Shakespeare is Dead

Visiting the in laws in Dallas, Texas, USA, I had occasion to shop at the hoity-toity Galleria, Dallas' biggest and most expensive shopping mall. I say "shop," but I really had no intention of buying anything. I was willing to break that prudent rule, however, for SHAKESPEARE AND CO., named after (but presumably not connected with) the famous Paris bookstore. I had been to SHAKESPEARE AND CO. once before and was very impressed with its selections of books and music. The store is literate, eccentric, elitist (in a good way) and iconoclastic.

It is also gone from the premises. There is a big, blank, blue wall where she once hawked her wares.

I later discovered she closed her doors in early 2007:

The new year will begin on a familiar, sad note for Dallas book and music lovers: Another once-thriving, well-known independent store is shutting down.

This time it's Shakespeare, Beethoven & Co., which has served Galleria shoppers for 25 years. General manager Katie Surtees said Friday that the store would close sometime next week.

"The business has been getting worse and worse and worse, and although the Galleria has been very good to us, it's just too high-rent for the amount of business we've been doing," she said. "I thought Christmas would pull us through, but it just didn't happen."

How incredibly sad.

The standard villains in such a tragedy are chain bookstores, Amazon.com, and anyone else who offers a discount on books. This is a reasonable list of suspects. Walking around the Galleria, however, I wondered why this need be so. Yes, any book, CD, DVD, or other item purchased in SHAKESPEARE AND CO. was more expensive than its chain or online equivalent. But is that not true for every item sold in the Galleria? Aren't purses, jeans, watches, and glow-in-the-dark widgets all more expensive when purchased within the solid gold walls of this Mother of All Malls?

If women are prepared to pay $100.00 to $150.00 for a pair of Lucky Jeans (and they are!), then why should these same women make an extra trip to Barnes & Noble to save five bucks on that coffee table book on exotic purses? I saw no less than FOUR luxury watch shops. I saw TWO Louis Vuitton stores, both of which appeared to be selling the same items.

I visited a shop that sold high-end shaving supplies. Since I am one of those who use real shavers and real blades on my face, with shaving soap applied with a badger-hair brush, I was drawn to the attractive, sweet-smelling (but manly) shop. The prices, however, sent me the other direction. Anything in the shaving shop can be purchased online at a considerable discount, yet THE ART OF SHAVING survives and thrives (according the the man working that day).

I would think that people who dress up in their best dresses, suits, and jewelry to go to the mall could keep an eclectic bookstore in business. Evidently I was wrong. Or, I was right for 25 years and things have changed. The General Manager of SHAKESPEARE AND CO. has her view.

"I think after 9/11 people realized it's much easier to buy things off the Net, and they just stopped coming to the Galleria. I've just seen such a decline in traffic here, in my end of the mall."

Mmm...9/11? I've seen the terrorist attacks on New York blamed for many things, but the demise of an independent bookseller is a new victim of radical Islam. I think perhaps the ubiquity and ease of online shopping is certainly a factor, as the GM pointed out, but Americans living in Dallas, Texas do not avoid the mall in fear of Jihad.

We (my wife and I, with two bored children in tow) walked the length and breadth of the mall, hoping that perhaps SHAKESPEARE AND CO. had simply changed locations within the mall. We asked employees in the other stores if they knew the fate of the great independent bookstore that had graced this mall for a quarter of a century. The employees had either never heard of the bookstore, or just assumed that "a bookstore" was somewhere within the mall. One man holding a curling iron and standing in front of a kiosk of wigs said that if we couldn't find our bookstore we should come back and he would curl our hair.

Finally, exhausted, we stopped in that other evil chain, Starbucks, for replenishment. I asked a "barista" with a nose ring if he knew what happened to the SHAKESPEARE AND CO. bookstore. He told me it went out of business, adding, "This is Galleria. We don't read." Much laughter ensued among the baristas.

As we were leaving one of the female baristas made some comment about chain bookstores ruining everything. I thought about asking her if she could recommend a good independent coffee shop, but didn't. Irony is wasted on the youth.