Features
On the Road with Mr. Toppit
by Paul Kozlowski
This article originally appeared in the October 2010 Other Press newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Back in June, Judith and I took a road trip around New England, with one of our authors in tow: Charles Elton, a quintessential English Good Sport and consummate pitchman for his beautifully oddball and affecting first novel, Mr. Toppit. Charles has enormous affection for America and its folkways—the second half of his book is primarily set in California—along with an affable curiosity as to our regional peculiarities. It was a kick traveling with him to meet booksellers. So we decided to do it again, this time a little farther afield, to places Judith and Charles had not been to before.
We began our trip in humid Houston, America’s fourth largest city, floating on mineral wealth, filled with cultural objects of the first order amid the sprawl. It is also home to three great, if very different, independent bookstores—Blue Willow, Brazos, and Murder By the Book. We visited all three in the company of our local sales rep, native Texan Liz Sullivan. She’s one helluva tour guide as well as a superb reader. We had a lovely dinner that first evening with some friendly tableside wrangling over the character of Laurie Clow, the heroine of Mr. Toppit. Was she a deceptive manipulator or a guileless bystander who simply lucks out? We discovered that not even the author knows for sure.
The next morning we visited the Rothko Chapel—unexpectedly drab and dated—before heading west toward Austin, our next stop. It’s a long, flat drive. We read manuscripts out loud, dozed, listened to Liz’s wry Lone Star stories, and watched the land stretch out lazily on either side of I-10. At one point Charles asked, “Is it always this green? I’d imagined it brown.” Liz laughed. “No, it’s supposed to be brown, but we just had nearly a foot of rain from tropical storm Hermine. Everyone in Austin is still talking about the flooding.”
In Austin we headed straight for BookPeople, one of the best bookstores in America, owned by the savvy and sly Steve Bercu, chief proselytizer for the “shop local” movement. He and his team run a profitable business and apparently have fun doing it. No, it’s not easy selling books, it’s not a miracle, true, and there’s some luck involved, but the BookPeople operation proves that it can be done. Charles and Judith were bowled over by the eye-grabbing “Banned Books” display there. That night we ate Mexican food with Steve and some of his senior staff, most of whom had read Mr. Toppit. Amid the talk and laughter, there was more friendly and informed debate about Laurie and whether the story was a tragedy or a farce. Judith, Charles, and I went back to the funky-chic San Jose Motel contented and energized.
The next morning we caught an early flight to Dallas, then flew from Dallas to Santa Fe. The day was perfection itself, the light, the surrounding peaks, the deep blue sky. Veteran Random House sales rep Ron Smith picked us up and gave us the tour. Ron is wise, gentlemanly, and smart as a whip—he calls on the two independents in town, Collected Works and Garcia Street Books, both run by brilliant women engaged in friendly, if occasionally warm, competition. Each store has its virtues. Collected Works is the store you shop when you visit; Garcia Street caters to residents. Collected Works is a showcase for Southwestern literature and culture thoughtfully curated, Garcia Street is as cozy as a home library, with a selection as eclectic. We had a blast browsing both stores. We’d scored tickets for a reading that night at the Lensic Theater where we joined a full house listening to Jimmy Santiago Baca declaim his prison poetry and converse with Carolyn Forche. We were astounded by the size of the crowd. Afterward, we ate superb tapas with friends and shared stories. At the end of the meal, we looked at each other and thought, “Hey, why don’t we move the press to Santa Fe?” Must’ve been the intoxicating air or maybe the altitude.
The next day we flew to Los Angeles after some small-town frisking and petty harassment at the municipal airport. By now, Los Angeles has lived up to all the clichéd statements made about it so there’s no sense in adding to the list—the best thing to do is to lie back and enjoy the weird pulse of the place. We had authors to meet and booksellers to entertain. Besides, Charles knew the town well and was looking forward to seeing old friends. L.A. may be a diffuse market, but it’s got some of the finest neighborhood bookstores anywhere, most of which were represented at dinner that evening: Emily and Charles from Skylight Books in Los Feliz; John and Alison, the gregarious Diesel duo, having recently opened a branch in Brentwood; and Sherri from Vroman’s in Pasadena. They were joined by Adrian, buyer for Warwick’s in La Jolla, another superb Southern California bookstore. The table was presided over by suave Sandy Pollack, our local sales rep and maybe the coolest guy ever to place a Quick Pick order. Everybody had read Mr. Toppit and the discussion crackled with insight and wit. Sandy thought the best way to pitch the novel was to call it a study in “unintended consequences.” Yes! The rest of us quickly assented to his characterization. The conversation that night at Lucques offered further proof that Judith is right to call independent booksellers “America’s secret intelligentsia.” You’d think after four days of intense travel we’d be tired. Not at all.
We spent a good part of the following afternoon rooting around the stacks in Book Soup. The late Glenn Goldman was a great bookman and a lovely person—it was a comfort to see how well his successors are tending to his legacy. The nonpareil selection, the witty displays, the attention to detail—every bibliophile and independent press should give thanks that Book Soup lives. We spent an hour or so with buyer Tosh Berman talking about the L.A. art scene while stacking books for purchase at the cash register. To browse in a carefully stocked bookstore is to live well, especially on a smoggy afternoon off Sunset Boulevard.
From Los Angeles, we took a short flight up to Oakland. The Random House rep in the East Bay is the singular Charles Spaulding, a man of effortless grace given over to cinema and dark thrillers. The two Charleses hit it off. After settling ourselves in the rather frayed Claremont Hotel, we took a long slow ride across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, first to visit the justifiably legendary City Lights, then the Book Passage outpost in the Ferry Terminal, and finally to have dinner with a group of local bookselling worthies. It was to be our last dinner together, Charles still charming and articulate, ever the trooper. Like all great storytellers, he is a great listener first. The bookstores represented at dinner: Book Passage, Books, Inc., Copperfield’s, Diesel, A Great Good Place for Books, and Mrs. Dalloway’s. We had so much fun it felt sinful. After all, we were supposed to be working on a book and building buzz. But this was pure relaxation, to talk about everything from Robert Reich to Hitchcock, from Montaigne to postmodern Italian literature, to be engaged in the great conversation literature engenders in its lovers. It was a splendid evening.
Sunday we visited stores, from Claremont to Fourth Street. Along the way we saw plenty of Other Press displays—Berkeley’s wonderful booksellers had been forewarned that we’d be visiting. We were all moved by the genuine affection with which we’d been greeted, and especially our first-time author. It had been the same story throughout our week-long trip: there was never a moment we weren’t among friends and kindred spirits.
Charles Elton is a prince and his novel Mr. Toppit is a superb book. We parted—Charles back to England, Judith to her home in Cambridge, and me back to New York—with the pledge that we’d do more traveling together down the line. “Where would you like to go?” I asked Charles. “Why, to more bookstores, of course. There’s still a lot of America to visit.” Judith concurred. “We’ll definitely want to visit old friends again, and, of course, make new ones along the way.”
Tags: indies, Mr. Toppit, Paul Kozlowski
