Lord, what fools these mortals be.

Perhaps the closing of retail establishments isn’t exactly what Ferlinghetti had in mind for these lines, but as a founder of the famous City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, I hope he wouldn’t object to them being used for this particular purpose.

“The independent bookstore is dead; long live the independent bookstore,” wrote The New York Times in September of 2008.  The big “chain booksellers” (namely Barnes & Noble and Borders) have been cited with killing off the smaller, independent stores at a rate of three per week for years, even prior to 2008.  But given the recession, the giants are struggling too; the value of Barnes & Noble’s stock fell 30% from 2007 to 2008, and Borders‘ a whopping 60% over the same time period.  Borders (relieved of its Amazon alliance in 2008) is now in debt and trying on a new CEO after a significant drop in holiday sales.

So, it seems surprising that the off-the-beaten path independent bookstores with a cool but quirky and wondrous but sometimes unreliable selection of merchandise are still in existence at all.  As I walk down Massachusetts Avenue towards Harvard Square, I’m shocked at how many businesses have closed up shop (“The People’s Republic of Cambridge” is especially proud of its high density of local, independently-owned businesses).

The other weekend I visited Grolier’s Poetry Book Shop, recommended to me by a friend.  It’s located right near Harvard Square off the main drag and shouldn’t be a difficult find at all, but Cambridge is full of shops stuffed into side-streets, alleyways, and other subtle nooks-and-crannies prone to being overlooked. The idea of “walking a neighborhood” (which many communities have traded in for strip malls, and which Merill Reports suggests may be one factor tipping the scales in favor of online retailers like Amazon), certainly isn’t dead in Cambridge.  With foot traffic up, it seems more important than ever to have high visibility and great word-of-mouth.  Afterall, I’d walked by the shop countless times, and had never known of its existence until a friend pointed it out.

The shop itself is surprisingly small and the interior bears an uncanny resemblance to Ollivander’s wand shop in the Harry Potter films, with tall wooden shelves and diffuse, yellowish lighting.  As far as book shops go, Grolier’s carries exclusively poetry… but they carry a lot of it.  Dan Wuenschel, the general manager, is a vault of pleasantly dispensed information, serving much the same function as the iTunes Genius.  He let on that Charles Simic (previously, not much known to me) shares the same dark humor as Billy Collins, which the two use similarly in “extrapolating the universe” from their immediate physical surroundings.

Aside from the quaint charm of the store’s atmosphere and the helpful personnel, I learned that there’s a nice feeling of community happening around Grolier’s, with the occasional, casual “celebrity” drop-in.  My friend loves Irish literature, so was interested to hear that Seamus Heaney stops by the store when he’s working at Harvard.  Among many others, Elizabeth Alexander, who wrote and recited the inaugural poem, is also a frequent guest at the store.

Grolier’s keeps tabs on all the literary events happening in the Boston area.  Mr. Wuenschel informed me that between the AGNI Magazine (run by Boston University) e-mail list (sign up for alerts relating to Boston or New York events here) and another local literary e-mail list (organized by a gentleman named Daniel Bouchard — send a note to bouchard [at] MIT [dot] edu and request to be included), it would be nearly impossible to miss news of a literary event in the area.

Given the competitive pricing and selection of Amazon and the rise of Half.com and eBay in recent years, it is compelling to forego on the small bookstore experience (mostly, the ever-so-slightly inflated prices that go along with it, by necessity).  But there is something to be said for standing in a charming little “niche” store with books calling down at you from packed shelves that seem to go on forever, and the helpful employees that have something more like a very astute conversation with you than a sales-pitch.  Call me old-fashioned, but Amazon’s recommendation engine couldn’t compete with Mr. Wuenschel, even if we discounted the pleasantries of person-to-person engagement.

Some other notable local booksellers:

I’d written previously in my Midnight On Your Left posting about two of my favorite local, independently-owned bookstores in the Boston area:

Brookline Booksmith (in Coolidge Corner, Brookline)

Rodney’s Bookstore (in Central Square, Cambridge)

I’m particularly fond of used books, so both shops carry them; however, Brookline Booksmith dedicates its top level exclusively to new books (and Rodney’s Bookstore doesn’t stock new books at all).  Both are definitely worth a good perusin’.