Thanks to the many bloggers who picked up my plea to help save Chapters bookstore, a literary bastion in downtown DC.
It wasn't just litbloggers who heard the call, several authors stepped forward as well. Here's a note by Richard McCann, author of the amazing Mother of Sorrows, letting us know what Chapters has meant to him.
In Praise of Chapters, by Richard McCann
Let me put it plainly: I love Chapters Bookstore. When I moved back to Washington in the 1980s—after twenty years of living elsewhere and abroad—I went to Chapters to hear Susanna Moore read from her novel The Whiteness of Bones. (This was even before Chapters moved to K Street, long before it moved to its current fine location on 11th Street NW, right in the heart of downtown.) I'd been away from Washington a long time, and I wasn't all that happy to have moved back. But I remember thinking that Chapters was there, and it was going to make a crucial difference in my life back in D.C., particularly since I had just started writing again, after some years of writing nothing at all. That evening, listening to Susanna Moore—I remember that Moore shook her silver bracelets a few times, and that she answered one question from the audience by informing us that she was speaking as a former Miss Aluminum—I thought, Well, I'd like to read at Chapters some day. That's what I'd like to do. That was the mantra I carried with me whenever I went through its doors, most often to find a book of poems that I could find at no other bookstore. Of course, some years later, it was a pleasure to read there, as one might imagine. It was a pleasure to read there a few times, in fact. But for me, the blend of enchantment and familiarity that I associate with Chapters—standing among writers, listening to writers whom I admire reading from their new works—has never vanished, not for a moment, and I'm still as happy as can be whenever I walk through its doors and see Terri Merz standing at the counter, sorting through the books that she and Steve love with all of their hearts. It's one of the crucial places of our lives.
I was in the other day and the clerks were just so persistent and pestering -- a new mandate? One bugged me three times in ten minutes. I suspect he had a problem with cognition or recognition of human faces. I asked him what Heather's Picks were (is that her name?) He said it was the personal choice of the CEO. I said, "A CEO, well she has no taste then." He said, "Oh I think she does." I replied, "No she does not." He walked away and not five minutes later he asked me if I needed help. Well, thanks anyway Chapters for carrying my recent novel.
Posted by: ChristopherWillard | November 27, 2005 at 01:09 AM
In this blog...Have a poem? I wanna read infront of people. About independents day. I wanna read on 31st of August.
Posted by: Shyashya | July 31, 2008 at 08:39 AM