The Bookstore Book
Ron Kolm
The Bookstore Book is a memoir by Ron Kolm based on his long career working in New York City bookstores. It has poetry and prose sections, and a long interview with him about the closing of Coliseum Bookstore by Kathryn Adisman. He met a number of celebrities while working in various stores over the years, among them Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and the former Governor of California, Jerry Brown, who figure in pieces in the book.
Praise for The Bookstore Book
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"Ron Kolm has seen a lot in his half-century as a Manhattan bookseller – street dramas starring desperate characters, the foibles and hyped-up egos of celebrity customers, and vaunted hipster scenes of the past. In his Bookstore Book, Kolm captures it all and delivers it via an entertaining mix of poetry and prose. Ron Kolm is a primo raconteur. Ron Kolm rocks!"
—Peter Bushyeager, author of In the Green Oval and Citadel Luncheonette.
"What fun I had wandering through dusty shelves and stacking memories with Ron Kolm. The Strand, St Mark’s, Coliseum, all the places where I bought or “borrowed” books. A great cast of characters wanders through the pages. Burroughs, Patti, Tom Verlaine, Corso, and many others we New Yorkers consider friends even if we’ve never met, and then there’s Ron, whose voice I heard throughout, sitting on a barstool telling his stories, reciting his poems, just the way it’s always been."
—Puma Perl, writer/poet, author of Birthdays Before and After.
"A half-century of gritty cool is retooled in these flickering tales of a storied career. As a bookstore manager who morphed into a beloved literary favorite of the Underground, Ron Kolm has lived the life, meeting his heroes and scribing his saga with an “aw shucks” style that could melt Frodo’s ring. Laugh, shake your head, and get a lump in your throat at his courage and humanity."
—Jeff Wright, author of Party Everywhere, editor of Live Mag!
"In The Bookstore Book, Ron Kolm takes us on a journey through his 50-year career in New York City bookstores. Told with Kolm’s folksy lemme buy you beer narration, we hear about the literary legends who’ve walked into Kolm’s bookstore universe – Ginsburg, Bukowski, Phillip Roth, to name a few. A great combination of prose and poetry, this is one you are going to just kick off your shoes and relax with. A treasure, really, of stories set in the gritty city told through the eyes of Ron Kolm, a NYC treasure himself. This is one you will want to read again and again."
—Francine Witte, author of Café Crazy and Just Outside the Tunnel of Love.
"If you are looking for a good book, Ron Kolm’s The Bookstore Book is for you. I have to tell you that the author’s love of books and NYC bookstores, and the years he has dedicated working in them, create a memoir that is compelling and has truth in every breath, personable insights, common folks and celebrities among the bookshelves, poetry and prose, and even life and death. I have already given The Bookstore Book as a gift to a friend."
—Don Yorty, author of A Few Swimmers Appear, Spring Sonnets and What Night Forgets.
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"Ron Kolm’s new book is an ode to an era, to the magic of books, to authors he revered and those he worked with or ran into on the job. A brilliant storyteller, Kolm enlightens and entertains readers with crisp, colorful prose and poetry based on interactions with quirky bosses, writers, and customers. With the city’s landmark bookstores as backdrop, he writes collages based on relics found in used books and publishes works as a member of the edgy Unbearable Poets. A passionate tribute to the printed page, The Bookstore book offers a treasure of stories that will delight readers and fellow bibliophiles."
—Amy Barone, author of Defying Extinction and We Became Summer.
"Ron Kolm's genre defying memoir reads like manna from heaven sure to delight any bibliophile worth their salt. As a poet and writer who reads his work all over the city, we know how Ron spends his nights. Now we know how he spends his days. And what a rich life it is. Populated with a cast of characters you will recognize; the pages of The Bookstore Book give us a warm embrace of a vanishing New York. This volume belongs in your hands and then on your shelf; more than an artifact, it is a celebration of the joy and soul-sustaining force provided by sitting down with a really good book."
—Danny Shot, author of WORKS.
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"Here are Ron Kolm's funnaminal records of his fifty-year career of working in New York City's independent bookstores. Ron witnessed the liberal Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, buying Hitler’s Mein Kampf and chased sexist Ugly George up Broadway. Hilarious. He's cooked up a story about enjoying a late lunch at The Russian Tea Room with Philip Roth’s Wiedergänger who is ordering a plateful of Cotelette à la Kiev. And he tells us that he couldn't order books because Kathy Acker of Blood and Guts in High School fame was talking endlessly on the New Morning Bookstore’s phone. The Bookstore Book is an exhilarating literary monument to the dying trade of bookselling."
—Jürgen Schneider, author of RMX, the Vienna diary Anilingasse and two books about James Joyce.
"Ron Kolm documents his bibliophile’s journey in The Bookstore Book: A Memoir. Bookstores are places to meander aisles, searching for treasures of knowledge and gratification on the shelves. We get to meet Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Philip Roth, Joseph Heller’s daughter, Erica, and an ancient street icon called Ugly George. Never dull, always an adventure on each page, enticing the reader to ask for more of Kolm’s “tales of the city.”
—Patricia Carragon, author of Angel Fire and Meowku and curator/editor-in-chief of Brownstone Poets.
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