Rick Simonson

Three Thousand Miles Away, a Three Lives Visit (Brief)

It is a part of this time of year. Tending to things in the bookstore, people coming by from various places near and far. Sometimes it's the odd moment to spot someone from Seattle, someone we know, someone who might also have restaurant recommendations or driving strategies for a customer/visitor with queries.

Then there are the total and pleasant surprise moments, such as when one is trying to make sense of a Kensington mass market catalog and a page comes over the phone: 'Toby, from Three Lives, is here."

This isn't the first time. Toby Cox, who has lovingly, carefully and adroitly kept the spirit and vitality of the one and only Three Lives & Co. bookstore in Manhattan's Greenwich Village (threelives.com, 154 West 10th Street) going since he took it over from its founders in 2002, has family in Seattle. The visits seem to come every other year or so (where he catches me, anyway), and are always like this, drop-by, unannounced. I am able to repay the favor (with pleasure), doing likewise a little more frequently, on visits to New York.

It is always good to stand there - there or here - and visit. What books, what works, business. Both our stores are in cities and neighborhoods that benefit from getting tourists, many of them European and Asian. In our case, we'll see what happens when that season quiets. For now, we're hopping about a bit.

Three Lives, if I've read things right, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Started in 1968, that is a feat to be celebrated, for sure. The little space on the corner of West 10th and Waverly Place is one of the most cherished places in all Manhattan, a sanctuary. Even if walking by late, when it's closed, there is a moment of standing, peering in, paying respect and tribute. What is within is so carefully thought-out, nothing there gratuitous - it has to be, for the space is so intimately small.

Standing in our place, yakking about this and that, we do talk books. We share Harry Potter stories - neither of our stores is located or has the history of being huge (relatively speaking) with those books, yet the last release or two, we both had sales that exceeded what we'd have imagined, purchases people were making very consciously with us, knowing what could or might be paid elsewhere.

I was also able to actually show Toby, finally, a few of the beautiful books published by Gaspereau Press, out of Nova Scotia: Robert Bringhurst's A Solid Form of Language, Jan Zwicky's Thirty-Seven Small Songs and Thirteen Silences - small books of substance but also great,crafted, sturdy beauty. They would display - and sell well - there at Three Lives, I do believe. As they have for us.

As happens with both my visits to Three Lives and Toby's to Elliott Bay, there is talk, though never enough, and then there is the time to get on or back to whatever we are up to. I have an appointment. He has places to get to - an island or two (where he would be now). He shows me the book he's purchasing. Yes, we do this. Shop from each other. On a memorable Three Lives visit not long ago, I'd found (and bought) Basque poet Kirmen Uribe's wonderful book of poems, Meanwhile Take My Hand (Graywolf) and 16th-century French poet Maurice Sceve's Emblems of Desire (Archipelago).  Now, ironically, Toby was getting a Knopf book I'd first seen the finished copy of when I was visiting New York back last spring. I'd been in there on the 'street release' day, seeing Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero in paper, the finished copy of Rabih Alameddin's The Hakawati, and other new titles for the first time. Now Toby was getting one of those books, albeit a signed one.

Chances are, he's reading it now ... while I, wait, I'm doing this ... I want to do some reading here, too ...

Posted by Rick Simonson on August 14, 2008 | Comments (1)