Chapter III: Part 3

Immediately several young analysts left their wives in the hall, dropped their coats, and rushed back to “fluff.”

The whole action was so unexpected and infantile that the blood rushed to my head and for a moment I was dizzy and unable to focus. And I had let myself in for this sort of thing! Jennie and I left without saying goodnight.

“There is a time when one goes toward Lionel and another time when one goes away from him,” an analyst who had once been part of the inner circle remarked. This indeed seemed to be the case, but my inner conflict remained unresolved. I was ashamed of living in a midnight of fear. At the same time I felt privileged to know this gifted and, so often, generous man, who understood the human soul as few others have. I respected and loved him and wanted to befriend him in every way that was not a violation of my own being.

As a group, I found analysts the most sensitive and intelligent to be found in the professions. But there were those I could not tolerate, no matter how much they spent at the shop; the shock artists who fed off the agony and terror of the bewildered, and the culturally illiterate who viewed anything dealing with the creative as their province. The atmosphere would begin to sizzle at the Seven Stairs the moment any of the latter started analyzing Mann, Gide, Dostoevsky, Ibsen, Kafka, Homer, anybody and everybody. I had read Freud’s essay on Leonardo Da Vinci and Ernest Jones’ on Hamlet with great interest and decided that the whole approach was one of intellectual gibberish, regardless of the serious intent of these great men. But the young and unread analysts were not even serious. When you cross-examined them, you found they had never read the plays or books in question: they were merely quoting an authority and taking his word for it. Of course, it is a nasty thing to expose anyone and it is sacrilegious to do it to an analyst. The change in my relations with some of the psychoanalysts became increasingly less subtle.

To offset some of the business losses attendant on this turn of affairs, I hit on the idea of giving a series of lectures in the store after closing hours. I offered a course of five lectures on great men of literature at a subscription price of ten dollars and was surprised to find I was talking to standing room only. After a month’s respite, I tried it again with similar success. Emmet Dedmon, then literary editor of the _Chicago Sun-Times_ heard one of the sessions and was responsible for recommending me as a replacement for the eminent Rabbi Solomon Goldman, when he was taken sick before a lecture engagement. The success of that one lecture was such that I was booked for thirteen more. It seemed as though all was not lost.

“It’s a big world,” I assured myself, sitting alone in the shop before the fire. “The sun does not rise and set with a handful of analysts.” It was a cool October night. Business that day had been particularly good. My debts were not pressing. I took heart.

In apparent response to this cheerful frame of mind, a smartly dressed customer entered the shop, a man of medium build with blond hair parted in the middle and a pair of the bluest eyes I had ever seen.

“I am looking for an out-of-print recording, the Variations on a Nursery Theme by Dohnanyi,” he said. “Perhaps you may have it?” The accent was unmistakably British.

It was obviously my day—I did have it! “I have something else, also out-of-print, that might interest you,” I said. “It’s the Dohnanyi Trio, played by Heifetz, Primrose, and Feurmann.”

“Oh, that,” he said. “I know that one. I played it.”

I hesitated, sensing some kind of ambiguity.

“I’m Primrose,” he said.

We chatted while I wrapped the records. He was charmed by the shop—it had a really English flavor, he said. Before I knew it, I was telling him the whole story of the Seven Stairs.

“Until what time do you stay open?” he asked. “It’s quite late.”

“I’m closing right now,” I said.

“If you have time, let’s have a drink,” he suggested. “I should like to hear more.”

On a sudden inspiration, I asked first to make a phone call. While my customer browsed among the books, I spoke with Lionel and asked if he would like me to bring William Primrose over. He was ecstatic. At first note, his voice had sounded forlorn, so empty of life that I guessed him to be terribly sick. But mention of Primrose acted like a shot in the arm.

“Hurry!” he cried.

I told Mr. Primrose that my friend had a wonderful bar and a devotion to great music. But he had already heard of Dr. Blitzsten. “Isn’t that the analyst?” he said. “My friends in the Budapest Quartet often used his home for rehearsal.”

So off we went. Lionel was at his best—charming, informative, genuinely interested in the small talk carried on by Mr. Primrose. I was delighted really to have pleased him. When I left Primrose at his hotel that night, the world seemed good again.

