Bookselling - An Open but Committed Relationship

With this article we formally welcome my life-partner Jarek Steele as Left Bank’s newest partner in books, bookselling and bookpeople. He’s already logged 6 ½ years in the store so he’s no stranger to many of you, but we thought it was time he came out as a managing partner. –Kris Kleindienst
When I stood to introduce David Sedaris on June 17, I faced a bookstore full of people who had paid at least $35 to support our store in addition to buying Sedaris’s new book. Outside, 300 more people sat on the curbs and in the street, in lawn chairs and on blankets, sharing wine and food, lounging with their families, friends and pets just to hear this man read from his book. To laugh with people. It occurred to me how remarkable that is – that literature and the community it builds are powerful enough to stop traffic in the city of St. Louis.
On the Saturday after September 11, 2001, about six months before I came to work here, I locked myself in a hotel room in Ohio where I had been stranded and cried for two days, alone with the images on the television. That same weekend, Deepak Chopra rented a car in Chicago and planned to drive to the next destination on his author tour. It didn’t include St. Louis, but he offered to stop by the store for a visit on his way. This was before LBB had e-blasts and large mailing lists, so with less than 24 hours notice, Kris made phone calls to news organizations and emailed the few folks we had on our lists. What happened next was unbelievable. People flocked to the corner of Euclid and McPherson and packed themselves into our store. They stood touching each other wall-to-wall all the way out the door as Deepak led them in guided meditation. Hundreds of people, standing together, healing together. That is the power of the community and ideas surrounding this store. It was something I didn’t even know I was missing until I found it here the next year.
As any alumni of Left Bank Books can tell you, it doesn’t take long for the dream of a bookstore to wear thin and the fiscal reality to set in. My first year here, I lived in Illinois and took two busses and the Metrolink to the BJC station and walked the rest of the way. As the reality set in and I realized that the struggle of this little business wasn’t some bump in the road, it was the whole unpaved stretch, I got frustrated. Kris said, “Jay, there are sprinters and marathon runners in this business. You just have to know who is who and which one you are.” It was the truest and most valuable thing she’s said to me about Left Bank. In the city of St. Louis, in the field of bookselling, in the cultural scene, LBB is a marathon runner. We don’t necessarily get off the starting line first, or run as fast, but we endure. We have endured, And we’ve grown, thanks to the love and support of readers in St. Louis. We are still writing this story.
As the newest, youngest co-owner at Left Bank Books, our customers haven’t really gotten to know me and, to be honest; I haven’t had the years of experience Kris and Barry have had to know myself within the context of the store. I’ve worked only six of the thirty-nine years we’ve been open. I stare at the dormant alphabet of my ergonomically correct keyboard as I undertake to write this article and I realize I don’t yet know what my dormant alphabet will spell for Left Bank Books.
The store here on Euclid and McPherson has housed the footsteps of all its staff, customers and writers. Authors ranging from Sonny Barger to Jimmy Carter have walked among our shelves. All of these footprints tap out the fantastic and unlikely story of this store. They make what we have here worth more than just some books on some shelves and a cash register.
What I hope to add to the mix is another vote of confidence, another pledge to keep this community alive. I’m adding my hope for this city and an invitation to all of its citizens to be a part of the Left Bank community and help it thrive. It’s good for all of us.

Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

(headline attributed to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich)
by Kris Kleindienst, Co-Owner

I have been inspired by Phillis Schlafly to write this article. Most of you will realize how unlikely this source of inspiration is: Phillis Schlafly is the 83-year-old uber-right wing founder of the Eagle Forum. She dedicated her early years of activism to furthering Senator McCarthy's anti-communist crusade, but she really hit her stride in the 70s when she discovered that preventing equal rights for women was a more timeless cause. Political systems come and go, but there iwll always be women to oppress. So why in the world would a co-owner of St. Louis' progressive bookstore be inspired to invoke Ann Coulter's fairy god-mother?

