Bible Depot Helps Them That Help Themselves

With its vibrant blue exterior, Bible Depot catches the eye of passing visitors and locals alike. Well, the paint job isn’t the most eye-catching aspect of the outside of the store, not when ‘Bible Depot” is sprawled, with large white letters, across the side of the building that faces out onto Front Street. Though, its old yellow façade might have been more intriguing to the eye but more crowded aesthetically. Its doors have been open for going on 88 years, having opened in 1931 originally on Main Street but then moving in the early 1940s to where it is now on Front Street. Sunbury is not a particularly wealthy town, with the median household income averaging around $32,000, according to the Data USA (Data USA). But the amount of businesses on the main road is telling that businesses still thrive in this area.

Another large part of Sunbury is the community of churches, there are many Christian churches, as well as other places of worship in the area surrounding the bookstore. This store, everything it has done for the community, all of it, started with little bibles handed out by the Reverend who founded the store. And then, when the WKOK-AM radio station went on the air in 1933, Reverend Ney appeared every week to advertise for the store.

Shortly after Nancy assumed ownership in 1970, pastors from the local churches came into the store and threatened to boycott Bible Depot for carrying a controversial chick tract – a short evangelical gospel tract. Nancy said she spent a lot of time debating about whether to discontinue the chick tract or to continue to sell it and after a lot of praying she decided not to carry the chick tract anymore. The store was never actually boycotted, but this is a particularly outstanding instance of discomfort between the store and the community. But this store has built a strong community, one that has grown through the hardships of area floods and local controversy. This store has become a staple within Sunbury, a true symbol representing the community of which it is a part. Bible Depot tells us a story through its history from its simple beginnings with Reverend Ney handing out Bibles door to door to Nancy’s current ownership of this treasure hunt of a store.

The store controls its own narrative by the way it is set up to appease its customers. This store has become particularly significant as it is not only a store, but a home to its owner. Bible Depot represents an inspiring tale of small business culture through how a tiny, family-run bookstore became what it is today. All the customers who enter the store are welcomed graciously and are considered to be a part of that family. One of the most important things about Bible Depot is how accepting it is of a diversity of religious backgrounds and all walks of life. It is a place that is constantly changing, not necessarily always in terms of its physical appearance, but because of the people that visit and shape the store into the place that it is and the role it plays within the Sunbury community.

 

Our experiences visiting Bible Depot gave us a lot of insight into the type of identity and mission the store is trying to project. As you walk through the store, you are fully immersed in a collection that has been carefully curated by Nancy Ney to reflect not only her personal interests, but the interests of everyone in Sunbury and the surrounding community. Tim Cresswell helps us to understand Bible Depot as it is immersed in this community not just as a space, but as a place – a meaningful location defined by its physical location, its local and its sense of place (Cresswell). Using the historical contrasting ideas of place, mentioned by Laura Miller, as reactionary and exclusionary and as open and progressive (constantly contingent and in flux) it seems that somehow, Bible Depot fits both of these descriptors.

Bible Depot functions as a gathering place – a place for anyone to congregate and commune within a “family” setting. When we look at the world as a world of places we see “attachments and connections between people and place. We see worlds of meaning and experience” (Cresswell 11). Bible Depot is an oasis in which a world of meaning and experience has been created within its walls. Nancy herself told us that Bible Depot is a place full of miracles, a place where people may not necessarily come in to buy things but might just come in to have a seat and have someone to talk to, to comfort them and to give them a coffee. She claims that it’s a people place and that “we’re here to bless others with the blessings God has given to us and when we see a need, we ask God for guidance and we pray for people and try to give them guidance.” This home-like quality of Bible Depot establishes it as not only a store where customers come to purchase things they may need or want, but as an actual “place,” a gathering, a community.

Bible Depot is greatly defined by its history, its owner, and its customers, but the one thing around which all these influences is centered is the collection housed within the store. The diversity and seemingly chaotic nature of the collection is at first a little confusing to visitors to the store. However, the more you examine the way the collection is structured, you begin to see that it is, in fact, a type of organized chaos and that everything has been carefully selected and placed exactly where it is meant to be.

To understand the store’s collection, you first have to appreciate its definition of literature. To do this, you have to have a firm grasp on the concept of self-care. There is a common misconception that self-care is a very individualized process, only applicable or usable by one person for themself. However, the term itself implies some entity taking care of itself; this could be an individual or even a community. In the case of Bible Depot, the definition of literature endorses a narrative of self-care both at the individual and the community level. Because Nancy Ney has created a collection with the interests of her community in mind, her collection acts as self-care for that entire community. We can see this literature of self-care on the individual level through the books in the “main” book room, housing books on divorce, prayer, counseling, etc. Yet on the other side of the store, there is a room we frequently call the “children’s room,” containing anything from posters and board games to Sunday school supplies, activity books, sheet music, stickers, and more. It seems, at first, difficult to fit this room into the store’s literature as defined by self-care. However, this seems to be a room that subscribes more to the idea of community self-care. This room provides customers with ways to better their community either through music, through fellowship and games, or through sharing religion with children. Furthermore, in the front room in which the cash register sits, there are many display cases of jewelry and other trinkets of either something symbolically religious or engraved with a scripture verse. These, too, fit into the narrative of self-care as those who purchase these items are seeking to carry a piece of reassurance and hope with them, close to their hearts wherever they go.

It is true that Bible Depot is filled with many “things,” but these things are more than just mere objects lined up along shelves. In the fifth installment of the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, a group of Hogwarts students, who lovingly call themselves Dumbledore’s Army, come across a room known as the “Room of Requirement.” This room somehow knows what its visitors need and upon entering the room, anything and everything someone needs is readily available within its stone walls. Sometimes more than one person may need the same thing and the room will adapt to those needs. All one has to do to make the room appear is walk past the section of blank wall three times concentrating very deeply on what they need. Bible Depot is, in a way, a Room of Requirement for the Susquehanna Valley community. Because the store provides self-help to both the individual and the community it holds anything and everything someone might neeed and specifically holds the things that people may not even know they need, but should have, whether that’s children or adults. It’s like a scavenger hunt resource room just waiting to be discovered by those who need it.

It is very difficult to walk into Bible Depot and not immediately feel imbued with the spirit and attitude with which the store is so heavily infused. While visitors to the store are, yes, surrounded by objects, they are also surrounded by “things.” Bruno Latour tells us that when we have little investment in something we are more likely to view things as mere objects and not as these multidimensional “things.” Though all the objects in the store have a monetary value assigned to them, they also have an inherent spiritual and personal value. Nancy Ney views all the objects in her store as “things” and has ascribed so much meaning and attachment to each thing that this kind of connection is therefore encouraged in every customer who walks through her doors. The contents of the store, as well as the store itself, are not mere tools, but are necessarily things that can provide fulfillment, enrichment, and meaning to our lives.

In Philipp Bloom’s book To Have and to Hold, he explains that “by surrounding ourselves with objects we hope to immerse ourselves in what is represented by them, with what they represent to us who are unwilling to accept that it will always remain elusive and cannot be locked into things” (Bloom 156). Here we see that Bloom has a bit of a different definition of “things” from Latour, one that probably aligns more closely to Latour’s conception of objects. However, Bloom’s idea is still valid. It is often not easy to distill the meaning of objects and therefore we must make the conscious effort to immerse ourselves in what is represented by them. Likewise, we must also examine what these objects represent to us though these representations may sometimes seem elusive and difficult to decipher.

This idea very much reflects our experience getting to know Bible Depot. At first it was exceedingly difficult to understand the meaning or purpose of any of the objects individually and consequently the message of the store and everything it stands for. But to find the answer, one need look no further than the heart of the store itself – the Bible Room. This room is the most important “place” in the store and is also home to the most important ”thing” in the store. The Bible Room is quite literally the heart of the bookstore situated just between Nancy’s home and the store around it. It is representative of the origins of Bible Depot and all the history that has accompanied it, as well as being the store’s namesake. When we consider all the ways in which Bible Depot is a gathering, a collection of “things” and a place in which literature is understood as a self-conscious narrative of self-care and reflection for the individual and the community, we can see that this small blue house on nestled along the Susquehanna River is much more than a store or resource. It is an oasis, a home, an idyllic escape and refuge for all who wish for or require it.

 

 

 Citations 

Text 

Benjamin, Walter. “Unpacking My Library.” Illuminations, edited by Hannah Ardent, Schocken Books, pp. 59–67. 

Bloom, Philipp. To Have and To Hold. Harry N. Abrams, 2004. 

Delaney, Carol. “Spatial Locations.” Investigating Culture, John Wiley & Sons, 2011, pp. 37–67 

Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concerns.” JSTOR, The University of Chicago Press, May 2004, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/421123?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents. 

Miller, Peter. “The Chronicle Review.” How Objects Speak, 10 Sept. 2014, s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/blackboard.learn.xythos.prod/57a9d55a4370f/585932?response-content-disposition=inline; filename*=UTF-8”How Objects Speak – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.pdf&response-content-type=application/pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20190501T184226Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=21600&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIL7WQYDOOHAZJGWQ/20190501/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=7b820ab50c309fb3a0250aac3974fb25cf3902ca4168533d961c5f7e262fe5a4. 

Rowling, J.K. Order of the Phoneix. Bloomsbury Publisher, 1997. 