Yet on the way home, I began to have hot and cold flashes. Why had I called Lionel and offered to bring Primrose? Why?

A pleasant period followed, warmed by ripening friendships. Jennie and I attended the Primrose concert and dined with the great violist afterward. In years to come, I was to see him frequently and even present him in a memorable concert in my own shop.

While at Orchestra Hall to hear Primrose, we had also encountered Dr. Harold Laufman and his wife, Marilyn, and through some instant rapport agreed to see each other very soon. The result was an enduring friendship, as well as one of the most pleasant parties ever held at the Seven Stairs, a showing of Hal’s pictures which he had painted in North Africa during the war. They were brilliant, highly individualistic works.... “My impressions of disease,” he said.

The party was a delight, particularly because there was no question of selling anything—the artist could not possibly have been persuaded to part with any of his pictures. There was nothing to do but pass out the drinks and enjoy the company, which included a lovely woman with reddish gold hair out of a Titian portrait who wanted every book and record in the shop—and who was later to deliver our first son. She was Dr. Catherine Dobson, an obstetrician, an analysand of Dr. Blitzsten, and a great and good friend.

The day after our son was born, I received a call from Lionel. “What are you going to name the baby?” he asked.

“We’ve decided on David,” I said.

“David?” he said. “That’s too plain. Why not call him Travis? I just love the name Travis.”

I admitted that Travis was fine, but perhaps a bit fancy. “After all,” I said, “Jennie wants to call the boy David. What’s the difference?”

“A great deal of difference ... for the boy’s future,” he said. “I love Travis. Suggest it to Jennie.”

I had to admit to Jennie that I was afraid to take a stand. But was it too much ... to give just a little and to keep things working for us?

“Why are you letting this man ruin our lives?” she asked.

When I couldn’t answer she relented. David was named Travis David.

In the days following, I was afflicted with a recurrent rash and sometimes by mysterious feelings of terror. I had gone wrong somewhere, and a secret decision had to be made. I picked up the phone, dialed a number, and made an appointment.

I started my analysis because I was in trouble. I needed expert help and I went out and got it. Later it dawned upon me that this is really the significant thing: not that there are so many people in today’s world who need help, but the miraculous urge on the part of the individual himself to get well. The fact that people on the whole don’t want to be sick, don’t want to be haunted by nameless difficulties, convinces me that at the very bottom of one’s being is the urge to be good, to the good. This is more important than any description of the experience of analysis, which, although it may be invaluable to the person who suffers through it, is but a process of living ... nothing more. After all, it was Freud who said that life is two things: Work and Love.

As I came to tentative grips with my fears of rejection—and the self-rejections these fears imposed—I began more and more to act like myself, like the man who started the Seven Stairs. If Hamlet’s problem lay in his fear of confusing reality and appearance, so, too, was mine. Only I was not Hamlet and my task was not the avenging of a father’s murder. My task was even more basic. I had to just keep on giving birth to myself.

It was a long time before I perceived that Lionel Blitzsten was less a cause of my problem than a factor in its treatment. Who was this strange and often solitary genius, who died leaving such a rich legacy of interpretative techniques to his profession, who lived like an ancient potentate, offering to a crowd of sycophants whatever satisfactions are to be gained from basking in reflected glory?

My relationship with him revealed things which I was slow in admitting to my analyst. I shall never forget the energy I expended telling my analyst how “good” I was. Fortunately I wasn’t in the hands of a charlatan. He interrupted me—one of those rare interruptions—and told me that we both knew how good I was, so quit wasting time and money on _that_.

Lionel was like life itself: an amalgam of selfishness, egoism, cruelty; of goodness, gentleness, compassion. He offered it all in almost cosmic profusion, and with cosmic capriciousness. Once he remarked: “The world owes me nothing. When I die, I will not be sorry. I had joy, still do; I had love, still have it; I had friends, still have them. I had all and felt all and saw all and ... believed all. I had everything and I had nothing. I had what I think life, in its total meaning, is: I had the dream, the ‘chulum mensch.’”

