The Last Bookstore
Physical books, and physical book stores, are on death’s door. This destruction, spurred on by the publishing juggernaut that is Amazon, will see a way of life — popularized centuries ago by the genius of Johannes Gutenberg — come to an end. Yet some people will fight it
Do You Want To See?
Can you imagine it? The only one on earth, alone, dying its last breath, overtaken by the rapacity of technology.
I can.
And it makes me sad.
Because it is the end of an era.
Do you know what? It’s happening. Slowly, but it is. One day, like the dodo or the T-Rex of the past. Or the panda in a decade or so. One day there will be just one left.
And after that one goes they will die forever.
Okay, so you’re telling me it’s bullshit, that I’m talking outta my back end, that the same thing happened to vinyl, to classic cars and to the top hat. But they’re still here. They’ve made a resurgence.
Maybe I’m lying about the top hat, though.
But book stores, they’ll be gone.
I’m a seer, I can look into the future, even be in it. I aiyn’t bragging. I’m just telling you how the hell it is.
Wanna come with me?
Do ya?
To see it!
The end, the complete summation of a way of life?
Come on, then, let’s go!
Let me teleport you.
Jimmy The Bookman
“Where are you going?” my wife asks me as I’m leaving the house.
“For a walk,” I answer.
“Get some milk on the way back,” she says.
“It’s not that kinda walk,” I answer.
“Then what kinda walk is it?”
“A long and sad one.”
“You’re going, aren’t you?” she then says, her eyes glued to the data-centre implant in her forearm now, checking her latest text.
I hate technology.
“I gotta, babe, I gotta do it.”
“You don’t have to do nothing but die, babe — how many times I gotta tell you that?”
I sigh and slam the front door behind me. I’m wasting my time. You can’t talk to some people.
The thing is, she’s wrong, they’re all wrong. I’ve gotta helluva lot more things to do than die, but the most important thing is coming right up.
So, I walk the two miles to the centre of town, towards the greatest place I’ve ever known.
When I get there, on Main Street, I open the door to the place. A little bell over the door rings out, signalling my entry. It’s still old school here, Victorian in sentiment. I love it.
At once the smell of veritable bindings hits me. I love that, too. It’s relaxing and comforting at the same time. Since libraries went outta business (were they ever a business?) nine years ago this past spring, the scent has been a rarer one to find.
“You’re here,” the man, in his eighties, grey-haired and wearing black thick-rimmed glasses, says. He looks like an elderly Carey Grant, all suave and intelligence.
“I told you I would be,” I answer.
“There’s not long left now,” he says.
“I know, that’s why I’m here.”
Outside there were no crowds, no fanfare. Nothing.
“Two hours.” He glances at his watch. “No, one hour and fifty-eight seconds till doom.”
“All the worse, then.”
“I guess so.”
I close the door behind me. Nobody else is in the place. Just me and Jimmy, Jimmy the Bookman, that’s what I call him, though that’s not his real name.
“So, are you going to buy something before the old place closes down?” he asks.
I approach the counter. On it are books stacked ten high everywhere.
“It depends whatcha got,” I say.
“Take a gander… But remember, you’ll never see the likes of this place again.”
“I realize that.”
Moby Dick
By the time I’ve gone through all the shelves, I find just the fit:
“What have we got here?” Jimmy the Bookman asks me with an air of interest as well as gratitude — it is one less book for him to get burnt, and that must be a relief to the age-old bibliophile. “Ah, one of my favourites, Moby Dick.”
“Yeah, I’ve never read it and I think it’s time to.”
Just then we hear the rumble of trucks approaching. Jimmy the Bookman looks at his watch again.
“Is that the time already? They’re here.”
And they are.
“I’m outta here. How much for the book?”
“Let’s say it’s a gift.”
“Well, thanks.”
“No, thank you, kid,” Jimmy the Bookman says, tears welling in his eyes.
“Thank me for what?” I ask as he hands the book back to me.
“Just for coming. Just for being here — I don’t see anybody else caring, do you?”
I can see his point.
Book stores. Book shops. Newstands. They come in all shapes and sizes, but now they’ll be no more.
The Last Book Store. This is it. The last one, on Main Street of my town. I’m lucky really. At least I have the chance to see it. Many don’t.
The Goon Squad
There’s a knock on the door. A man, in riot gear, looks on:
“Open the door,” he says
He’s expecting trouble, but neither I nor Jimmy the Bookman is the violent kind.
