The Magnificent Mondragon

A doctors office turned center for the County Democratic Committee turned a hub for Lewisburg, the building which is now home to Mondragon Books has seen many businesses come and go and has had to undergo various interior changes over the years. Although Mondragon is quite small due to its structure, owner Sarajean utilizes the space by making sure books are stacked so high, barely any wall space can be seen. The makeup of the hidden bookstore is surely anything but that of an ordinary corporate bookstore with its maze-like pathways and hidden rooms.

Mondragon has two entrances, one leading in from the outside and one leading to the actual bookstore. Entering into the second door, I was greeted by the “Front Room.” This room highlighted the owner, Sarajean’s personality the most as many books about cooking, health, nature, and overall self-sufficiency are standing on their shelves.

As I wandered through the tiny, yet filled bookstore I noticed that there is a room for everyone. With the wide variety of books all carefully placed in their own rooms, I had seen that me, as well as my partners, had been drawn to and developed a meaning toward a specific room.

In order to gain that attachment, it is required that a visitor browses around and focuses on the books within each room as there is no specific label to any room which means one would not know what types of books are in a room until they walk into it. Being adventurous, I found myself enjoying that aspect for I could create my own themes as I closely observed each book carefully and drew my own conclusions. With this feature, I had become aware of my immediate fondness for not only the bookstore but to one specific room because I was able to create my own unique meaning, ultimately generating a bond.

My first instance with realizing this was when I entered the “Side Room”, the first room I was drawn to. I named this room the Geography Room. Consisting of secondary sources about different countries as well as the history of those countries and foreign affairs with a window front table to relax, read, and enjoy a cup of coffee from the Front Room’s coffee closet. While being the most aesthetically pleasing, I found myself rushing out due to my great disliking for anything about history. That room was surely not for me. However, individuals who enjoy politics as well as expanding their knowledge of the world will find pleasure in exploring this part of Mondragon.

The layout of the Side Room consisting of books relating to the history of countries as well as a coffee table aligned with the window.

The layout of the Middle Room.
Black History Flashcards placed eye level to customers.

Opposite of the Side Room I headed to the Middle Room, the second biggest room next to the Front Room. I found myself amazed by the selection of books and items placed upon the shelves, books relating to topics regarding race, philosophy, and religion, surrounding the walls and in the middle of the room, two sofa chairs on either side of a small bookshelf containing Shakespeare.  This room also held many small items like one dollar postcards, pins, and buttons. My favorite object of all? The Black History flashcards laying on the second highest level of a bookshelf, just about eye level to me. Being as I am African American and understanding that Lewisburg is not the most diverse town, I appreciated that those cards were not only made a part of Mondragon but placed in an area where any customer can see them. The Middle Room had made a strong impression on me and proved to be my favorite room out of the whole store as it symbolized diversity and inclusion through the art of literature.

Hallway Leading to the Back Room.

To the right of the entrance of the Middle Room is the hallway leading to the Back Room. At first sight, I thought the hallway was off limits to customers and was hesitant to peek as I believed it lead to a break room or the owner’s room. However, it was soon discovered that the hallway leads to the Back Room above all, the hallway even held books!

Back Room holding fantasy, fiction, sci-fi, and more!

The Back Room hold fiction, poetry, Sci-fi, fantasy, and children’s fiction, vinyls, handmade coasters which resembles mini vinyls from classic albums, and many signs labeling the discounts of certain books. Individuals with strong imaginations who consider themselves free spirited and enjoy opening their minds while reading a wide variety of fiction and sci-fy novels will not be let down when entering this room.

Aside from the attachment different customers develop to each room or their own specific room in the store, the owners love and commitment for their bookstore is also taken into mind as their layout speaks for each owners personality. Seeing Sarajean put pieces of herself into this store makes it easier for customers who know her to also form a close relationship with Mondragon. Is it just Sarajean reflecting her personality into her bookstore that draws all of these individuals in or is there more to that? Could it also be that that Sarajean is well respected throughout the community so her store is able to thrive based on that? Or is her book selection just magnificent?