Online  

Data USA “Employment by Industries” chart. https://datausa.io/profile/geo/sunbury-pa/ 

“Google Maps.” Google Maps. Google, n.d. Web. 1 May 2019, http://maps.google.com/. 

“Time Graphics.” Time Graphic. Time.Grapjic, n.d. Web. 1 May 2019, https://time.graphics/line/234320 

Thinglink,” Thinglink.com. Web. 1 May 2019 

Pictures 

Bucci, John. Bible DepotSunbury, Pennsylvania

Chobanoff, Anna. Bible Depot, 1 May 2019, Sunbury, Pennsylvania

WKOK Radio Station. <http://www.eagle107.com/Eagle_107/107_Station_History.htm>

The Qualifications of “Classic” Literature in D.J. Ernst Used and Rare Books

D.J. Ernst, an independent bookstore located on Market Street in Selinsgrove.

In Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, nestled on North Market Street, sits a bookstore that’s been serving its community for 44 years. In its display windows, used books surround electric candles, inviting passersby to peer in and, just maybe, walk amongst the books that line the shelves within. Hanging beside the receding door is a wooden, weather-worn sign, welcoming potential customers with the name of the bookstore: DJ Ernst Books, Used & Rare.

Donald J. Ernst—known to the students and faculty of the nearby Susquehanna University as “Homer”—has owned and operated the single-room store since he was a college student in the 1970s. Looking around the space, there’s an ever-present sense that this is a place in which time stands still, and the once-forgotten is given a spotlight. From the cloth-bound collections to the vintage orange-crate shelves to the old cash register that came with the store, DJ Ernst proudly shows its age and revels in its history.

Age, history, and a “classic” status are important features in the types of literature Ernst keep in his store. With the books being used or rare copies, it’s clear that many of these books have histories we can only begin to imagine. For DJ Ernst, literature is made up of well-written classics that both reflect Homer’s personal taste and the tastes of the communities he serves.

The Past

Donald J. Ernst (A.K.A. Homer)

The bookstore was first established on February 1st, 1975. Ernst’s father had always had a passion for literature as he enjoyed collecting and reselling books out of his house. He passed down this joy to his son as they began to bond over literature in the ’60s. As their passion grew, Ernst’s father decided to open the very store that still stands today and is now owned by his son.

In the text “A Global Sense of Place,” Tim Cresswell reiterates Massey’s definition of place as, “[a] site of multiple identities and histories” (72). From what was previously a women’s shoe store, to what is now known as DJ Ernst Books, it is safe to say this particular building has been filled with multiple identities and histories. To add to this, along with the building, Ernst was also left with an antique cash register that is still there today.

The contents of the store are in a way a part of a time capsule, one formed when Market Street started to slow down. Preserving “Old Selinsgrove” became the store’s aesthetic. The memorabilia hanging on the walls–the postcards, the pictures of his family, the articles cut outs from newspapers about his store, the multiple maps of Pennsylvania–are points in his timeline that makes up Ernst’s time as a bookseller. The antique cash register is a tribute to a time when Market Street was busy, before the mall was built on 11/15. It is one of the oldest stores on Market Street and it proudly shows.

One of Ernst’s many interests is used, rare books, and he’s not alone. Antique books are some of the staples of the store. Throughout the years he has managed to find a signed copy of a Robert Frost book, as well as a signed Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass. These old books help define what literature is in Homer’s definition.  To further explain what his definition of literature is, it is well-written classics and antique books that both reflect his personal taste as well as the tastes of those within the community. Ernst says he stocks books that he believes are interesting and are worth passing the knowledge on to others or are books everyone should read at least once in their life. I can agree with that.

A copy of Bookman’s Weekly Magazine, the publication Ernst and his father used to use to buy and sell used and rare books across the country.

While other stores in Market Street have struggled to stay open through the years, DJ Ernst has persisted. The store has expanded by creating an online presence. In the early 2000s when he joined Biblio and Abebooks, it allowed him to accept credit cards and to sell worldwide. He also created a Facebook page, where he posts books that he finds and updates his customers on what he has in stock. However, he never added a credit card scanner to the physical store. It was not part of the environment he wanted to have. Homer wants to keep the good parts of the history in his store and allow customers to experience it by purchasing the classics that he has for sale.

The Bookstore

The structure of the store is a clear layout of self-identity embodying a living and breathing time capsule of classics. Looking into this time capsule is a large “timeline” of Ernst finding out who he was, but also learning what has molded his experience into the bookseller that he is today.

Ernst’s store embeds various versions of his history through the structure and layout he provides within the store. At first glance you see a giant, awkwardly shaped display of books smack in the middle of the store. This shelf is made up of small and tall shelves, a table, and a couple of random wooden pieces placed nicely together. This system holds a variation of books that are displayed either facing you when you first walk in, spine out, or even the cover facing up. It is not the type of shelving you would see at a chain bookstore since they would display their books in rows and columns of straightforward shelving, but there is true character behind this funky shape that makes his system so attractive. It is almost as if each piece was put there at a different time in his life, expanding the ability to display his collection of books.

This giant mix-matched shelving is shifted a little to the left when you walk in. Peering through the right-side window enables the customer to face Ernst as he sits at his front counter.  As an assumption, Ernst was probably trying to find the best way to display the most amount of books that he had, so his system of this awkward shelving worked for him and his store. Ernst cleverly placed the shelving in the center forming a pathway around the perimeter of his store, which directs the overall traffic throughout the building. This is a creative way to keep the viewer intrigued and their eyes constantly active, making it easier for a consumer to get “lost” within the store. Regardless of if the customer was to start their journey on the right or left side of the store they always walked around the entire perimeter either once, or multiple times.

Most books are placed on the shelves, but there are also three rows of books stacked on the floor, spine up, and in front of the shelves filling the perimeter of the store. Whether you look up to the ceiling, or down to your feet the place is completely covered in books. Ernst talks about not really knowing how to be a bookseller when he started out and this experience stemming from a passion that he shared with his father. You can tell by the setup of the store that Ernst doesn’t look into the nit-picky details of how to organize the business; it is merely groomed out of that hobby that he formed the store from.

A few of the shelves that make up the History section in DJ Ernst, along with the fiction books on the floor.

Ernst mentioned how he is a “specialist in early Pennsylvania history and local history,” which is not apparent until truly digging into the identity of the store.  You can tell that he is proud of the accomplishments through the various newspapers and articles hanging around the room. Whether it is a shout out from the town’s newspaper, or him and his father inside the store, every moment has been captured and hung up. You can tell that Ernst holds things close to him through the way he has structured his store and his layout.

The chair that faces Ernst’s front counter.

An example of such would be how Ernst has placed the chair facing the front counter that he sits behind. He mentions that individuals from the Selinsgrove community always come in and sit on the worn-out rocking chair with a colorful knitted blanket to talk for hours. It could range from talking about Philosophy to WWII and even for some, a trip after the bar for a “how are you” conversation. And most times these community members leave his store empty-handed, but the openness that Ernst gives for a conversation and a place to sit back and relax makes the community feel welcome. He never passes on the opportunity to learn new things as he helps his customer’s branch out on topics that they are interested in. When thinking about this generation, it is known for basing basic communication skills off of technology whether it is texting or even email. Ernst holds onto the past when facing the chair towards his desk only forcing this “abnormal” form of communication to occur. Whether it is the structure of his store or the things that embedded within it, the history is apparent, and it is not going away as long as Ernst is there.

Within DJ Ernst Books, the collections of books themselves are perfectly indicative of the bookseller and

Just one of the many books Ernst keeps in his bookstore.

the community surrounding him. DJ Ernst Books is clearly not a typical bookstore, at least, not in the way modern consumers understand them to be in the world of corporate stores and standardized inventories. In true fashion of the personal bookstore, Homer doesn’t refer to popular bestsellers lists to stock his shelves. His collections differ greatly from the standardized models of corporate bookstores and his inventory is not motivated by profit or marketability. Personal bookstores almost always differ from corporate ones in this sense, as seen in Reluctant Capitalists by Laura J. Miller. Like many other personal bookstores, DJ Ernst Books is, instead, purely a reflection of the owner’s taste, interests, preferences, and distinct definitions of literature.

Those distinct definitions, however, can be difficult to discern with the way the collection is organized throughout. DJ Ernst has subgenres and niche categories galore, all fit in tightly with each other in this small space. If the collection is supposed to reflect the bookseller’s tastes in literature, the only thing that becomes clear upon entering is that DJ Ernst loves to read as many books as he can. Children’s Illustration Books are next to Ancient History, books on music are near books on war, and on the other side of the store, there are hunting books next to American Literature, as well as reports of historical explorations next to World Literature. Many people are so used to walking into a bookstore and finding nothing but modern bestsellers and the most popular books hot off the presses. DJ Ernst Books, however, overflows with books from a wide array of genres, time periods, and aesthetics.

The other thing that becomes immediately clear is that Homer has a deep respect for the book itself as a material. While there is an almost overwhelming number of subgenres, all of them are clearly defined in handwritten labels, and many other labels pasted throughout the space are handwritten warnings to treat the books with great care, as if they were made of glass. It’s clear that Homer values the book as a special kind of object, which is also evident in the aesthetics of the books he chooses to place on high, important pedestals and shelves. There are antique, leather-bound books, and more rare and ornate tomes presented in high places, in the center display for people to admire, or even in the back shelves away from customer’s hands. However, on the other hand, the simple paperbacks are lined up in rows on the floors in front of most of the bookcases.