“Why did you lock the door?” I ask Jimmy the Bookman.
“Didn’t want the bastards to get in.”
“Fine chance of that, Jimmy.”
“I know.”
The man at the door is joined by a dozen more, all dressed similarly.
“Oh, what the hell,” Jimmy the Bookman then says as he walks around the counter and towards the door.
Jimmy the Bookman opens up. The men enter the book store. Their uniforms are sand coloured with the Amazon logo on the left arm. These men are part of Jeff Bezos’ goon squads — as we book lovers like to call ‘em — 100,000 highly-trained security guards to implement his very word.
The leader — he’s wearing a white helmet with three stripes on his arm as opposed to the black helmets and lack of rank insignia of the rest — takes his helmet off and, with a piece of paper in his hand, declares to Jimmy the Bookman:
“By order of the Amazon Corporation, on this day, 18th April 2037, I hereby have the power and authority to close this store and commandeer all stock herein. Do you have anything to say, sir?”
“Did you write that speech yourself, son?”
“No, sir, I did not,” the man replies glumly.
“So that’s it then, there’s nothing I can do to save it?”
“Not a thing, sir.”
“Can I at least take my hat and coat?”
“You may, sir.” The sergeant or commander or whatever he is says before looking at me: “You’ll have to leave that here, son”
“What, the book?” I ask, angry at the patronizing ‘son’ as I’m over forty and the sergeant a decade younger at least.
“Yes.”
I place the book on the counter while Jimmy the Bookman disappears to the back to find his hat and coat.
Pokemon Go & Snapchat
Thank you, sir,” the sergeant says to Jimmy the Bookman. We’re outside the book store now. “And the key?”
Jimmy the Bookman gives him the key.
As we walk away, the rest of the goon squad starts taking the books outta the book store and into the waiting vans.
Soon it will be bonfire of the vanities, tomes to ash, utter disintegration.
“Where are you gonna go now, Jimmy?” I ask him.
“Home.”
“And what about you, son, what are you going to do?”
“Home, too, I guess.”
“No more books. No more knowledge .”
“It aiyn’t that bad, Jimmy, sure we’ve still got it, just not in the form we like it.”
“Books have been around for a long time. We need them.”
“But it looks like the world doesn’t.”
“I guess so.”
Technology — it aiyn’t like when I was young and Pokemon Go and Snapchat were the dope.
“What will they use it for?” I ask Jimmy the Bookman.
“I have no idea. Another Amazon store, selling dime-a-dozen gadgets that everybody wants but nobody needs.”
“Like books, I guess, Jimmy.”
“Don’t say such things, son.”
“But they’re dead, they’re gone.”
There will be a resurrection one day, you can count on that.”
“I don’t count on it.”
“Listen, I’ve got to go. I don’t want to listen to your nonsense.”
“Okay, Jimmy. I’ll see you around.”
Milk
I go home.
I look into the face and voice recognition box at the door and say into it:
“Hello, it’s me.”
The door opens and I go inside.
My wife’s in the kitchen.
“Did you buy the milk?” she says, looking at me all empty-handed.
“No, I forgot.”
“Did you go there?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard they closed it.”
“Yeah, they did. And you know about it.”
“What for, why did you go?” she says in a tone that is both scolding and bitter.
“To say goodbye to it.”
“Well, good riddance, I say.”
“C’mon, babe, it’s books we’re talking about.”
“Books can go to hell. Who needs ‘em?”
“I do, babe. I do!”
Final Message
Do you see, do you see how it will be? That will be the last one, the last ever book store, and I was there to witness it.
I was a rebel. A fighter for the cause I knew we’d lose.
And do you know why? Because of you, that’s why. I see you all, on your phones, on your other devices, because you’ve given up reading from the printed page. The mass of information, the ocean of content — some useful, while most is not — is all you want. Social media gives you everything you need. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram bottle feed you the lot in bite-sized chunks. Not too long, because you don’t like that, do you? You prefer it small, that way you can understand it. That’s why the printed word isn’t useful anymore. Too many trees have been cut down, though the ancient bibliophiles, those educated in the old ways, the good ways, the ways that seem a fight against progress, will try to tell you otherwise.
Technology, not books, will make you weaker. The self-absorption of social media and its vacuous message will dominate you and kill the intellectual curiosity that books once held for you.
Silly people.
Thanks for reading Writers Guild — A Smedian publication
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