10-16 May 2007
GONE—BOOK TRAFFIC
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ntering Book Traffic on Leliegracht these days, one is faced with a room full of nearempty shelves. Since its owner Herbert Lewitz died last year, the store has been in everything-must-go mode. Now, all that remains are unwanted leftovers—too obscure even for those normally hunting for obscurities—and several rows of empty wooden shelves. The man who has been running Book Traffic for the greater part of its existence is known simply as ‘Basil’. Born in Belgium to Ukrainian parents, Basil grew up in New York City, and moved to Amsterdam in 1972. ‘I loved New York in the Fifties and Sixties,’ he says, ‘but then it became not a good place to be anymore. Nixon was just running for his second period, and I knew he would win. So I decided it was time to leave the States.’ Like so many of the people who come to stay in Amsterdam, and who constitute such an important part of the city’s soul, Basil had never planned to live for a long period of time. ‘Originally,’ he says, ‘I was just travelling through. But you know how it is with Amsterdam. You come here, you sit down in a café, and the next thing you know is you’ve been here for thirty years. ‘In the late Eighties, I helped Herb set up Book Traffic,’ says Basil. Before that, Lewitz had owned another store for used English-language books, together with a man called Barry Klinger: The Book Exchange on Kloveniersburgwal. But the two parted, and Lewitz went on to open Book Traffic. ‘We opened on 5 March 1988. I worked there for ten years, then took a year off to travel, came back in 2000 and stayed for another five years,’ Basil says. Then he moved to Antwerp, where he still lives today. Basil is a book person in hart en ziel. ‘The first time I ever walked into a library, I was sold,’ he says. ‘I loved everything about it: the shelves laden with books, and the smell. And there’s a social aspect about it, too—at a bookstore, you can meet the most interesting people.’ Book Traffic was frequented by a diverse set of customers. ‘All sorts of people came in, from professors to near clochards, who would pay me with the pennies they had just begged off someone on the street. A few writers and poets came in regularly, too. Cees Noteboom was here sometimes. And Boudewijn Büch used to come by on his bicycle, and sit down for a chat. ‘I had a great time at Book Traffic. It was a fun place to be. We used to play music all the time, everything from classical to country and western, and from jazz to fado. And people used to come by for a chat, as well as for buying books. I’ve had some great discussions there. And I made some of my best friends there, too. One day, a guy walked in and asked for Colin Wilson’s Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs. Unfortunately, we didn’t have that book, but I told him I could make him a cup of tea and we’d just talk about it. He remains my best friend to this day. ‘Another day, a man walked in. He was wearing a baseball cap and looked like a typical American tourist. After looking around for a while, he came up to me. “I see you’ve got a few of my
Amsterdam Weekly books,” he drawled in a broad American accent. “Do you want me to sign them?” It turned out it was Saul Bellow. And he signed all of his books—even the paperbacks. He said he had had a nostalgic hit when he walked into the store, because it reminded him of the book stores in Chicago in the Fifties.’ But things have changed, and times are hard for the used-book trade. Basil blames it on several factors. ‘Of course, the internet does a lot of damage to shops like this. But the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the recession that followed had an impact, too. There were much [fewer] American tourists, and the locals got a bit tighter with their money, too. ‘And the city has changed so much, too. Like what they’re doing now with the Noord-Zuidlijn. They’re cutting the heart of the city right out. It’s one of the
STAYING—THE BOOK EXCHANGE
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he Book Exchange is a shop of four rooms divided across several floors. According to their business card, the stock consists of more than 80,000 books, with genres ranging from literature to social sciences and art books to science fiction—surely every book lover’s paradise. Jeff Stone has been the owner of The Book Exchange only since 2005, but he’s been there from the very beginning. ‘Barry Klinger and Herbert Lewitz opened up the store together,’ he says. ‘And I helped them set it up. Since that time, I worked there until about 1997. Then I quit, but came back to help out in 2002, because Barry fell ill.’ Sitting on a barstool in De Engelenbewaarder, the jazz café opposite his shop,
‘EVERY SINGLE BOOK I OWN, I REMEMBER WHERE I BOUGHT IT. THAT ROMANTIC ASPECT IS LOST WHEN YOU BUY BOOKS ONLINE.’