Most notably is the sheer number of historical genres, especially on the left side of the store. From history books on the wars big and small, to Pennsylvanian history, and even a section just labeled “Europe,” it is clear that the past and knowledge are immensely important to Homer. This is clear in almost everything about this personal bookstore, such as the unchanged interior design and the ancient cash register on the counter. He has even kept a magazine from decades before where regional collectors and booksellers such as himself could keep in touch and share product, despite the magazine being obsolete now and many of those contacts outdated. This is why the bookstore isn’t categorized with genres like fantasy, science fiction, romance, or self-help. Homer isn’t interested in these kinds of books, and he doesn’t tend to stock them unless they stand out to him or he knows one of the regular customers might be interested. Instead, the definition of literature presented in this bookstore’s collection reflects the classics and the unique, especially if they are reminiscent of an older era.

Beside the door are books on hunting, fishing, and wildlife, all of which relate to the area’s interest in hunting.

In addition to the bookstore’s personal taste, Homer attributes a lot of his inventory to other people in the surrounding Selinsgrove area and many of his contacts who are collectors. DJ Ernst Books isn’t solely a reflection of the bookseller’s personal taste but also a reflection of the community it is so ingrained in. For example, if this was just a personal bookstore, there wouldn’t be any sci-fi paperbacks, seeing as how Homer doesn’t like the genre. This also explains the hunting books, the books about fishing and nature, as well as books written by faculty from the creative writing department at Susquehanna University. Ultimately, DJ Ernst Books is a personal bookstore whose collection reflects the personal taste and identity of the bookseller, just as people are products of their communities.

:

The Present

While the number of independent bookstores is on the decline, one that still remains today on Market Street is DJ Ernst Books.

A view of DJ Ernst from Market Street.

At D.J. Ernst Books, people don’t come just for the books, they visit for the conversations with Homer. Also, people visit for the unique and personalized experience that only an independent bookstore can create. In his book The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Lewis Buzbee reflects on this idea. Buzbee explains, “My excitement at being in a bookstore comes from the place itself, the understanding that I can stay here for as long as need be” (4). Unlike other book merchants eager to make a sale, Homer doesn’t rush his customers. People are free to browse until the store closes. Buzbee as a bookseller reminds me of Homer, as both gravitate towards old paperbacks, talk freely with their customers, and create a helpful atmosphere in the store. When Buzbee talks about the “excitement” of the bookstore coming from the sense of place, Homer’s bookstore fits this description. The “excitement” of Homer’s bookstore is the atmosphere the store creates, a sense of home. It’s the comfortable and relaxed atmosphere of an independent bookstore that makes it feel homey.

When looking back on how Homer defines literature, Buzbee touched on another concept. His definition of good literature can be summed up in this quote: “I fall into these worlds again, not as much for the enchantment, but for the familiarity” (35). Homer believes that literature is defined as classic books, the “familiarity” stories that many generations have read. Similar to Buzbee, Homer believes in the power of the familiar, that these old books have a reason for maintaining their celebrated status. Homer has built his business around the classic paperback favorites that keep customers engaged with the store, the books that are the most “familiar.”

Another bookseller that reminds me of Homer is Kathleen in the film You’ve Got Mail (1998). Kathleen runs an independent bookstore and she knows all her customers by name. Although her store in the film appears nothing like Homer’s décor, they both appeal to a local audience. Kathleen runs a children’s bookstore and recommends her favorite books to her customers. Homer runs an independent bookstore that’s frequented by mainly college students and retired residents of Susquehanna. What makes these two booksellers similar is their passion for good literature, the quality content between the covers.

A more specific example of what Homer defines as literature is his selection of John Steinbeck novels. Homer himself has been recently discovering Steinbeck’s works. He stocks them now because he’s reading all the works and discussing them with customers. Buzbee commented on Steinbeck by writing that “John Steinbeck has always been a controversial writer. More of his works have been banned than those of nearly any other American writer in the last sixty years” (42). It’s this attention, this acknowledgment that Steinbeck’s books have been read by so many, that Buzbee uses to define the work as literature. Homer doesn’t care whether Steinbeck is “controversial” or not, because he enjoys the books and the response they receive from customers. Since people of all ages and generations have read Steinbeck and enjoyed his work, it is good literature to Homer. Homer defines good literature by how his customers respond to the work in question, his opinions on it, and the impact the book has had on the world. It’s the relaxed atmosphere, the familiar books, and the excellent customer service that makes Homer’s store so special to locals.

Conclusion

What makes a book or a type of literature a “classic” is highly personal. At DJ Ernst, that personal understanding of classic literature–old, rare, and well-written–mixes with the wants and needs of Selinsgrove residents, Susquehanna students and faculty, and the people of Snyder County. This store’s stock, then, creates a beautiful union between the past and the present that can stand the test of time.

Sources

Film:

Ephron, Nora, et al. You’ve Got Mail. Warner Bros., 1998.

Graphics:

Floor plan by Erin Reid, created via ThingLink

Map by Monet Polny, created via Google

Photos by Erin Reid, Valerie Erickson, Monet Polny, Laurel Jakucs, Ty Bricker, and Eneida Giboyeaux

“DJ Ernst.” New Timeline – Timeline, time.graphics/line/234048.

Text:

Buzbee, Lewis. The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop A Memoir, A History. Graywolf Press, 2008.

Cresswell, Tim. “Place: A Short Introduction” A Global Sense of Place. Off Our Backs: pg. 72. Print

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

Choose Your Own Comics Shop

It’s Tuesday, 4:17 pm. Outside, the air is crisp and clear, and you can feel each breath as it rushes to fill your expanding lungs. You pull your jacket tighter. You had rushed quick as you could to Lewisburg, PA; three days ago, your friend had let you know about a comic shop in the town that you hadn’t known existed. You’re excited to see what it has to offer. The shop is on South 3rd Street, just off Market Street. When you arrive, you’re struck by how much it resembles a house. A large sign hangs out front, proudly proclaiming the name of the store to the world: Comics Metropolis. There’s a short set of stairs leading up to the entrance.

When you open the door, a chime sounds, and you hear a greeting from the room to your right. You peek your head in. The room is full of shelves stocked with thousands of comic books; at the front of the room is the counter, where a jovial gentleman sits: Albert Payne, one of the owners of the store. You return the greeting, still standing in the entryway of the store. There’s a set of stairs in front of you, a couple boxes printed with images of various superheroes, and a small kiosk populated by comics inspired by Disney. To your left, you see a room full of action figures. Ceiling-high shelves are stocked with figures from comics and popular movies, all of varying sizes and detail. You have two options before you: to the left or the right?

If you want to go left, click here.                                                                           If you want to go right, click here.

 

You head into the gaming room, and inside is Laura Payne, the other owner of the store, sorting comics on the long wooden table. She tells you that this is what they do with shipments every Tuesday; Comics Metropolis is one of the few comic stores that bags and boards comics free of charge for customers, and all comics on the shelve are wrapped up to prevent damage.

The room has the perfect feel for a room you would love to play games in, with the big windows and spacious area. It fits the tabletop gamer aesthetic you’re familiar with fantastically. As you watch Laura carefully package each comic book, you recall an essay you had read in one of your classes: “Unpacking My Library” by Walter Benjamin, from his book Illuminations. The essay deals with, at parts, the methods and reasoning behind why people collect things, primarily books. Benjamin writes “I am not exaggerating when I say that to a true collector the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth” (Benjamin, 61). This particular passage from the essay strikes you as you recall the numerous old comics decorating the walls, in particular that which Albert had shown you as you entered the main comics room.

The comic is only worth so much as it is because it’s important to somebody. Here, in the store, it sits, doing nothing but looking pretty, but if and when someone takes the effort to procure it, the comic will be given new life. It will impact someone’s life, whether they be a lifelong fan or a new collector. New meanin g will be attributed to it. When it was printed, it was merely a fun story for children. Now, however, it harkens back to the golden age, to when you could grab a comic from a newsstand for a nickel and have a fun afternoon with your friends reading about how Spider-Man thwarts the villainous Electro. To the buyer, that comic means so much more in their possession than it does growing dusty on a shelf.

To return to the comic book room, click here.                                   To go to the action figure room, click here.

 

You head to the room decorated with action figures. The center of the room is dominated by a large display of figures, all in their boxes, like a wall of trophies. Rows and rows of identical figures hang from white metal hooks. The far wall houses an impressive collection of Funko Pop! figurines on the lower half of the wall, the top dedicated to impressive Transformer models.

All four corners of the room have a dedicated shelf. One is full of excess Funko Pop! characters and action figure sets. To the left of the entrance to the room is a shelf dedicated to the famous faces of Marvel Comics.

The thing surprising about this room’s book display is the fact that it contains real paperback books. You hadn’t expected to find real books in a comic books shop, and yet here you stand, face to face with that exact situation. You look closely at the books, and notice that each of them seem to bear the crest of the Warhammer 40,000 series. Warhammer 40,000 is a multi-form spanning science fiction/fantasy world, encompassing books, buildable models, and video games.

