No big news but another independent bookstore has bit the dust. Barbaras Books of Oak Park has gone the way of so many and left only an eight by eleven paper stuck to the door to explain that after forty years they have gone out of business. Of course the death of the independent bookstore has been a foregone conclusion for years since the superstores moved into town. But still it is shocking when you walk up and the store is closed.
Oak Park is the home of Hemingway and Burroughs and is a literary town. Not many of those left either but the town has always put the written word first. I had just left the attic of the Hemingway house when I decided to get a book. Rode my bike and just stopped and stared at the grocery bag paper covering the windows and the white paper posted on the door. Just like that. Gone with the wind.
Barbara's brought in many writers known and no so well known. The signings were intimate and sometimes they were well attended and many times not. Of course they carried more alternative fiction than found in the chains and there were the little cards telling people what the staff thought of this book or that. There were couches to read on and alternative papers to thumb through.
While I stood and snapped pictures people walked up and read the notice. One man just shook his head. A woman muttered something and turned around and walked away. A couple of guys walked up and swore. One of the men hit the ground and threw back his arms screaming, "Man this is the problem the generation behind us doesn't read! They just sit on their couch and play Xbox!" I took heart. He was in his twenties. Another man said that a sandwich place was to take the space. "People would rather eat than read," he shrugged.
William Hazelgrove's latest novel is Rocket Man. His highly praised first three novels Ripples,(Pantonne) LJ highly recommended, ALA Editors Choice, Tobacco Sticks, (Bantam, Best Novels of the Nineties Doris Lesher, Starred Review PW, LJ highly recommended) and Mica Highways, (Bantam,) covered the scope of a coming of age, a courtroom drama set in Virginia in the forties, and a mystery set in the South. Rocket Man is a satire about a man struggling to keep his home. William Hazelgrove is the Hemingway writer in residence for the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park. He has written reviews and features for USA TODAY and been the subject of stories in the NY Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and NPR'S All Things Considered.. More information can be gathered at http://www.billhazelgrove.com
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