This I believe is what he was—a “chulum mensch.” It contained everything a dream could and should, good and bad. And much of it was glorious. No one who shared this part could thank him enough for the privilege of being admitted.

7
Farewell to the Seven Stairs

I had to break it to them gently ... and to myself, as well. It took a long time to compose the letter to go to all my clients. “Sometime between June 30th and July 20th,” the letter said, “the Seven Stairs will end its stand on Rush Street and move to 670 North Michigan Avenue, where it will resume life as Stuart Brent: Books and Records.

“Everything that the Seven Stairs has come to stand for will continue. The place will be lovely and cozy and warm—the conversations easily as crazy and possibly more inspired. More than that—all of the wonderful possibilities that we have been developing over the past five years can now bear fruit.”

I reviewed the history of the shop, trying to set down some of the memorable landmarks in its growth. “... and so it has gone,” I wrote blithely, “always fresh and magical, punctuated by famous and admired visitors—Joseph Szigeti, Katharine Cornell, Elliot Paul, Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Koestler, Frieda Fromm Reichmann, Nelson Algren, Gore Vidal, Carol Brice, many others—wonderful talk—parties—exhibits. You have been a part of it with us.

“But physically, the Seven Stairs could never meet our needs fully. It was too small. Congestion forced us to give up those author cocktail parties for launching good new books. It kept us from promoting lectures and exhibits. It put a definite limit to the size of our stock. And even if we could have made more space, we couldn’t have afforded it without an increase in street trade which Rush Street couldn’t provide.

“However, for all the crowding, the worn appearance, the careless bookkeeping, the hopeless methods of keeping our stock of books and records in proper order—the Seven Stairs set the tone we dreamed of.

“That tone—with all the ease and informality—will go with it to Michigan Avenue. Probably nothing like it has ever happened to the Avenue. It’s about time it did.”

My message to the faithful was heartfelt, but more than a little disingenuous. It mentioned the economics of bookselling only in passing. And these economic factors had at last caught up with me. I might ignore my accountant, but when Jennie and I were invited among the well-fed and well-cared-for, we were distinctly surrounded by the aura of the “poor relation.” I might congratulate myself upon having accomplished, against absurd odds, so much of what I had initially dreamed about, but I was no longer responsible only to this dream: I had a growing family—and I wasn’t unhappy about this, either. It seemed to me, in spite of all the evidence the modern world has to present to the contrary, that the fullness of life (in which the feeding, clothing, and housing of a family traditionally figure) ought not, as a matter of principle, stand irrevocably opposed to personal fulfillment or spiritual realization.

There wasn’t room in the Seven Stairs, it is true—for books and records, for parties, for anything else. But room is not the great necessity—it can always be made, if the spirit is willing. The plain fact of the matter was that my situation was economically self-limiting in its scope and its momentum. Only a certain number of people could be drawn into its sphere, and time and the accidents of time would take their toll. Some of the parties did not draw. Some of the clientele who dropped out or who were alienated through the vagaries of my personal relations were not replaced. I was either going to have to regress toward my beginnings or advance toward something which would suggest, at least, the possibility of greater scope.

Did this possibility exist along a well-traveled market place (the Chicago version of Fifth Avenue, although pictorially more impressive than its Manhattan counterpart), which lay only a block away from the questionable Rush Street area?

The opportunity to confront this question came about, again, through one of the apparent accidents of life, which I identify under the rather occult heading of “attractiveness.”

Without Jack Pritzker there could have been no move to Michigan Avenue. Jack and his wife, Rhoda, came into our lives at a cocktail party and became close friends. Rhoda is English by birth and wears her charm and dignity like a delicate mystery. She has a gift for seeing and has written wonderful articles as a correspondent for British newspapers. Jack, also, has the effortless manner that stems from a quality of mind. He is as unlike me as any man can be: impassive, almost secretive, yet I have never known a more comfortable man to be with. He is a lawyer with large interests in real estate and a quiet passion for being a mover behind the success of others. He will not forsake you when the going is rough, but in his relations he holds to a fine line between friendship and duty—and holds you to this line also. I had already experienced the danger of the kind of benefactor who tends to take over your life for you but with Jack Pritzker there is never this danger. He prefers to see you make it on your own. If you are beset by circumstances which you cannot control, he is there; but if you are merely waiting for something to happen, you can expect nothing but the criticism you deserve.

