I sit at a back table at Café Luna in Uptown New Orleans, trying to formulate my thoughts about bookselling since Katrina. It's fitting I'm here, since Café Luna was the first coffee shop open in my neighborhood and, in fact, for miles around, when I returned October 13 last year after evacuating to Texas. It was here, a few days later, that we had our first post-storm Maple Street Book Shop staff meeting on the morning we reopened. I remember being envious of the crowd of customers at the café. I could've said that the line of patrons was "streaming" through the aisles or that the café was "flooded with business," but you can't say water words anymore without people flinching.
We allowed enough time for us to exchange hurricane stories, evacuation stories and coming-home stories before we got down to business. One colleague's house, garden, cars and virtually all of her family's possessions were destroyed by the flood waters; another lost almost everything, too. Others (including me) lost little in the way of stuff. Miraculously, both our children's and adult book shops were almost totally unharmed. One tree clipped the back room we use for office space, and four other trees fell within inches of both shops. By reopening day, though, our electricity was on (and off and on again) but we had no phones or Internet connection.
We vowed to make the shops survive—we'd been around since 1964 and we would do what it took. Since there were few people in the city, we would abbreviate our weekday hours and close on Sundays. To generate cash flow to pay our bills, we agreed to reduce inventory by attrition, and only order books that were specially requested by customers. Although we discussed pay cuts, we resolved not to do that for the time being.
To share our good fortune at being spared, and hoping to contribute to the community, we started a free book exchange on the front porch of the main shop. Since all three coffee shops on Maple St. were still closed, we started offering free coffee (French roast with chicory) on the Children's Book Shop porch to our customers, neighbors and passersby. We designated our front fence a "Community Bulletin Board" and put chairs and a table in the front yard to make it easy for people to gather.
After the first couple of weeks, business was booming, thanks to people who said they were committed to spending money to keep us going and to contribute to New Orleans' recovery. They said how glad they were that we were open and normal.
For me since the storm, it's all about New Orleans. I have no energy to take on other problems. I read my Times-Picayune and skip, or at best skim, everything that's not about New Orleans. Everything else looks too complicated, too far away. I look for articles that might provide some hope or at least clarity for our devastating problems. Anything humorous about New Orleans is gold, pure gold. And I'm not alone. Quickly breaking our "only order special orders" policy, we ordered and have sold thousands of copies of Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose's book of post-K columns, 1 dead in attic. Also flying out of the shop is Spoiled by Tom Varisco, which comes in its own little plastic bag. It's a collection of photographs of some of the duct-taped-shut, putrid refrigerators that sat on curbs everywhere with the messages people had spray-painted on them.
Walker Percy's books have also been selling well since Katrina. Love in the Ruins, his novel set in anarchic and apocalyptic times in a place somewhere north of New Orleans, is particularly popular since the storm. Selling it always jolts me.
In other books, Percy wrote about the new, shared aliveness that an approaching hurricane brings. The malaise, the sense of "everydayness," falls away and we become alive to what really matters. Keeping that aliveness thriving is our task each day.
To love in the ruins, more than before—better than before—is our job at Maple Street Book Shop.