Visiting Mondragon Books and hearing what Sarajean had to say about her collection of books and also detecting how much “literary education” (Miller, 201) she has acquired throughout her years of running this store is certainly beyond impressive. Definitely not something one would hear from an employee working at a corporate bookstore. Laura J Miller highlights in her book, Reluctant Capitalist Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption, that “independents see themselves, in contrast to chains, as devoted to books for their own sake rather than as a means to acquire monetary reward” (Miller, 165) which is something I noticed about Mondragon.

Sarajean’s knowledge of these books and of her customers allows her to select literature that she knows shoppers will appreciate and want to buy because they would be interested. With the layout of her store, customers know exactly where to visit whereas in a corporate bookstore, not only is the space so big that it is harder to develop an attachment due to being overwhelmed by what feels like an abundance of books. But these books are also continuously moved around so that a shopper will hopefully become distracted while in the process of searching for what they want. The purpose of Mondragon’s layout is to provide a relaxing environment that allows customers to gain an attachment so that they are able to feel comfortable while wandering through the maze-like rooms and also draw them into coming back because they want to, not because they have to.

Sources

Map created by Thinglink

Text

Miller, Laura J. Reluctant Capitalists Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption. University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Images
Courtesy of Desiree Bratton

For Sale: Books (and Small Children, Too!)

As a senior undergrad student I have a hard time imagining that the temptation of discount books and a cozy promise of caffeine could fail to appeal to anyone. Interestingly enough, the owners of the Politics and Prose bookstore seem to believe the same thing. When you enter the bookstore, the stairs to the lower floor are located directly in front of you. Above are large signs advertising the sale books and the Modern Times Coffeehouse awaiting patrons just downstairs.

I initially believed that having the stairs at the entrance that lead to the lower level of the bookstore made for an awkward design in the building layout. After extensively touring the bookstore via Google Maps (which is definitely easier said than done), I decided that perhaps having the lower level stairs at the entrance is not awkward at all. It allows for the checkout area to be located near the entrance, which offers more potential for employees of the bookstore to engage patrons, a surefire indicator that you are in an independent bookstore, not a chain bookstore whose employees tend to keep a distance from shoppers. The stairs at the entrance also offer the bookstore patron another exciting selection of pathways from the moment they walk in the store.

Below are two floor plans of the Politics and Prose bookstore. If you hover over the image, small tags will appear. For the main level, I would recommend following my train of thought by beginning in the Fiction Room and then going around the store in a counterclockwise manner. For the lower level, my experience was more scattered, thanks to the complexity of Google Maps. I would recommend taking a more orderly, clockwise path starting with the discussion tables.

If you are interested in a fictional series, the Fiction Room on your left after entering the bookstore is your main objective. Inside you are not only surrounded on all sides by the store’s fiction selection, but you can also find the Opus machine. There are less than 100 of these machines in the world. Clear walls allow you to see how the machine is printing on the inside, so when Opus is in action it will often draw a crowd of onlookers to the Fiction Room. A so-called Espresso Book Machine, Opus is able to print paperbacks on demand in five minutes or less. With that unofficial slogan that sounds an awful lot like a cheap pizza business, Opus is keeping the printed book relevant in the age of e-books and tablets.

If instead of going left into the Fiction Room you stay on the main floor and go to the right, you will encounter the part of the store that I honestly have the least interest in. This part of my digital tour was what really made me fit the name of the bookstore to its merchandise. Although the rest of the bookstore is not entirely political, it is certainly interspersed with politically associated genres more than your average bookstore. 

PROSE-popup
Susan Tobias, a patron of Politics & Prose, relaxing in the aesthetically pleasing Art section. And yes, tucked away on the Art bookshelf behind her is a book with President Obama’s face on the cover.

