Because it doesn’t have one. That’s the first, foremost, and most self-reflexive answer I can give you. There’s 76,000 in the city, Tufts, a very active Red Line, and there’s no bookstore.
(Note — the ‘late update’ at the bottom of this post: given where it is, my walking mind always put the other bookstore over in Cambridge. I also imagine this bookstore-to-be to have a much more aggressive public and community presence, located as close to the center of the Square as possible, perhaps even in the old Gorkin building.)
Another reason behind my thinking — and keep in mind: I’m only one person in the project; you can be a part of, too — is that a bookstore is terrific in walking that axis between the specific and the communal: with all due deference, love, and respect to the Somerville Theater (read: don’t ban me!), they’re not going to simultaneous carry 5,000 movies that speak to the Irish American, Italian American, Portuguese American, Brazilian, Haitian, El Salvadorian, South Korean, Nepalese, students (not just Tufts students — young parents and kids going to other colleges live here; the rent is pretty good) and Indians who live in the city limits. A bookstore plugs you into that.
A really good bookstore can help plug you into the world. There is a difference in walking into a Mighty Chain, seeing half a shelf of books on ‘world history’ that only seem to mention England during WWII and Greece and Rome during their B.C. heyday, and that’s it — and walking into a bookstore, and it’s Antonio Lobo Antunes, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Park Kyung-Ni, students stopping in to order books and then walking over to Diesel, books for lawyers on the make, public servants on the make, high school students looking to kill a few hours, “This-would-be-perfect-for” purchases, and all the innumerable more.
That’s where — idealistically, at least — I’m coming from. There’s a lot more to this — executing effective market surveys, sanding down shelves, finishing up some of the particulars of the research, and just a bunch of plain ol’ hard work, but I wanted to first start writing publically about it — and deliberately about it — from what I always think is one of the strongest aspects to a bookstore: idealism. There is a reason pictures of libraries and bookstores run like wildfire across the ‘net. There is a reason books grow dog-eared. There is a certain degree of necessity to that.
Action is my ambrosia: I love getting things done — whether it’s in watching a line of thought manifest itself or in plowing through a checklist of physical tasks, so expect more on this from me soon.
Photos via Chris Devers / Another Lost Shark.
Late update — the infallible Meg has reminded me that I’ve forgotten Three Geese in Flight. Sorry! I’ll fix that soon! Still doesn’t change the basic nub of the gist of the point of the post! Yikes!