We have a lot in common, actually. For one thing, Schlafly is a graduate of Washington University, as are most of Left Bank Books' co-founders, my mother, and me. All of us are activists, having co-founded or directed various projects, including this bookstore, where the "women's" section is not for books on diet, fashion and relationship. While Schlafly led the charge to defeat ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in the late 70s, my mother was working in Washington, D.C. as the president of Northern Virginia N.O.W. to secure its passage. Too bad Schlafly won.

Phyllis Schlafly was busy in the late 70s. She was in law school at Wash. U., graduating in 1979, the same weekend I received my bachelor's degree in Women's Studies. Our names are in the same commencement materials. I thought it was very inspiring at the time that she could be vociferously arguing for women to stay in the home while she pursued a professional career. Rumor around campus back then was that she was so busy on her anti-ERA campaign, that she had hired help to get through all her law school homework. I'm not saying she actually cheated, I'm just saying. I'm pretty sure she wasn't doing her own housework.

The reason she inspires me today is that our alma mater has seen fit to issue her an honorary degree. Washington University has always been forward-thinking on the issue of women's rights. Its law school was one of the first in the country to admit women. Even Harvard University, where Schlafly earned a masters degree in 1945, refused to admit women to its law school until 1950. Phoebe Wilson Couzins was Wash. U.'s first female graduate in 1870 and, like Schlafly, Couzins had women's rights in mind. She co-founded the National Women's Suffrage Association with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Coincidentally, I'm pretty sure I was one of the first people to graduate from Washington University with a degree in Women's Studies, about a hundred short years after Couzins co-founded the NWSA. (Ok, you couldn't major in women's studies, but it could be your second major, kind of like working full-time, caring for the kids, and going to school.)

The point is, here's Phyllis Schlafly, getting another degree from Washington University (her first was a bachelor's in 1944, one year before her master's from Harvard), one she didn't even have to pay for, while powerful women's rights advocates like my mother (who, incidentally, also wrote implementation guidelines for Title IX and authored a landmark government study on families of military personel), hacve gone to their graves without so much as a nod. The anti-war activism of Left Bank co-founders has made law book history, and their collective effort to provide a progressive voice in the founding of Left Bank Books still stands today, albeit beaten about the kneecaps with the lead pipes of late-capitalism. The surviving founders all do amazing community work and activism in their respective communities. One of them, Anita Diamant, even wrote a bestselling novel.

But do any of us get an honorary degree? No! Instead, we get repeated requests for donations from a school with one of the healthiest endowments in the country. Personally, I would happily settle for a tenured position on the faculty. Come to think of it, not only did Washington University officials overlook my mother and the co-founders of Left Bank Books when they thumbed through their rolodex of prominent graduates, years ago they actually eliminated the very department that spawned all this activism to begin with: the Sociology Department. And, were it not for a generous and carefully worded matching grant from local philanthropist and Women's Studies "major" Susan Stiritz,there would probably not even be a women's studies "area" to second-major in anymore.

And yet. In a published statement, Chancellor mark Wrighton apologized for the "anguish" his university's decision has caused and admitted he doesn't even agree with most of Schlafly's positions. He says that the degree is intended to recognize "an alumna of the University whose life and work have had a broad impact on American life," whether or not you agree with the effect of that impact. I guess that's why Trustee Emerita Margaret Bush Wilson, another very powerful woman, volunteered to read the citation to award the degree to Phyllis Schlafly. Ms. Wilson is the first woman of color to serve as the national chair of the NAACP, the second woman of color admitted to practice law in Missouri, a prominent St. Louis civil rights attorney for more than 40 years, and - small world - was a colleague and close friend of my mother's, close enough to speak at her memorial service five years ago.

I am a great admirer of Margaret Bush Wilson. Her life's work broke ground, sometimes in spite of Phyllis Schlafly's life work. She inspired my mother and she inspires me. I would much rather she get the honorary degree than give it. More than being moved by Schlafly's impact on America, I guess you could say Ms. Wilson is moved by the First Amendment. I am too. It can be a powerful tool in the right woman's hands.