You gaze around the room in awe of the sheer number of different action figures that exist, the store’s inventory not nearly exhaustive, and recall a passage from James Clifford’s book Collections. The passage comes from the chapter “On Collecting Art and Culture”: “Thus the self that must possess but cannot have it all learns to select, order, classify in hierarchies–to make “good” collections” (Clifford, 218). Clifford is talking here about the way that people decide what is worth collecting. Many of these action figures are certainly fit for collecting, and as you glance around the room, you remember that action figures are one of the most highly sought after collectibles on the market; rare and mint-condition figures can sell for over seven thousand dollars.

To you, Clifford’s essay hits right at home here, especially surrounded by action figures as you currently are. The only reason that these items wind up costing so much is that they mean something to somebody, that they ignite within individuals “an excessive, sometimes even rapacious need to have” and so these items are increased in their monetary value because of the cultural value that they have to people. You wonder if any of the figures around you will someday fetch such a high price.

The small room off of the action figure room piques your interest, and you pop your head in. It is stocked full of roleplaying tabletop games, with everything from Dungeons and Dragons miniatures and guides to five levels of expansions for Betrayal at the House on the Hill. The room also features a collection of Star Wars and Warhammer 40K scale models to build and paint, with a display dedicated to the decorating tools.

If you want to head to the comics room, click here. If you want to reexamine the action figure room, click here.

 

You head to the comics room. You give Albert a nod where he sits behind the register, and notice through the glass casing that there are some comics inside. You head closer to examine them.

“These are some of our most expensive comics,” Albert says. “Do you want to take a closer look at our most expensive?” Without waiting for an answer, he reaches under the counter and pulls out a pristine edition of The Amazing Spider-Man. It’s the introduction of Electro. “Character introductions always sell for a lot. This particular comic is worth six-hundred dollars. Most expensive one we have here.”

Suitably impressed, you throw a glance around the walls of the comic room. There are comics in hard plastic sleeves lining the walls, each of them adorned with a hefty price tag. These comics all seem to be worth at least twenty dollars, some reaching up to over one hundred dollars.

The comics themselves fill all the shelves in the room. In the back right corner, you catch sight of the newest editions of current comics series, all organized alphabetically, and as you follow the shelves, you notice they travel around the shop clockwise. The big shelf taking up the middle of the room is also full of comics. You move to the back of the room, close to the second room opened off of the comic room, and find that the shelf in the middle is full of older comics. there are drawers all along the bottom of the shelf, also full of comics. These comics too are organized alphabetically but circle the room counterclockwise.

This layout is smart. You realize that if someone were to be checking out these old comics, they would be forced to move to the back of the room and circle around until they reach the shelf dedicated to the newest releases. A wanderer would pass every comic in the store, and with the eye-catching covers these issues all have, they would most likely be sucked into purchasing more than they bargained for. You yourself find your eyes drawn to the myriad covers in the room. They truly are beautiful.

The back wall has space dedicated to publications other than superhero comics, and you are drawn over to these shelves. There are, of course, superhero comics on these shelves, but contained in omnibuses rather than individual issues. Much more of the shelves are dedicated to graphic novels, and you spy a graphic adaptation of Moby Dick. There are manga high up on the shelves, and a window separates the two shelves of graphic novels. You can explore the second room branching off this one, or you can head to the other side of the store. Wherever it is you wind up heading, you know you’ll feel at home in Comics Metropolis.

To head to the gaming room, click here.                                           To go to the action figure room, click here.

 

Sources

All photos courtesy of Jacob Tashoff and Chris Naiman

Texts:
Benjamin, Walter. “Unpacking My Bookstore.” Illuminations. Mariner Books, 2018.

Clifford, James. “On Collecting Arts and Culture.” Harvard University Press, 1988.

Regional and Personal Expression: The Books of DJ Ernst

On a dreary Wednesday afternoon, I walk into DJ Ernst Used and Rare Bookstore. The owner–affectionately known as Homer–greets me from the check-out desk three quarters into the small, one-room store. The walls are lined in red wallpaper, old photos, and clippings from various magazines and newspapers. Busts and memorabilia line the shelves along the walls, and, just like everything else in the store, even the shelves themselves vary in size, shape, and materials. In a display in the middle of the store, books are stacked in make-shift shelves made from vintage wooden orange crates and on a table. The store holds decades of work and dedication to the collectors who come work with Homer online from around the country, the Susquehanna University students who stop in regularly, and especially to the Selinsgrove community that inhabits the land around it.

In regard to the local community, I say especially because of the configuration of the room. As Gilda Bruckman of the feminist bookstore New Words put it, “how we featured books had a big effect on who came in” (Spain 88). The same can be said for DJ Ernst. As mentioned in my last blog post, Homer’s main customers have always been those who wanted to learn more about American–and Pennsylvanian, in particular–history. If this is his main market, it’s no surprise then that the history books should be towards the front of the store and or in the window displays facing Market Street. On the other side of the store, books on hunting, guns, birds, and other subjects a hunter or nature enthusiast needs also sit at the front of the store. This isn’t a coincidence, either; many people in the Susquehanna Valley hunt and fish. In addition to this, being so close to the Susquehanna River increases the need and desire to have these books in stock for the community and to make them easily accessible to customers.

Major community members (regardless of their more temporary living situation) are the Susquehanna University students and faculty, who may come in to peruse Homer’s collection of philosophical texts or his collections of low-price poetry and fiction. He even keeps music books in his stock, and his relationship with the school’s Creative Writing program means that he carries faculty publications, which sit in a shelf in front of his desk. DJ Ernst is a place where students can feel a part of the Selinsgrove community and participate in it, while also providing a place to engage in conversations with the books and with Homer, as the comfy armchair between the shelves and the sales desk suggests. The space is small and meant to facilitate a dialogue regarding the books and what lay between their covers.

Not far from that armchair, I notice the amount of books about ships and the sea on the same wall as the history books. While they fit into the history section, there seems to be a special reason why there are so many. When I talk to Homer about them, he smiles excitedly.

“I’m a really big fan of ships,” he says. “Those are some of my favorites.”

For some reason, this surprises me. Despite knowing his love and enthusiasm for many of the books that come into his store, it still seems like a strange idea that someone would stock their favorite books in their store, even if they may not sell as quickly as everything else. Throughout her book, Reluctant Capitalists, Laura J. Miller talks about chain bookstores and how their book selection process and floor plans have been rationalized and standardized over the years, meaning that, regardless of what state or town I’m in, I can walk into any chain and find a similar layout and similar (if not the exact same) books on the shelves. Often, these books are able to sell quickly and have larger audiences. The chain bookstore stocks what sells in every store, and maybe only provides variation in books about the particular state the store is in. Having grown up in stores like Borders and Books-A-Million, I could always find the same books in the almost the exact same place in any store.

On the other hand, Homer ultimately decides what books are in the store and how they’re set up in the space. This contributes to the idea that DJ Ernst is more than an independent store; it’s a personal store that’s based in a person’s interests and understanding of the community in which it resides. Homer isn’t relying on national bestseller’s lists or national trend studies; his own interests and the books his customers are looking for (as well as whatever used books end up in his possession) create the stock. The bookstore’s personality (a major selling point independents use in competition with the chains) is formed by and for Homer and the community.

Continuing with the previous idea that what’s available and easy to access informs who the customers are, Homer also happens to stock books that only a collector can imagine having. Here, the idea is not so much about what’s in the book, but rather what the book is and how old it is. As I talk to Homer, he points to some books stacked on the floor. He tells me that they’re early-edition Oz books, and my eyes grow wide. Such books would cost a fortune; I know that even if I had my wallet on me, there’s no way I could even afford one of them.

“People are always looking for copies of these books for their collections,” Homer says, delighted that I’m amazed by the bright hardcover books. “These’ll sell quickly.”

It’s clear that these aren’t the paperbacks that I’d find on the floor of the main part of the bookstore. These books are special, almost like gold. They could have serious deformities on the inside–a printer could have messed them up and made them illegible–and someone would still want them because such rare books are unique. Not everyone can say they have a full collection of early-edition Oz books, after all. Sometimes, a book has meaning beyond what’s between the covers. Merely owning these books, knowing their history and how their stories influenced American pop culture, is enough to shell out a thousand or two dollars. The book becomes, as Miller and booklovers the world over call it, a sacred object, something worth special treatment and reverence. Even if these books end up shipped off to another state, just having them there infuses the space with an air of importance.

Before I leave, I take a glance around at the eclectic mix of books along the walls and on the central display table. I look at them and see the imprint of the community and of the uniqueness of the books on the place, and I see how they’ve made the place both communal and personal.

Sources

Floor plan drawn by Erin Reid, edited through ThingLink by Erin Reid

Text

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

Spain, Daphne. “Feminist Bookstores: Building Identity.” Constructive Feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. 84-110.

The Anatomy of a (Mon)Dragon

When you first enter Mondragon, you do not actually enter the physical store. Instead, you enter a long hallway that leads up into the apartments. The hallway is lined with books. If you remember from my last post, this is the hallway in which people take free magazines, post flyers for local events, and sometimes take the occasional book or two for reading when the store is closed. The front door to Mondragon sits among these shelves of books like the teeth to the mouth of a dragon.