This gentle, quiet man, tough yet sentimental, absorbed in his business, yet somehow viewing it as an experiment with life rather than a livelihood, devoted to concrete matters and the hard world of finance and power, yet in conversation concerned only with the breadth of life and the humanness of experience, provided a scarcely felt polarity that gave direction to my often chaotic forces.

When I heard that Jack had a financial interest in a medical office building under construction on Michigan Avenue, I asked to rent one of the street level stores. It was not a matter of seeking financial assistance—it was entirely enough to be accepted as the kind of “prestige tenant” normally sought for such a location. But when Hy Abrams, my lawyer, went to see about the lease, he reported that Jack remarked, “If you think I’m letting Stuart in this store to see him fail, you are mistaken. I have no intention of standing by and watching him and his family tenting out in Grant Park.”

But even though someone might be keeping a weather eye on my survival, I had to face up to my own money problems. It is madness to go into business without a bankroll under the mattress. I thought I could see my way to making it on the Avenue, but where was the cash outlay coming from for fixtures, additional stock, everything? Not even my reformed accountant could prepare a financial statement that would qualify me for additional bank loans.

There was a way, however, and it was opened to me by a client who, as a vice president of the First National Bank of Chicago, was about the last person I thought of approaching with my difficulties. I knew about banks by now, although I had somewhat revised my opinions about the personal limitations of all bankers. In fact, it was always a source of genuine pleasure to me when this particular banker, a tall, handsome man with greying hair and a fine pair of grey eyes to match, came into the shop.

When I told him of my projected move, it was natural for him to ask how I was financing it. I told him I didn’t know, but I was certainly going to have to find a way.

“May I offer a suggestion?” he said.

We sat down by the fire, and he told me first what I already knew: that normally when a business man needs extra money, especially for a cyclical business dependent on certain seasons, he will go to the bank for a short-term loan, say for ninety days. But in New York, he told me, there is a large department store that finances its own improvement and expansion programs. Instead of going to the bank, the store goes to its customers. My friend suggested that I do the same.

“Here’s how it works,” he said. “Write a letter to your hundred best accounts explaining what you hope to do. Ask them to help by sending you one hundred dollars in advance payment against future purchases. In return, you will offer them a twenty percent discount on all merchandise purchased under this plan. And of course they may take as long a time as they wish in using up the amount they have advanced.”

Even as he spoke, he pulled out his pen and began composing the letter. We worked on it for an hour, and the next day we met at lunch to draft the final copy. I sent the approved message to one hundred and twenty-five people, and I received one hundred and twenty-five replies—each with a hundred dollar check!

There remained little else to do in the way of arrangements except to break my present lease. It was not easy, but it was a pleasure. Now that I planned to move, my landlord’s attitude was something to behold. He danced the length of the shop on his tiny feet, his cane twirling madly, alternating between cries of “Excellent! Your future is assured!” and “But of course you’ll pay the rent here, too!” He did not know, he said, what “the corporation” would think of any proposal for subletting the premises. Finally he doffed his black hat, waved goodbye, and skipped out of the store.

A week later I heard from him. The answer on subleasing was a qualified yes. If I could get a tenant as responsible and dignified as myself and with equally brilliant prospects for success, they would consider it.

I advertised for weeks and no such madman responded. Then one day the answer walked in the door, a huge man with the general physique of the late Sidney Greenstreet, hooded eyes, and a great beard. He looked around, blinked like an owl, and said he’d take it. It was as simple as that. I realized, with a slight sinking feeling, that I was now perfectly free to move to the Avenue.

My formidable successor to the home of the Seven Stairs turned out to indeed be a man of brilliant prospects. He opened a Thought Factory, evidenced by a sign to this effect and bulletin boards covered with slips of paper bearing thoughts. Needless to say, he was in the public relations and advertising business. I have always felt grateful to him, but I never got up courage to cross that once adored threshold and see Mr. Sperry making thoughts.

