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By Bill Altreuter

Patti Smith used to work at Scribner's bookstore. What a great place that was. It became a Benetton, and now it's a Sephora, but when it was Scribner's it was a palace. Of course, back then there were a lot of bookstores in New York-- just about every district had its own cluster. When I worked downtown there was Mendoza's and Putnam and probably a half-dozen more where I'd run into my dad from time to time, both of us whiling away our lunch hours working the circuit. The Village was its own thing-- the Strand is still there, but the Village was rich with other places, places you'd go to on the weekend. When I got a job in Midtown Scribner's became a more regular stop for me. It was right up the block, and walking into it used to make me feel connected to the older, more romantic New York. You didn't necessarily go to Scribner's to browse Edith Warton books, though. That's where I first discovered Madison Smartt Bell and T. Coraghessan Boyle. It's where I bought the copy of "Moby Dick" that I used to read to EGA until she was old enough to say, "No more 'Moby Dick'!" It's nice to think about Patti Smith working there, even though our paths only crossed in the same way that we both were crossing paths with Scott Fitzgerald and Max Perkins. By the time Scribner's became a regular haunt of mine I'd probably already worn out my first copy of "Horses". Funny to think that in a hundred years or so we will all be haunting the place, whatever it becomes next: Scott, Max, Patti, my dad and I.

Full post as published by Outside Counsel on February 09, 2010 (boomark / email).