 

You enter the store and enter the “Front Room” (as labelled by Sarajane). Like the hallway, it is cluttered with books. Everywhere your eye can see, there is most likely a book. Except when there’s not. When there’s not, there is art from local artists or a record player that exudes the sounds of jazz. To your right is where the worker sits, usually surrounded by books. And then in a little corner of the Front Room is a free coffee nook. You can take a mug and pour some coffee or hot water for tea and add whatever you like to make your coffee exactly the way you wish.

***

Just beyond the coffee nook is a hallway. There are three options to go down. There is the “Side Room,” the bathroom, and the “Middle Room.” You go to the Side Room and see, again, a cluttering of books and art. In front of you is a bench and table. To your left there is a hole in the wall. This bookshop used to be a doctor’s office and the Side Room used to be where the receptionists would sit. As you peruse the selection of books, you notice that they mostly deal with international history. When you start travelling on your right side, you start with US History from the beginning. As you move along, you get to the International History section. This section takes up the largest wall in this room. The next section of books you hit then is the Economics section. Before you know it, you are back in the hallway.

***

You continue into the Middle Room. As usual, this room is packed with books, more so than the rest due to the island in the middle of the room housing their Shakespeare collection. The amount of books in this room may intimidate you, so you decide to check out half of the collection of books in this room before you head on over to the room full of novels. As you do this, you see a selection of plays from various playwrights throughout history. And before you head into the hall, you stop to look at a small wall of books covering film and media.

You step into the hall and see a small bookshelf covering a miscellaneous selection of genres from sports to literary criticism to comedy.

***

You finally find the “Back Room.” The Back Room has a lot of books but surprisingly not as many as the other rooms. One and a quarter walls are covered with fiction top to bottom. Rare copies of fiction are placed at the top of the shelves to be displayed. Three quarters of another wall is a mixture of nonfiction, poetry, and literary criticism. At the end of this grouping of books, on a table by the window, sits a table with baskets of records of many genres and a variety of sizes. Looking through the fiction section, you find books that you have seen before or heard of before. You pick up the ones that have been recommended to you.

***

Leaving the Back Room, you go back down the hallway, but now from a different angle. You can see the Front Room through the cut out where the register sits.

You enter the Middle Room again, but now, the room seems less full than before. This time, you venture to the sections that you missed. You pass the LGBTQ/ Women/ Africana/ Indiginous Studies section. This section is larger than you expected; most used book stores don’t carry a section on diversity specifically. On the same wall, there are sections on Culture, Philosophy, and Art. And finally, there is a small collection of Graphic Novels. If you do not know where to look, you might miss them. This section is the smallest and in a tiny bookcase under a window. You have never heard of most of the Graphic Novels in this section. But, there are some that look really interesting to you.

***

By the time you return to the tiny hallway between the three first rooms, you realize you have finished drinking your coffee and have been done for a while. You make a stop in the bathroom to drop your mug off in the washing basket.

You then reenter the Front Room and realize you have missed so many books in this room. As a matter of fact, you have missed walls of books. When you explore, you find a section on Agriculture and Gardening, Cooking, Music Theory, and a small section on Birth/Life/Sex/Death which is mostly a tiny religious/ spiritual section. While in the Front Room, Tiger will probably snuggle up to you as you sit and look through the sections.

You buy the books you want after having a pleasant conversation with the owner about gardening and/or books and/or Tiger. Like that, you exit the store the way you came in.

***

Mondragon has a large, large, collection of books. As stated in previous posts, this collection is made up entirely of donated books from people in the surrounding area. Benjamin’s idea of a collection of books is particularly interesting, especially when analyzing Mondragon. Benjamin says, “The period, the region, the craftsmanship, the former ownership– for a true collector the whole background of an item adds up to a magic encyclopedia whose quintessence is the fate of his object.” (Benjamin 60). While Mondragon may not sell their rare books in store, every book feels rare in the way they are marketed. First, the experience of browsing allows the consumer to find treasures within the store, like the Graphic Novel section. Mondragon does not have the newest books coming out of the press, but what they do have are books with a history. In some books you can see the yellowing of the page, pen markings of certain sections, or the wear and tear on the bottom of a book from being taken on and off shelves. When a consumer shops used, they shop the history of the book. Like I said in my previous post, Mondragon feels like a shrine to books. But, along with being a shrine, it also destroys books. Sarajane categorizes and picks out books specifically to be used for craft nights in which people take apart a book and use it to create art. This art can be seen all around the store. This complicates Benjamin’s position before because, in a way, this destruction of books is a destruction of a collection. I am continually mystified by people who worship the physical object. Bookriot, a website for the modern bookworm, reported on the destruction of books in an article called, “Books Are Not Sacred Objects.” In this article they argue that books are simply an object. They quote Rachel Fehrschleiser, an editor in Big Six publishing,

“They used words like ‘sacred’ and ‘deface’ and ‘murder.’ My best guess is that these people have little experience working in a bookstore, library, or publishing house. Books are made from wood pulp. If they don’t sell, to wood pulp they return.” (Schinsky).

This goes back to an important part of Mondragon’s identity. Mondragon is a store that is conscientious to world politics and environmental conservation. With this destruction of books, they reduce, reuse, and recycle. Their stock is in a constant state of renewal. In my group’s interview with Sarajane, she told us that her office is cluttered with donated books that she simply cannot put out due to the large volume of books already in the store. This process of recycling books helps create more room in the sore, reduce waste in dumps, and still worships the book, but in a different way.

_________

MAP

Map courtesy of Sarajane Snyder.

IMAGES

Photos courtesy of Richard Berwind

SOURCES

Benjamin, Walter. “Illuminations.” Schocken Books: New York.

Schinsky, Rebecca J. “Books Are Not Sacred Objects.” BOOK RIOT, Riot New Media Group, 20 Aug. 2012, bookriot.com/2012/08/20/books-are-not-sacred-objects/.

Snyder, Sarajane. Personal interview. 22 February 2019.

At The Center Of It All: Bibles

When entering Bible Depot, the feeling of the merchandise leaning in close to whisper, “Come in, please, look around,” was close to my first experience when walking into the bookstore. When the door opens the customer is faced with shelves, a wide variety of a collection rests on these shelves, the most prominent being the first communion trinkets and mementos. My only thought to the placement of these items is a convenience for those coming in, perhaps for returning customers or local churchgoers of the area. At this point, the customer is led to the right, from the commonality of customers moving right (due to most people being right-handed) but another reason is that the left pathway is through a doorway, small and seemingly more closed off than the right path.

I myself took the right path on my first-time visit to Bible Depot. This area was of more interest to me on the basis that they had trinkets that had personalized items with names on them (I tell you now, they did not have the name I was looking for at the time (Tazwell, my brother) but not to fear, they may have yours!). This is of note because shop owners will place certain merchandise to the right because of the customer traffic and the higher probability of getting customers to purchase these items. This may be something that the owner of the bookstore has thought about, but also the layout of the bookstore makes this hard to combat as the store is physically built to be that way.

Another tactic for shop owners is to have the customer move through as much merchandise as possible before checkout so that the customers are incentivized to buy more on their trip. Bible Depot uses this tactic, but the use of it is so natural as the entire store has trinkets and small items that catch the eye. The current owner, Nancy, describes the style of the store as “crunchy”. While I don’t know exactly what that means I can interpret that this bookstore has a different feel than most other bookstores. Some sections are labeled by genre but most of the shelves are filled to the brim with miscellaneous objects and things, no room for anything else to be displayed without chaos erupting. Each item seems to have found a place in every nook and cranny of the store, which gives it a nostalgically claustrophobic feel (in the best way possible). The store comes alive with objects at every corner and gives the store a personality all of its own.

Photo by Anna Chobanoff

One room that seems especially alive is “The Bible Room”, this is not its actual name but it is what my group has come to call it. It’s aptly named as the only things on the shelves are bibles of all sorts, stretching from children’s bibles to large print, sizes from small to large. A desk stands in the middle with bookmarks and a small instructional on how to properly open your bible. The room is small, I can stretch my arms out and worry about hitting the other side. This room almost lies at the center of the store, you have to go through three doorways to get to it like it’s nestled into the building. Being the creative writer that I am, I can see how meaning can be grasped from the fact that the Bible Room rests at the center of this place. This store, everything it has done for the community, all of it, started with little bibles handed out by the Reverend who founded the store. And the bookstore is named Bible Depot, it makes sense that one room would be dedicated to this type of book. The Bible is, metaphorically, the foundation of this store and it is also, literally, the center of the store.

Photo by Anna Chobanoff

While the placement of the books, and other items, is important to the overall layout of a bookstore the items themselves hold stories and sentimental weight. Look around yourself, do you see items that you got recently, maybe some you bought a while ago? Do you see an item from your childhood that you’ve held onto for all these years? What story does it contain for you, what does it symbolize?

Walter Benjamin in “Unpacking My Library” says, “Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories” (60). Benjamin points out that while books and other items have a utilitarian value, to be used and read, they also contain memories and stories that mean something to the reader (the collector). Benjamin talks of a “magic circle” that is the collector’s alone, in which items are brought into and made special by the collector.