When the Columbia Record people approached me concerning the possibility of a party in connection with the release of a record by the jazz pianist, Max Miller, it struck me this might be just the thing as a rousing, and possibly rowdy, farewell to the Seven Stairs.

Somehow, when I phoned our original fellows in literature, the gaiety of my announcement did not come off. I called Bob Parrish, who had once turned an autographing party into a magic show, and was greeted by an awesome silence, followed by a lame, “We’ll be there.” There was similar response from others on the list, but they _did_ come, all of them ... even Samuel Putnam, who journeyed all the way from Connecticut.

We had rented a piano and managed to get it in through the back of the building by breaking through a wall. The bricks were terribly loose anyway, and it wasn’t much work to put them back and replaster when it was all over. Max Miller had promised to bring along a good side man, and he did: Louis Armstrong. Armstrong was immediately comfortable in the shop. “This is a wise man,” he said. He didn’t know I was giving up the ghost at the Seven Stairs.

Perhaps the end of the Stairs was a symbol for more than the demise of a personal book store. During the period in which I had set up shop, the old _Chicago Sun_ had launched the first literary Sunday supplement devoted entirely to books to be published by a newspaper outside of New York City. At least one issue of this supplement, called “Book Week,” had carried more book advertising than either the _New York Times_ “Book Review” or the _Herald Tribune_ “Magazine of Books.” The _Chicago Tribune_ had followed suit with a book supplement and, together with the _Sun_, offered a platform for people like Butcher, Babcock, North, Apple, Frederick, Kogan, Wendt, Spectorsky, and others who were not only distinguished critics and authors, but who truly loved the world of books. Their efforts had certainly contributed to the climate that made the Seven Stairs possible. The diminution of this influence (today only the _Tribune_ carries a full-scale book supplement) was in direct relationship to the decline of my own enterprise.

For the last party, everyone came. There were the remaining literary editors, Fanny Butcher of the _Tribune_, Emmet Dedmon of the _Sun-Times_, and Van Allen Bradley of the _Daily News_ (the latter two fated to move along to editorial positions on their newspapers). There was Otto Eisenschiml and there was Olive Carrithers, for whom one of our first literary parties had been given. The psychoanalysts came: Lionel Blitzsten (who had assured everyone that I really wouldn’t, couldn’t, make the move), Roy Grinker, Fred Robbins, Harvey Lewis, and of course Robert Kohrman, who was still to see me through so much. There was Sidney Morris, the architect; Henry Dry, the entrepreneur; Ed Weiss, the advertising executive who discovered the subliminal world and asked which twin had the Toni; and Everett Kovler and Oscar Getz of the liquor industry. Louis played and sang and signed records and shook hands and sang some more, and Miller played and autographed while the apparent hilarity grew, the shouting, laughing, and singing. It was a very little shop, and had there been rafters you could have said it was full to them. But Ben Kartman was grim, Reuel Denny seemed bewildered, and above all, the old gang: Algren, Conroy, Parrish, Terkel, Motley, Herman Kogan ... they were being charming and decent enough, but something was out of kilter. I had never seen them more affable, but it wasn’t quite right—being affable wasn’t really their line.

Terkel occasionally emerged from the throng to m.c. the performance. Studs Terkel is a Chicago phenomenon, a talented actor and impresario of the wellsprings of culture, whether jazz or folksongs. In the early days of commercial television, when the experimenting was being done in Chicago, he created a type of entertainment perfectly adapted to the intimate nature of the medium. “Studs’ Place” was the hottest show in Chicago, so far as the response of viewers went, but it soon disappeared. Apparently what Chicago offered could not be exported. The strange belief continues to persist that the tastes of America can properly be tested only on the Broadway crowd (the knowing) or the Hollywood Boulevard misfits (the paranoiac). The crowds and misfits elsewhere do not seem to constitute a suitable national index. Anyway, so far we have not been able to export Studs.

In the growing crowd and increasing turbulence and raucousness, I didn’t care any longer what happened. I just stood in a corner and tried to look friendly. Rhoda and Jack Pritzker came in with a party of friends. People were crushing about Studs and Louis, urging Louis to sing and Max to play. Suddenly I was terribly tired. I wanted air. I was just getting out when the ceiling came down.

