Spotlight on Bookstores: *Kepler's* in Menlo Park

I am delighted to welcome Linda Gray Sexton to the blog today!  A memoirist (Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton) and novelist (Rituals, Mirror Images, Points of Light and Private Acts), she is the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Anne Sexton.

Ms. Sexton’s recent memoir, Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide, is about her struggle with her own mental illness and the legacy of suicide left to her by her mother and her mother’s family.  Of Half in Love, Joyce Maynard, author of Labor Day and At Home in the World says: “With brutal honesty and total lack of self-pity or sentimentality, Linda Sexton has dared to explore a subject more taboo than almost any other: not only suicide, but what comes after, for survivors.”

Ms. Sexton is on a virtual book tour with TLC Book Tours, and offers here a wonderful essay about successful efforts to save an independent book store.  Her full tour schedule is listed at the end of this post.  You are invited to join her community of fans and learn more about Linda at her official website, lindagraysexton.com.

Shortly after its fiftieth anniversary in 2005, in a small suburb near San Francisco, an independent bookstore closed its doors. Kepler’s Books had succumbed to the pressure of chains like Barnes and Noble, and Borders, as well as to the plethora of e-books flooding the market and beginning to be available on Amazon.com.  The “book economy” had done them in.

Then something astonishing happened, something unheard of, as far as I know, in the history of small, owner-run bookstores in the U.S: before Clark Kepler could declare bankruptcy, the surrounding community rallied round, motivated by what can only be called sorrow.  What did those who lived in Menlo Park, and those who didn’t, do to save the store?  There was a group protest outside doors now locked against an adoring public.  Soon letters of support and love were plastered over the signs of closure pasted on the big glass windows.  There were queries such as these: “How can I help?”  “Can I donate monthly?”

Hence, an idea was born.  SaveKeplers.com was soon a website riding the internet airways, and a group of local business investors, aided by the efforts of bereft citizens who donated small amounts, plowed in financial assistance so that the store could reopen.  Even a “Literary Circle” was later established, through which people could actually belong to the store and support it with a yearly membership.

Why were people so committed to reopening the independent store, even though some fessed up to having bought books at a chain?  It was the atmosphere, they explained, all that made Kepler’s unique from the places where only the commercial bestsellers were piled high on the tables just inside the door.  At Kepler’s even the smallest, least well-known author, had a chance to be front and center.

I discovered Kepler’s when I first moved to the Menlo Park area in 1989.  Back in the New York suburbs from which I had migrated, there wasn’t a local store even remotely like this one.  I marveled at the way I could go in and ask any salesperson—any salesperson at all—for a recommendation as either a gift or for my own personal reading, and receive what would prove to be an on-target opinion.

They had always read the books they “hand sold” and could tell you in detail why they loved the book and why you would, too.  There is a shelf filled with “staff picks” that always yields admirable fruit.  Over the years, I discovered many authors new to me in just this way: Isabel Allende, Susan Cheever, Laurie Colwin, Mary Karr, Salman Rushdie.  The list goes on and on, and I couldn’t possibly name even those I’ve read off this shelf this year alone.

When a book I want eludes me, I go to the information desk and ask for help, and a staff member takes me personally to the shelf and hands it to me; how differently it is handled in the chains, where an anonymous finger from behind the register points in some hard-to-follow general direction amidst thousands of books.

I am the author of four novels and two memoirs and I have read at some of the events that Kepler’s sponsors nearly every night of the week.  I am happy to report that I’ll be reading there again in January for the publication of my new memoir, Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide. Why am I so happy for this event to be the kick-off for my publicity tour?  Why does every author in—and even out—of our area crave an invitation to read at Kepler’s?

Through its reputation alone, Kepler’s draws remarkably sizeable crowds, thus pleasing the authors immensely. They sometimes film the readings and then they are run on a local television station, which is great for your book’s promotion. But I have also been to readings by less recognizable writers, readings that had only six or seven attending on some cold and rainy night, when the staff comes and fills the chairs in support, so that the author won’t be speaking to an empty house.

Feeling comfortable with the ambiance, audiences don’t hesitate to raise their hands and ask questions.  On the walls of the bookstore are ever-changing candid photos of those who have, over the years, read at Kepler’s, and I consider myself lucky enough to be up there among them once in while.  And then, of course, there is the pleasure in attending the readings by other writers, both those who are favorites and those who are new to me.

Maybe what I love best about Kepler’s is the wide, cushy armchairs positioned strategically throughout the store—against the enormous glass windows that catch the morning light, among the shelves of carefully organized books with all their multi-colored jackets, or in the children’s section, that is peaceful in the evening when little ones are tucked into their beds.

No one hassles you about pulling a book down off the shelf, beginning to read, and growing immersed.  Sometimes you absorb the first line and immediately take the book to the register, and sometimes you read two chapters and don’t buy.  No one bothers you about it, or urges you to move on.  It’s a place of light and comfort and knowledge, in harmony with books and caring people.  What a pleasure.  At Kepler’s, I am absolutely at home.

Thank you, Linda!  I hope to get out to the West Coast – some day! – and visit Kepler’s.

To read more about Linda and Half in Love, please visit these other stops on her TLC Book Tour.  Aside from learning about the author, reading reviews and guest posts … and maybe a giveaway, you may discover a new-to-you blog:

• Monday, January 17th:  Savvy Verse and Wit
• Tuesday, January 18th:  Life in Review
• Wednesday, January 19th:  Regular Rumination
• Thursday, January 20th:  Book Club Classics!
• Monday, January 24th:  Necromancy Never Pays
• Tuesday, January 25th:  Colloquium
• Thursday, January 27th:  Chaotic Compendiums
• Friday, January 28th:  Rundpinne
• Monday, January 30th:  Boarding in My Forties
• Wednesday, February 2nd:  The Bookworm
• Wednesday, February 9th:  In the Next Room
• Friday, February 11th:  Stuff as Dreams are Made On
• Tuesday, February 15th:  Red Headed Book Child
• Thursday, February 17th:  She Reads and Reads