Photo by Brianna Simmons

When I first visited Bible Depot, Nancy was happy to speak with us and when we went to leave she offered us free rocks. These rocks were inscribed with phrases from the Bible. Normally, this wouldn’t hold any meaning to me, in fact, I could have not taken a rock if I truly did not want one. But I did take one (after searching for the phrase I liked the most) and when I got back to my room I displayed it on my desk with other trinkets. I took an item, seemingly with no “use” and put it in a place where I would see it daily. And now it holds that memory of the store, of Nancy, and of my group.

Peter Miller in his article “What Objects Mean” says, “The point was concisely stated by Ringelblum: If the ephemeral objects were not collected, and if the journalistic, social-science reports not commissioned, and if all of it were not preserved, then no one would believe that such a place had existed.” There is weight to the presence and preservation of books. Miller puts emphasis on artifacts from the Holocaust and the movement to preserve them to remember the past. As if the only way to capture the past is to hold onto it tightly and give meaning to objects in a memory’s place.

I believe Bible Depot captures this in a different way. It has stood as a staple for Sunbury since 1931. The building itself has seen the passage of time, it has experienced the floods just as much as the people and the people of the town give their own ideas of what Bible Depot means to them. If Bible Depot were to disappear, what would it leave behind to remember it by? The answer to that is the community it has built, the people that come in and volunteer to work, the people that shop and know Nancy personally. The bookstore gives life to the merchandise it sells and gives the items meaning, but it is the people that give meaning to the bookstore.

 

SOURCES

TEXT

Benjamin, Walter, et al. Illuminations: Schocken Books, 2013.

Miller, Peter N. “How Objects Speak.” Chronicle.com, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11 Aug. 2014, www.chronicle.com/article/How-Objects-Speak/148177/.

PHOTOS

Photos by Anna Chobanoff and Brianna Simmons

FLOOR PLAN

Designed on www.thinglink.com

DJ Ernst Books: A Passion that Has Stood the Test of Time

On February 1, 1975, Selinsgrove’s most notable independent bookstore, DJ Ernst Books, was founded. Neither Ernst nor his father, who originally opened the shop, had any real experience in bookselling. Business was booming for Ernst as he learned the ins and outs of bookselling on the job, and in the early process established a community with other booksellers, as well as with the community of Selinsgrove.

In the first thirty years of business, DJ Ernst Books’ niche products were a perfect fit for the small town of Selinsgrove. The bookstore’s specialty was local Pennsylvanian history and featured genealogies and immigration records. Many residents came to the bookstore in search of their family history, typically older customers looking to understand the legacies they would eventually pass on. In addition, DJ Ernst sold antique books, out of print editions, and unique historical texts such as records of expeditions during America’s era of discovery. Ernst’s bookstore thrived off of intentional and specific clients, those that would come specifically to complete collections or find special editions of a classic novel. The owner recalled how familiar he became with his customers because they had such specific interests that the average book buyer did not typically have. At one point, Ernst sold an entire stack of history books to a customer for $3,000 in one visit. In that sense, DJ Ernst Books catered to the community’s interests in a way that not many other bookstores in the area had done before. DJ Ernst Books became the most prominent source for classical or antique literature. The bookstore established itself within the community of Selinsgrove, and while the town is still standing, that community of antique finders has not seemed to continue into today.

This is an example of an antique book from DJ Ernst Books on local history

Ernst attributes this change in clientele interest to several factors. He said that people now just are not interested in classical or antique literature. To prove this, he would mention the names of classic illustrators or authors that would have held literary weight thirty years ago, but mean next to nothing to a younger generation. Most of his clientele upon first opening were older and some have since then passed away. Additionally, they seemed to be the only demographic knowledgeable of older texts, the only ones who understand how rare signed illustrations by Andrew Wyeth or Harrison Fisher are. As a result, customers with those specific interests that he has always catered to are in low supply, just as old books are in low supply for him. In this day in age, booksellers online are peddling those niche products so that customers do not have to physically go out and look for them in shops like DJ Ernst Books. The internet has made a large part of Ernst’s business null, as the bookseller pointed out. Now those interested in history do not have to shop around in a number of bookstores to find what they need, instead, they can simply search for that information online.

Most notably, however, the Internet has made the community of booksellers in the area that DJ Ernst once thrived in much different and scarce. The shop owner clarified that 50% of his sales were, in fact, to other booksellers. He would go to auctions and sell his wares at book fairs and markets, but not anymore. At this point, as Ernst confessed, he doesn’t know what the market looks like anymore, and it is no wonder considering the fact that booksellers do not communicate with each other in the way they used to. In the 60s and 70s, Ernst connected to a network of other booksellers through a magazine called Bookman’s Weekly. It acted as a directory for booksellers in the area to communicate and cross reference each other’s products to find what they needed for buying or for selling. If you wanted to stock up on more texts about Jewish history, you would pick up Bookman’s Weekly and look for a bookseller who carried them. Then, you would call him or stop by his shop to make a personal connection through a mutual love of literature. Bookselling was a personal and community-based process, but now through the Internet, it is impersonal and detached. Those other booksellers are also not as common as they used to be, many of whom have retired or passed away. Of course, this is a recurring and natural change in the bookselling market. As Laura J. Miller states in Reluctant Capitalists, “commerce is culturally marked: the way it is understood and practiced depends on specific historical and cultural contexts” (9). As the modern world digitizes, it is an eventuality that booksellers such as Ernst will be affected by that change.

Milestone chart

Nevertheless, DJ Ernst Books itself has not changed much on its own in the forty years it has been in business. The most significant event in its history since its founding was a fire in the neighboring building, the event of which the owner himself had not mentioned, but documented extensively on the store’s Facebook page in 2015. On September 18, 1990 the Romig building on the corner of the street and to the bookshop’s right caught fire and was destroyed. Thankfully, due to an extra layer of brick wall in between the two buildings, DJ Ernst Books was left standing largely undamaged. The owner and a few friends were able to save two truckloads of books, paintings, files, and other products while the firemen did their best to protect what was left. The bookshop was left slightly worse for wear, suffering some water and smoke damage, but not enough to destroy the building itself. Even still, and even after a large fire threatened to destroy it, the interior of the bookstore has barely changed in design since the 90s. Ernst’s bookstore is very much a personal endeavor, so much so that the interior reflects the man who runs it. The owner feels no need to change it because his feelings towards books and a place for books has not changed.

Another significant change that occurred in the 90s was the introduction of the Writer’s Institute in Susquehanna University of Selinsgrove. Writing professors Tom Bailey and Gary Fincke immediately established a working relationship with DJ Ernst Books. Students and sometimes entire classes were sent to the bookstore by writing professors with book recommendations or with the goal of appreciating and supporting older literature. Although this productive relationship has since slowed due to many of those professors moving on from the university, there is still an established connection. Students sometimes visit the store of their own accord and the Literature Club on campus has many books bought from DJ Ernst.

During the site visit, the owner said something that has stuck with me since. He said that the changes to his bookstore will not mean anything to us because we can never know what the shop truly felt like in its prime and that we can never understand exactly how different it is now. I would argue that Ernst himself can never truly understand what the world was like in the antique books that he is so passionate about. Even still, he reads them and absorbs the information, appreciates them, and encourages others to get lost in the narrative of a time period before theirs. That is what literature is for, to read experiences outside of our own, and that is what my team was doing at his bookstore. We were absorbing his tales of the history of his bookstore and gained a new appreciation for not only the longevity of his unique business, but also for the man who has kept it running for decades. He mirrored the qualities of the ideal bookseller that Morely describes in Parnassus on Wheels, someone who values the content of a book much more than the profit he gains from selling it. This is evident in the fact that even though he makes very little overhead, he continues to sell quality books to those he calls “book people,” those who also value literature from all time periods. Even while other independent shops in town have closed and gone out of business, even while the world has changed how bookselling is conducted, and even while a disaster was a few inches away from destroying the entire building, this small bookstore has consistently been left standing.  DJ Ernst Books has survived fire, time, and outside change, and yet the heart of the business, the passion for quality books for quality readers, has not changed at all.

Photos

  • All photos courtesy of DJ Ernst Books Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/djernstbooks/photos/

Timeline

  • Timelines made using Time Graphics: https://time.graphics/updates/new/234798

Texts

  • Miller, Laura J. Reluctant Capitalists Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption. University of Chicago Press, 2014.
  • Morely, Christopher. Parnassus on Wheels. Ebook #5311, Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5311/pg5311-images.html.

A BAM to the Past

The Susquehanna Valley Mall is a focal point of the Selinsgrove town and surrounding areas. It it where all the college kids from Susquehanna University go when they need anything ranging from clothes, to food, to even appliances and furnature.  One big thing we college kids always seem to need are books, whether text books for school, or class readings, or even just casual reads. This is why there is a decently sized Books-A-Million in this mall. It being the “town center” as it would seem, makes it the prime location for a corporate bookstore.

If we look at the history of the area, this mall used to thrive. It truly was the big heart of the little town. Back when it first opened 1978, the large anchor store was Boscovs, as this was at the location and the mall was built around it, and as the mall opened, a Bon-Ton opened.  10 months after opening, J.C. Penny because another anchor store for the mall, making it even more of a popular places for people of all ages to hang out and get to know eachother.

This mall has been a place for more than just the resindents of Susquehanna University. Yes, a large population of the consumers at this mall are college students, you don’t really have to think about why, there is an Aunty Annes, nothing more needs to be said about why this attracts college kids.  But why does it attract regular townsfolk?  They can’t ALL be there for the pretzels. (Although we can hope).