The toilet was on the second floor (it served the entire building) and, never very dependable, it had come to the end of the line. When it broke, the water came flooding down through the ceiling onto the people in the shop and taking the plaster with it. Louis was soaked. I shall always remember Rhoda Pritzker barraged by falling plaster and Dorothea Parrish losing her poise and letting out a war whoop. Studs got a piece of ceiling in his eye. Max Miller was directly beneath the broken pipe and suffered the consequences. For some moments it seemed as though the total disintegration of the aged structure was at hand.

I ran up the stairs and began applying my best flood control technique. Finally, with the aid of a pile of rags, we managed to staunch the flow. Those engaged were exhausted, but the party was made; now the laughter rang with real gaiety and the songs soared with enthusiasm. It was one hell of a wake.

The last song was “Honeysuckle Rose.” The damp musicians thanked everyone for listening and said goodbye. There was a hurry of leavetaking. Soon only Ira Blitzsten, Bob Kohrman, and Ben Kartman remained.

There was nothing left but to turn off the lights and close up, yet I couldn’t bring myself to rise from behind the desk. No more building inspectors, no more landlord wishing me good luck, no more broken plumbing ... just the end of the world. All I had to do was get up, look around for the last time, turn off the lights.

Look around at what? The old bookshelves made out of third grade lumber? The dark green walls that Tweedy and Carl Dry had helped paint? The absurd little bench with its hopeful inscriptions? I didn’t need to worry about the bench. I could take that with me.

There was the barrel in the corner, half full of apples ... the battered old coffee pot sitting on the hot plate ... and the string dangling from the ceiling from which a salami once depended. I always bought my sausage from a little old Hassidic Jew who appeared from time to time in his long black coat, black hat, and with a grey and black beard extending down his chest. We would haggle over the price and he would shower me with blessings when he left. All of this was spiced with Rabelaisian jests. Once I asked him, while studying the sausage situation, “Tell me, do you think sex is here to stay?” He thought a moment. “I don’t know vy not,” he said. “It’s in a vunderful location!”

Somehow, I did not see a salami hanging in my new Michigan Avenue location.

But onward and upward! Don’t turn back now, or Lionel’s prediction will come true. All is well. The lease is signed, the fixtures are paid for, you’ve o.k.’d the color the walls are to be painted, no one is threatening you, and you’ve put down a month’s advance on the rent. So please get up and turn off the lights.

It was not I, but a zombie moving mechanically toward the future, who touched the button, left the room, and softly shut the door.

8
On the Avenue

In all my life, I had never shopped on Michigan Avenue. I had no idea who was in business there or what they sold (except for a general feeling that they sold expensive merchandise and made plenty of money). It was only after I had opened the doors of Stuart Brent: Books and Records, that I discovered what a strategic location I had chosen ... strategically in competition with two of the best-known book dealers in the city!

Only a block down the street was the Main Street Book Store, already a fixture on the Avenue for a decade. A few blocks farther south stood Kroch’s, Chicago’s largest bookseller and one of the greatest in America, while north of me the Michigan Avenue branch of Lyon and Healy, the great music store, still flourished. And I thought what the Avenue needed was Stuart Brent with his books and records! Maybe it was, but the outlook did not seem propitious.

Now, ten years later, Main Street and I are still selling books and not, I think, suffering from each other’s proximity. Main Street’s orientation has always been toward art, and they run a distinguished gallery in connection with their business. Lyon and Healy eventually closed its branch operation, and Kroch’s left the Avenue when they merged with Brentano, an equally large organization with which I have no family connection, on the Italian side or any other. These consolidations, I am sure, were simply manifestations of big business. If I were to fret about the competition, it would be that of the dime store next door, which sells books and records, too.

In addition to the street-level floor, my new shop had a fine basement room which I fitted out hopefully as a meeting place. I immediately began staging lectures and parties and put in a grand piano so we could have concerts, too. Anything to bring in people. Business grew, but as I soon found I would have to sell things besides books in order to meet the overhead, I compromised on long-standing principles and brought in greeting cards. Within six months, I was also selling “how to do it books”—how to eat, how to sleep, how to love, how to fix the leaky pipe in your basement, how to pet your cat, how to care for your dog, how to see the stars....

