Robert Schuster’s piece in the Village Voice “The Gotham Book Mart’s Final Chapter” confirms that we haven’t heard the last of it.
“Something’s cooking,” and “important things happening” is what people in the know are saying.
“Don’t issue a death certificate just yet” says Schuster.
Why is this not surprising? The more you talked to veteran booksellers after the auction shenanigans the more you got the sense that this was not the end. There were still too many unanswered questions for it to be over. At minimum, the sheer carnival of the auction guaranteed a second act.
The auctioner Eliot Millman sums up the owner Andreas Brown’s “haphazard businessman” behavior this way:
“The book market attracts a lot of collectors and quirky-type individuals that get enamored with this kind of merchandise.”
Is Brown really a book collector masquerading as a bookseller?
Could the auctioneer of all people have exposed the truth. That Brown is unfit to run the Gotham Book Mart because he is a collector at heart and in no condition to maintain the Gotham Book Mart legend? “Had book-loving clouded bookkeeping?” (and bookselling!)
This proves, contrary to the practices of the 3 major online bookselling sites’ (Amazon, AbeBooks and Alibris) strategy of no barrier to entry, that not everyone can be a bookseller.
This is a classic tale.
Book Patrol’s post on the auction “The Gotham Incident“