This whole sense of a towncenter can be traced back to the beginning of BAM! as a store. This store was started in 1917, the company was founded in a newsstand in Florence, Alabama. The boy who founded it was the 14 year old Clyde B. Anderson. The store really got its foot in the door when Anderson heard workers complain that they couldn’t get their home papers where they were working.  So what did Anderson do? Well he got the papers to sell them to the workers.  Clyde’s little news stand stood where? You guessed it. At the town center for all those workers who just wanted their local news.

So this mall we have here doesn’t seem to be doing so great, even with all the evidence pointing to it surviving and being the best mall in the entire area because it is right across the street from walmart, and has the only movie theater in Selinsgrove. So why isn’t it doing so well? There isn’t really any definite answer, but I think it has to do with the online shopping industry. With the creation of Amazon and EBay, we can buy virtually, and literally anything you could think of.  You want that shirt you saw some guy wearing the other day? Well you can find that online. You want an everything bagel from Panera Bread? Just look online and you will find a Panera Bread just down the street from the mall, but this store delivers to the college campus, so why would you need to go out and get things in person when you can just buy it online and you can just order it online and it will be shipped straight to your doorstep.

What does every good town square have? A fountain.

I believe that people have just become too lazy to go out and get to know each other in town.  If we look at the Disney movie, Beauty and the Beast, the opening song takes place in the center of the town as everyone sings about how strange Belle is. Now, this might not be the best example to just look at on the surface because they are being mean and making fun of her, but if we look deeper into it, she is very happy with all the people there and seems to get along with them all. She doesn’t see what their doing as being something mean, but just playful banter. And if we look at it, she is friends with all the people in the town. As she’s walking through, the baker and his wife give her some bread and they are happy to see her, and the bookseller talks to her about a book that she loves to read and has read over and over again. He then decides to let her keep it. This shows their sense of friendship and comraderey. As soon as Belle is past the people, they talk about how weird and strange she is, even though they all are happy to see her.

This whole song shows a sense of place that you can find in a quaint little town center. Another sense of place we see here is the bookstore. Well, more specifically the book seller. He has a personal connection with Belle because he visited him every day and would talk to him about the books she was reading. After she borrowed the same book enough times, he let her keep it.

This shows a strong sense of community. Unfortunately, this is not the reality of a corporate bookstore like BAM!  Even if it was still this little bookstore called Bookland like it was so long ago when it first became a corporation in 1964. This happened when Clyde’s son, Charles, inherited the bookstore and turned it into a chain when he opened more stores.  In 1988, the store aquired the Gateway Books chain based out of Knoxville Tennessee, thus expanding their chain even more.  This puts their stores in even more locations and towns.

So why are they failing? My theory is that it is because they took all the locations where Borders was when they closed down. I can see both sides of this. Borders closed, so then there was all that “prime real estate” for a bookseller because that’s where everyone went to buy their books, so since people dont like change, they will continue to go to that same place no matter what store is in it. The problem I see is that Borders closed down for a reason. That reason is bankruptcy, so to me the idea of buying all the locations of a store that closed down seems like a bad idea because the first store went bankrupt, so since you are in the exact same spaces, you will too.

The stock of BAM! Is about $3. Now I’m not expert in the stock market, but I’m pretty sure that you want a higher price for you stock. When the stock of BAM! Spiked back in 1998 up to $47, it was a big deal, but then it dropped back down to the $3 that it started at, just this second time the $3 is worth much less than in 1980.

A Metropolis for Comics History

For a look at the entire comic, please click on the image. Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.

In 1842, the American company Wilson & Co. published what is now called the first American comic: an English reprint of the French comic “The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck”. Published originally in French and Switzerland in 1837 by Rodolphe Töpffer, this comic tells the story of one Obadiah Oldbuck as he attempts to woo a lady of his fancy. He is fairly unsuccessful in this endeavor, and the aptly titled adventure that unfolds over the course of the comic, Obadiah is involved in all manner of slapstick incidents that result in myriad injuries to his person. At the time of publication, Comics Metropolis wasn’t even a dream of a dream. Of course, the idea of a comics shop wasn’t really a dream of a dream either, as the first American comics focused retailer was opened more than one-hundred years later, in the late ’60s. Which of these early comics shops was first is a point of contention, and some point even earlier to a store opened in the late ’30s. Dan Gearino, in a blog post on this very topic, points out the possibility of Harvey T. “Pop” Hollinger’s store. The release of the first Superman comic, written by Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster, coincides rather nicely with the opening of Hollinger’s store, having been first put to print in June of 1938; Hollinger did, however, sell much more than comic books, and (while this is something you can say about many modern comic shops) was almost more, as Gearino points out, of a junk shop than a comics specialty shop. So, sometime in the ’60s seems the most reasonable answer.

A mere seventy(ish) years after the opening of this pseudo-mysterious first comics shop, Laura and Albert Payne opened Comics Metropolis, LLC.  on South Third Street in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Comics Metropolis truly began about thirty-six years ago, when co-owner Albert was 12. He was, and still is, an avid collector of comic books, and has maintained an interest in the media form since his first foray into the medium in seventh grade. His move with his mother to London did nothing to sway him away from his love of comic books, and instead, his mother’s position as a teacher encouraged her to become more involved in her son’s interest. What young kid doesn’t like superheroes, after all? (I’m sure there are quite a number–I wasn’t into superheroes at all as a kid, but please forgive me this small generalization.) Perhaps one of the most interesting things regarding this store, and comics shops in general, is how little the past seems to have influenced the comic book market.

I speak first about the legal battles of the ’50s regarding the sale of comic books. Fredric Wertham’s 1950’s crusade against comic books is an historic event, even it seems to have had little impact on the current comic book market. The Paynes are certainly not bereft of business. In fact, they have the first comic shop subscription program I have ever encountered; for forty dollars a month, subscribers are offered a very nice ten percent discount on store merchandise; the most interesting thing about this subscription plan is not the offered discount, however nice it may be, but rather the fact that there are over one-hundred current subscription members. I suppose the offer of a personal comic cubbyhole is pretty tempting (it is). But no, Wertham’s campaign seems to have had little impact on the virility of Comics Metropolis.

In the mid-’50s, Wertham led a campaign against the violence and gore contained in many of the decade’s most popular comics: crime and horror comics. The covers of these comics alone were worthy of some attention, for the graphic depictions of violence and grotesque monsters. Wertham certainly had grounds to hold disgust and anger towards the comics being published by EC Comics, as many of the issues of series such as “Tales From the Crypt” did possess gruesome images. Jack Cole, for example, illustrated a scene in “Murder Morphine and Me” in which a woman is nearly stabbed in the eye by a hypodermic needle. Wertham called his campaign against these comics Seduction of the Innocent, and asserted that the stories told within the comics would encourage similar acts in the children reading them, as well as cause psychological damage to these same children. Wertham went on to appear before the senate in a series of hearings calling for legislation to be passed outlawing this sort of storytelling. While no such law was ultimately passed, a warning was issued, and comics saw a wave of voluntary censorship imposed by the publishing companies responsible for the crime and horror comics.

Powered by Time.Graphics (It is recommended to view the timeline in fullscreen)

Perhaps the lack of these comics as a presence in comic shops denotes a particular impact of Wertham’s “war on comics”, but, of course, there are modern comics being published with similarly adult themes as those being published in the ’50s. We can trace mature comics as far back as the ’80s with the release of comics such as “Watchmen” and “The Killing Joke”, both, interestingly enough, the work of Alan Moore. We return to Comics Metropolis in the present day, where you can find tucked away on the shelves and on proud display on the register counter numerous prints of “Watchmen”, and certainly Wertham’s assault on violence in comics held no sway over the content of “Watchmen” or its inclusion in the stock of Comics Metropolis. It is, however, important to note that while there are mature themed comics depicting the acts of violence and gore that Wertham disliked, the specific comics targeted in his campaign are not present on the shelves of Comics Metropolis.

The particular stock of the store lends itself to the definition of the place of Comics Metropolis. As discussed in previously, Comics Metropolis offers a unique conceptual presence to Lewisburg and the neighborhood surrounding the store by providing a specialized arrangement of products. Cresswell’s definition of place involves three different points; the one with the most import to this discussion is point three: the sense of place. Cresswell defines the idea of the sense of place as “the subjective and emotional attachment people have to place” (Cresswell, 7). Comics Metropolis offers ample opportunity for customers to forge emotional connections to the store and to allow it to form its unique and personal definition. As highlighted on the above timeline, Comics Metropolis participates in what is known as Free Comic Book Day. Free Comic Book Day is a pseudo-holiday celebrated on the first Saturday of May each year, wherein participating comics retailers hand out a selection of free comics to anyone who enters the store. The Free Comic Book Day site states that “this event celebrates the independent comic book specialty shops, thousands of which exist in North America alone.” Comics Metropolis is one such store, and the idea of Free Comic Book Day adds a unique flare to the sense of place within the Paynes’s store. Of course, this event is not the only thing that lends itself to the unique atmosphere of Comics Metropolis. The layout of the store plays an integral part in this; Comics Metropolis has a room dedicated to the playing of tabletop games. These range from card games such as Magic: The Gathering (a personal favorite of mine) to intense, multi-session role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons (both, interestingly, created by Wizards of the Coast).