At the entrance you will encounter today’s current events in the form of The New York Times, and continue on to the Politics and History section. Passing between the International Studies and Science sections, you find another entire corner of the bookstore designated to Washington, D.C,Finally, at the very back of the store, framed by sunlit windows and an open, aesthetically pleasing space, is the Arts section. If ever there were an instance in my mind of prioritizing the “top shelf,” this would be it; the Arts section located in the most pleasing place on the main floor, and the cheaper books and walking petri dishes section located down below in the lower level.

If you are neither interested in the Fiction Room nor the rest of the politics-infused portion of the main floor, then I would assume you are either a patron looking for affordable books or a mother of young children clambering to get their hands on a new elementary fiction story. Either way, heading straight downstairs to a rejuvenating latte is the way you want to go. Even if the occasional open ceiling concept gives off a more industrial style vibe, all of the shelves and books appear to be kept organized. The designated areas for children are colorful and inviting, whereas the discussion table area is simpler, with an open and clean space meant for work that is separate than what would be done in the coffeehouse. In the coffeehouse, there seems to be a unique energy compared to the rest of the store, where I imagine contemporary jazz would be playing underneath light chatter and the occasional coffee grinder.


After taking this entire tour digitally and with the help of the constantly busy staff members of Politics and Prose, I had to wonder at the placement of all of these genres. As Brown wrote, “The story of objects asserting themselves as things, then, is the story of a changed relation to the human subject and thus the story of ho the thing really names less an object than a particular subject-object relation” (Brown, 4). In less convoluted terms, I believe there is something to be said for housing the sale books with the parenting and children’s books. Sale books tend to have that vibe that less people want them, or else they have seen better days on the market. Putting these books in the vicinity of children could simply have been strategic damage control. After all, if a child gets his or her hands on a sale book, far fewer people are going to worry about the condition of that book in the timeframe of the child picking it up and a parent quickly plucking it out of their hands. Likewise, having a coffee house in a bookshop always poses the potential for spilled drinks or scone crumbs getting near preciously valued books. If a sale book were to get blueberry muffin droppings on it, it would have less value than if it were on a pristine, gold-gilded book set of Shakespeare works.

I do wonder, however, if there is not more to this layout than initially meets the eye. Although both the original owners and the current owners have children (and some grandchildren), all of them are older and grown. Perhaps both sets of owners have a lesser tolerance for young children than they are willing to openly admit, and so decide to put that section of their bookstore downstairs. As Benjamin put it, “inheritance is the soundest way of acquiring a collection” (66). Perhaps when Graham and Muscatine took over Politics and Prose they also took on the original owners’ viewpoints and values for certain genres and clientele. After all, neither set of owners could avoid a children’s section altogether, given the family-filled demographic of the Chevy Chase neighborhood. An idea that I found quite interesting to come out of all of this is that, although they are delegated to the lower level of the store, the children still get their own history section. Clearly political topics are an encouraged reading subject by the owners of Politics and Prose, regardless of the age of their patrons.

 

Sources:

Text

Benjamin, Walter, Hannah Arendt, and Harry Zohn. Illuminations; Edited with an Introduction by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn. London: Cape, 1970. Print.

Brown, Bill. “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry 28.1 (2001): 1-22. JSTOR. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.

“Frequently Asked Questions.” Politics and Prose. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2016.

Muscatine, Lissa. “Coffeehouse Renovation Begins in January.” Politics and Prose. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

Righthand, Jess. “Print Your Own Book at Politics & Prose.” Washington Post. The Washinton Post, 15 Dec. 2011. Web. 15 Mar. 2016.

 

Images:

“Politics and Prose.” Map. Google Maps. Google, July 2010. Web. 14 March 2016.

Torbati, Yeganeh June. “Bookstore in Capital Seeks Its Next Chapter.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 22 June 2010. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

Slaughter-Graham, Nicole. “Eat and See Your Way Through Washington D.C. Like a Local.” Beyond Words: A Lifestyle Magazine Inspired by Sylvia Day. N.p., 02 Mar. 2016. Web. 18 Mar. 2016.