drunks trolling for spare change. They'd
all come calling later on. However, it was just the right
time for a team of crazy booksellers to start their day.
Out there in the wilds of the aisles of biographies, Merck Manuals,
cookbooks and Nancy Drew mysteries we yawned and stretched. We
often looked like we'd slept at Pickwick the night before, shuffling
lazily while dusting the books and slurping coffee from Styrofoam
cups. That blessed silence! It was the only time of day
when the phones were quiet, cash registers still and aisles empty of
shoppers. On those mornings, it was easy to imagine Pickwick
standing firmly on Hollywood Boulevard like the eighth wonder of the
world; it seemed eternal to me. As the big security door was
rolled up to let in the first customers of the day, we would all check
to make sure our name tags were pinned on and the books on the front
tables in perfect alignment.
We were all misfits in those days, not fitting in anywhere else but
within the dusty confines of Pickwick. It was the start of the
seventies, and Los Angeles was on a swing shift from anti-war hippiedom
to the tentative rhythm of disco, from hallucinogens to cocaine, and
from the "closet" attitude forced on homosexuals to more openly gay
lifestyle from the hide-and-seek nature of the dreaded 'closet' to a
more openly gay lifestyle. I was part of an eccentric group of sales
clerks, shipping and receiving clowns and brilliant book buyers.
Between the employees and the clientele we demonstrated the whole gamut
of psychological diagnoses--from manic-depression to narcissistic
tendencies.
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