reasons I left Amsterdam. We all felt it wasn’t our town anymore. Especially the city centre—it’s becoming like some sort of theme park. ‘Back then, I always said that Amsterdam was like the Times Square of Europe. Everybody came through at some point. And Book Traffic was like a microcosm of it all. Sometimes it was really busy, sometimes it was dead all day—and I’d sit inside, like in an aquarium, and watch the world go by.’ To handle the increased competition created by internet booksellers, Book Traffic started cooperating with a centralised online dealer. ‘But we only sold a small percentage of our stock through them. Of course, it’s a completely different thing,’ Basil says. ‘The tactile part of dealing with books is lost, and that’s the part that’s so important to any true book lover. Every single book I own, I remember where I bought it. That romantic aspect is lost when you buy books online. And online, you also only buy books you specifically look for. In proper bookshops, especially secondhand ones, it’s all about serendipity. You don’t look for something—you find something.’
Stone describes The Book Exchange’s former owner. ‘Barry had an amazing knowledge of books. He put his whole life into the store. And when he wasn’t there, he was here.’ Stone taps his stool. ‘This was his chair. Barry was a big jazz fan. He could recognise any saxophone player after hearing three notes.’ The shop has a long history, as Stone explains: ‘The Book Exchange opened up in 1978. Back then, it was the only place in town to get English-language books. Barry and Herbert had discovered a real hole in the market. More and more foreigners started to live in Amsterdam, and English-language books became increasingly popular with the Dutch public as well. We had—and still have—tons of regular customers. ‘So, things were going good,’ Stone continues. ‘But pretty soon, after a few years of running the shop together, Barry and Herbert fell out, and Herbert went on to open up Book Traffic.’ What follows is a long and turbulent story. It includes personal altercations, torn-up wills, with a bit of bad blood thrown in for good measure. And it ends with Stone taking over the running of The Book Exchange after
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Klinger’s death. ‘Upon Barry’s death, The Book Exchange was left to Herbert Lewitz, and I had to buy it off him,’ Stone says. ‘Barry had asked me to be his partner for years, but I had always refused. You see, I never aspired to be a businessman. But in the end, you know... Barry was one of my best friends. And I had been there all the time—I knew how to handle things. It’s a very specialised trade, this. ‘This shop wouldn’t exist anymore, had it not been for Jeff,’ Ralph Kats agrees. Kats has been working at The Book Exchange for the past six years. Having begun working at the shop as a part-time job to supplement his studies, Kats is now, according to Stone, the ‘main man’ at The Book Exchange. ‘Jeff saved the shop,’ Kats says. ‘You see, to run a store like this, you need to have a passion for it. It’s not like there’s much money in it—you need to put your heart in.’ ‘The heyday of secondhand bookshops has gone,’ Jeff says. Kats agrees. They, too, blame the internet. ‘The internet means the death of businesses like this,’ Kats says. And it’s not only because rare books are more easily accessible these days. Internet shopping has also had an impact on customers’ behaviour in regular book stores. ‘The fact that you can order nearly every book online has changed people’s attitudes,’ says Kats ‘People used to come here and rummage around for hours. Nowadays, they usually walk in and ask for a specific book. And if we haven’t got it, they walk straight out again.’ One of The Book Exchange’s regular customers, a small, red-haired woman who has just walked in, agrees. ‘People don’t nose around anymore,’ she says. ‘Although that is the great part of it!’ ‘Exactly!’ Kats agrees. ‘You never know what you will find. Sometimes people come by and discover, by chance, that one rare book they’ve been looking for, for the past twenty-five years. You wouldn’t believe how happy that makes some people! And that’s what I love this job for.’ There is still a large number of regular customers. And they aren’t just restricted to locals. ‘There are people coming over from Germany and Belgium to buy books here,’ Kats says, ‘often books from our science fiction department, which is quite large. Those customers only come once a year or so— but then they walk out with two Albert Heijn bags full of books.’ Still, the store is not afraid to move with the times: The Book Exchange, too, is planning a joint venture with an internet bookseller. ‘That way, you can easily expand your customer bases to include those people who can’t be bothered anymore to rummage around in a store,’ says Kats. But the shop proper will remain the heart of the trade, both Stone and Kats confirm. ‘This has always been—and will always be—a bricks and mortar business,’ Stone emphasises. ‘It’s about being in contact with the customers. You meet all sorts of people here. Once I have to sit behind a computer, selling books out of a garage—that’s the point where I’m going to stop.’ Back at Book Traffic, meanwhile, the shelves are almost bare. In the store a customer can be heard asking to buy a few of them. He gets them at a good price. Everything must go.