A Northshire Elegy? Nay! By Jeff Tarbox Featured in BBR April 1995 That drive up into Vermont was sometimes a revelation: rounding up over a bend in the road, I found myself peering downward at structures quickly yet not immediately recognized as church spires-crisp white apexes seen from a strange, hilly perspective. I was jotting stuff down to remember: people ice fishing and skating, covered bridges foretold by the roadmap, perhaps-fashionably kitschy antique joints, and the rough, surprising glints of the Connecticut River. They came to be part of my provincial vision of a state of real life, an enriched existence. My destination was the Northshire Bookstore, an independent shop par excellence, and yet I savored the drive un-impatiently. Manchester lies twenty miles up Route 7 from tiny Bennington College and is in no way overrun with throngs of undergraduates. However, "there's a great body of erudition stuck up in these hills," people opting out of more urban lives. Such wayward booklovers include owner Ed Morrow himself, who put in his time in the Big Apple until the early '70s when he and his wife started the bookstore. Indeed, their Vermont environs are a three-season draw to the outside world-fresh mountain air in the summer, that crazy autumnal foliage, and winter skiing turning into spring skiing and "mud season"-which is just as well slid quickly through, I'm told. The booklover's quest for that livre juste is nurtured here, understood to transcend simple entertainment or educational needs. Says Morrow (waxing Cantabridgian perhaps), "American society is afraid of spirituality." The best of bookstores understand and strive to support "the idea of emotional and spiritual sustenance, the combination of intellectual and morally-satisfying enrichment" we get from reading. Along with involvement in community affairs and planning, Morrow is helping to expand a new Vermont organization that promotes book-related discussions and community activities revolving around the written word. As you'd expect, the Northshire has carefully stocked shelves with the second and third books by those favorite authors you keep in mind to check for, to see if a store's got your stuff. Aside from the excellent fiction selection, I particularly enjoyed the "Current Issues" area, a smorgasbord extending from those wacky Paglias and Chomskies to a collaboration by Cornel West and bell hooks to a book called Imagologies, an avowedly technology-embracing guide to the cultural media-blender our social structures and psychologies may currently be in. But don't take my word for it: many titles throughout the store have small displays offering paragraphs of commentary by the incisive Northshire booksellers. My hat's off to a bookstore whose music department is well-stocked and integrated-I read some good recommendations on blues books. And the store's renowned children's section could easily stand alone-a real community resource hosting its own kid-inspiring events and coordinating numerous programs with area schools. Today's challenge to high quality bookstores, of course, is to keep three steps ahead of deep-discounting superstores. There's a small business guidebook called Up Against the Wal-Mart whose Northshire newsletter ad space just must've been free, Vermont proudly being the only state in the union sans Wal-Mart. Following the market, the Northshire has made the tough decision to discount Times bestsellers by 20 percent. In a small town peppered with dozens of discount outlet shops, purists should consider the concession to discount marketing an added invitation to take home some of the personal recommendations made by Northshire's staff. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised-especially having just picked up Sven Birkerts' The Gutenberg Elegies, that timely tome-but the (book-)cultural ambivalence toward new technologies is a concern here, too. Morrow stated in a recent issue of the store's sharp-lookin' newsletter (in which Microsoft, tellingly, ran an ad), "Despite our love of, and loyalty to, the printed word in bound book form, [multimedia publishing] is too compelling to ignore." Could computers ever push books aside, active-matrix screens replacing crisp off-white pages? Calling Northshire a "high-touch counterpoint to the high-tech world," Morrow related an anecdote about a friend overhearing a group of schoolboys discussing the Internet, e-mail and interactive computer games with normalcy, nonchalance, and indeed no nostalgia for the printed word of olde. A momentous shift in the way we receive and interact with text-be it personal communication, news, literature or junk mail-is unquestionably underway, and the bookstore is embracing rather than avoiding technology. Northshire has two multimedia systems available for test-driving the CD-ROMs they sell, and they take as much care in selecting these titles as they do with their book stock. (For our part, we heretics at the BBR are developing and expanding our electronic version, the BBR On-line-e-mail me if you'd like the latest lowdown) . Lively author breakfasts and teas featuring informal panels of three writers connected by genre or theme keep the local creative juices flowing. Evening readings have recently drawn Steven King and Katha Pollitt among others, and the Northshire always has big plans abrew. But mainly it's the books. Great independent bookstores like the Northshire Bookstore will keep us in books-physical volumes, et al-till Birkerts' hell freezes over. They are our best "defense" against the encroaching pixelization of our beloved print. So engage the booksellers, when you're there, in conversation about your favorite new author and don't swing your factory outlet bag around too much. With plans in the works to expand the store outward and upward further into the old inn building the Northshire inhabits, there's cause for rejoicing. Someday, steeples. The Northshire Bookstore is open Sunday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Fridays till 9 p.m. and Saturdays till 7 p.m. Call 802-362-2200 or 800-437-3700 or e-mail to northshirebook@vtnet.com. Jeff Tarbox, a.k.a. jjtarbox@delphi.com, is an all-around text enthusiast who reads, scribbles and types in Somerville, Massachusetts. He has the sneaking suspicion that he'll never get around to writing the Great American Hypertext Novel. &copy1995. Boston Book Review. All rights reserved.

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