In a piece titled “Bookstores, Communist and Capitalist” Jack Perry takes a look at his own experience with bookstores in capitalist America and communist Bulgaria. It is relatively easy to assume, and perhaps bountifully obvious, that Comics Metropolis is a capitalist bookstore. After all, it exists in America, and what is America but a capitalist country? Perry offers an interesting perspective, however. The main difference in the way these two economic principles changed the idea of the bookstore, Perry argues, is that in America, there is no real censorship in regards to what books are allowed to be sold, which results in an almost lesser appreciation for books. In Bulgaria, where there is strict censorship of what books are readily available, people are happy to have any new books afforded them at all. Perry makes the observation that “in a linguistic this small, the appearance of new books was an event, and the appetite for them remarkable” (Perry, 108). Certainly, this sets the Bulgarian bookstore apart from what we witnessed in Comics Metropolis, but I find that the store’s participation in Free Comic Book Day to be an integral part of bridging this gap; while there isn’t censorship, the promise of something new and free brings people into the store, and as Laura and Albert told us, 2018’s Free Comic Book Day was their biggest day of sales to date. And it is also true that the comics provided during the “holiday” are all written expressly for the purpose of being given out for free; they are unique to Free Comic Book Day, and this prospect of something new has people flocking to the store in a manner of similar excitement to that which Perry identified in Bulgaria.

The history of a book is always intrinsically tied to that book’s retailer, and Comics Metropolis is no excuse. The impact of the comic on American culture is widely visible in a store with over two-thousand comic books available for purchase, and the push-back of the ’50s is similarly reflected in what the store doesn’t carry. History made waves in the comic book market, and similarly, Comics Metropolis is doing the same in Lewisburg.

 

Sources:

Timeline embedded from Time.Graphics.

Photos

Comics Metropolis LLC. www.facebook.com/Comics.Metropolis.LLC/photos/a.1667114816863070/1772725596301991/?type=1&theater. (Image 2)

“FCBD 2019 Site Downloads.” Free Comic Book Day, www.freecomicbookday.com/Article/203520-FCBD-2019-Site-Downloads. (Image 5)

“File:Crime Suspenstories 22.Jpg.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Dec. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Craig#/media/File:Crime_Suspenstories_22.jpg. (Image 3)

Image 6 courtesy of Chris Naiman.

Piperson. “Jack Cole’s True Crime Comics.” The Great Comic Book Heroes, 1 Jan. 1970, thegreatcomicbookheroes.blogspot.com/2013/06/jack-coles-true-crime-comics.html. (Image 4)

Topffer, Rodolphe. “The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck.” Samson Agonistes: Introduction, 31 Mar. 2010, www.dartmouth.edu/~library/digital/collections/books/ocn259708589/ocn259708589.html. (Image 1)

Texts

Cresswell, Tim. Place: a Short Introduction. Blackwell, 2010.

Perry, Jack. “Bookstores, Capitalist and Communist.” The American Scholar, 2001, pp. 107–111.

Online Sites

Gearino, Dan. “What Was the First Comic Shop?” Dan Gearino Writing and Reporting, 19 Mar. 2018, dangearino.com/2018/03/19/what-was-the-first-comic-shop/.

 

Used & Rare: A History of DJ Ernst

Ernst and his antique cash register that is located with the thin green arrow on the left.

As I walk into DJ Ernst Books, Donald J. Ernst–known affectionately to Susquehanna students as Homer–is already in the midst of a conversation about the types of books he sells and used to sell in his store. He leans on the counter and talks to the group of students around him about the texts he stocks and looks for at thrift stores and book fairs.

“I sell a lot of books on county history and regional history,” he says as I write his words down furiously. “People in their old age like to buy the books for genealogical work. Sometimes I even end up selling collections of books to state legislators. Those are the big items I sell here.”

My classmates and I take in his every word. We’re amazed when he tells us about some of the other books he’s sold over the years: a signed copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, a first edition American copy of Winnie the Pooh, and illustrated children’s books from the late 1800s to early 1900s. Like booksellers Frances Steloff (Rogers 71)  and Madge Jenison (Jenison 121-122)–whose lives in the bookselling industry are considered legendary by generations after them–the clients he sells these books to are those with the money to dish out thousands for books like these. At the same time, he and Jenison have also tried to appeal anyone who wants to read something with a history of its own..

Homer’s eyes light up as he continues to talk about the books and their publishers, and even though his voice stays even and clear, his moustache-lined smile widens the more we listen. This is a man who knows and loves his books. Of course, this isn’t surprising; 44 years of working with books is sure to give a person some level of expertise. Like his literary counterpart in Christopher Morley’s Parnassus on Wheels, his knowledge of what he is selling and his enthusiasm to sell the right book to the right customer makes him didactic and make his store a special place in Selinsgrove.

Looking around, I see leather-bound books, yellowing handmade paper signs indicating genres and prices, old magazine and newspaper clippings, torn carpeting, and a (possibly fabric) wallpaper that has to be older than I am. An antique cash register sit in his counter, a remnant of the building’s history as a woman’s shoe store. Homer’s bookstore and life is full of the old and rare. After all, his father was the one, in a sense, who started his interest in the rare and used.

A copy of AB Bookman’s Weekly Magazine.

“Dealers and individuals used to come to our house to buy and sell books,” he tells us as he pulls out what looks like a magazine. “My dad would look through these Bookman’s Weekly catalogues and find people who were looking to buy certain books, or if they were selling anything of interest.”

When DJ Ernst Used and Rare Books opened on February 1, 1975, Homer had graduated from Susquehanna University and had developed some of the experience needed to run a used and rare bookstore. Dealers would often come into the store and ask about books and collections he had. He also used the postal system to send books to dealers and sellers, who often sold those books to people all over the country.

Despite being a Susquehanna alum, and despite his physical closeness to the university, Homer didn’t have much of a close relationship to it after opening shop.
“It took about twenty years to build my relationship with the school,” he says. “It wasn’t until Tom Bailey and Gary Fincke [two of the three original Creative Writing professors; Fincke is noted as the founder of Susquehanna’s Writers Institute] started sending students to me for books that I started doing business with the students.”
Homer even tells us that an alum stopped in about two weeks before this post and bought a book. Even when people are no longer students at Susquehanna University, they still come back to see him and remember their days combing through the bookshelves. For many, coming to DJ Ernst during a visit is almost as important as visiting the campus itself.
Homer doesn’t give any of us exact dates besides the opening, but it doesn’t seem to be a big concern. Homer thinks in terms of decades, giving us whole swaths of time with no specific points. The moments of buying and selling are ever-present and have no needs for exact dates or years. Besides, he seems to be constantly surrounded by the old and historical anyway.
Throughout our conversation, the words “used to” come up again and again. Dealers used to come in all the time. Students used to visit more frequently. He says all of this matter-of-factly, as if it’s just what happens. The building of the bypass that takes travelers away from Selinsgrove, along with the rising popularity in online stores, are some of the many reasons DJ Ernst’s foot traffic has declined. Another is that his books are old.
Some of the used books on display at DJ Ernst.
“Nobody knows who my main authors or titles are anymore,” he explains. “I’ve got illustrated children’s book from the golden age of illustration [according to Homer, from the 1880s until the 1930s]. Drawings from people like Andrew Wyeth and Harrison Fisher. But nobody knows who they are, so they sit here.”
Even as we sit in the middle of the store, the doors stay closed, and the store stayed quiet save for our voices and the sounds of the street outside. We talk for a full hour, yet there is never an interruption, nothing to suggest that the world outside knows the bookstore’s existence anymore.
At about four o’clock, Homer tells us that he’s going to close up shop for the day and go meet friends down in Harrisburg. He says goodbye to us, and we leave. The store is quiet again, with no voices to bounce off its walls or breathe new life into it.
Going to DJ Ernst is like stepping in a time machine, with its old furniture and bookshelves, the yellowing newspaper clippings hanging on the walls, the books that look as if their last owners had read and shown great care with them. It’s a capsule that holds over four decades of memories and literature that’s even older than that. There is a clear love and understanding of books and an enthusiasm amongst those who come here and the man who runs the store. A sort of kinship forms in just one visit that can’t be found in the typical chain bookstore. There seems to be something unexpected in those books that make the place so special and enthralling, even if it’s old. Maybe it exists in Homer’s own excitement, his happiness that comes through as soon as you ask a question about books. There’s something to be said about the power of literature to raise people up and bring them together, and there’s evidence of that ability in DJ Ernst.
Sources:
Images

Images courtesy of Valerie Erickson (1 and 2) and Erin Reid (3)

Timeline

“The History of DJ Ernst.” New Timeline – Timeline, time.graphics/line/234266.

Text

JENISON, Madge. Sunwise Turn. A Human Comedy of Bookselling. Jonathan Cape, 1924.

Morley. “Parnassus on Wheels / by Christopher Morley.” HathiTrust, Boston :Ginn,c1938., babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000006155315;view.

Rogers, William G. WISE MEN FISH HERE: THE STORY OF FRANCES STELOFF AND THE GOTHAM BOOK MART. HARCOURT, BRACE AND WORLD, 1965.