By the time I had been on the Avenue a year, it was hard for me to see how my shop differed from any other where you might find some good books and records if you looked under the pop numbers and bestsellers. Apparently some people still found a difference, however. In his book _The Literary Situation_, Malcolm Cowley, the distinguished critic, wrote:

On Michigan Avenue, I passed another shop and recognized the name on the window. Although the salesroom wasn’t large, it was filled with new books lining the walls or piled on tables. There were also two big racks of long-playing records, and a hidden phonograph was playing Mozart as I entered (feeling again that I was a long way from Clark and Division). The books on the shelves included almost everything published during the last two or three years that I had any curiosity about reading. In two fields the collection was especially good: psychiatry and books by Chicago authors.

I introduced myself to the proprietor, Stuart Brent, and found that he was passionately interested in books, in the solution of other people’s personal problems, and in his native city. Many of his customers are young people just out of college. Sometimes they tell him about their problems and he says to them, “Read this book. You might find the answer there.” He is mildly famous in the trade for his ability to sell hundreds of copies of a book that arouses his enthusiasm: for example, he had probably found more readers for Harry Stack Sullivan’s _An Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry_ than any other dealer in the country, even the largest. Collections of stories are usually slow-moving items in bookstores, although they have proved to be more popular as paperbacks. One evening Brent amazed the publisher of Nelson Algren’s stories, _The Neon Wilderness_, by selling a thousand copies of the hardcover book at an autograph party.

We talked about the days when the Near North Side was full of young authors—many of whom became famous New Yorkers—and about the possibility of another Chicago renaissance, as in the years after 1915. Brent would like to do something to encourage such a movement. He complained that most of the other booksellers didn’t regard themselves as integrated parts of the community and that they didn’t take enough interest in the personal needs of their customers.... Brent’s complaint against the booksellers may well have been justified, from his point of view, but a visitor wouldn’t expect to find that any large professional group was marked by his combination of interest in persons, interest in the cultural welfare of the community, and abounding energy.

As a group, the booksellers I have met in many parts of the country are widely read, obliging, likable persons who regard bookselling as a profession and work hard at it, for lower incomes than they might receive from other activities. They would all like to sell more books, in quantities like those of the paperbacks in drugstores and on the news stands, but they are dealing in more expensive articles, for which the public seems to be limited.

_The Literary Situation_ was published by Viking Press in 1954. I had met Mr. Cowley on a January evening the year before. When he came in, tall and distinguished looking, I had given him a chance to browse before asking if I could be of assistance. He smiled when I offered my help, then asked if I had a copy of _Exile’s Return_. I did. He fingered the volume and asked if I made a living selling books. “Of course,” I said, slightly miffed.

“But who in Chicago buys books like the ones you have on these shelves?” he asked.

“Lots and lots of people,” I assured him. I still didn’t know he was baiting me. We began to talk about Chicago, as I now saw it and as it had been. In a moment, he was off on Bug House Square (Chicago’s miniature Hyde Park), the lamented Dill Pickle Club, the young Hemingway, Ben Hecht, Charlie MacArthur, Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Archibald MacLeish, Sinclair Lewis. I had to ask his name, and when he said, Malcolm Cowley, I took _Exile’s Return_ away from him and asked him to autograph it to me. He took the book back and wrote: “To Stuart Brent—a _real_ bookstore.” I felt better about being on the Avenue.

The next evening, Mr. and Mrs. Cowley came to one of our concerts in the downstairs room and heard Badura-Skoda and Irene Jonas play a duo recital.

America lacks the cafés and coffee houses that serve as literary meeting places in all European countries. I had high hopes for our basement room with its piano and hi-fi set and tables and comfortable chairs as a place for such interchange. In addition to our concerts, lectures, and art exhibits, there were Saturday afternoon gatherings of men and women from a wide range of professions and disciplines who dropped in to talk and entertain each other. We served them coffee and strudel.

Possibly the most memorable of our concerts was that played by William Primrose. He had promised long ago to do one if I ever had a shop with the facilities for it. We had them now, and quite suddenly Primrose called to announce that he would be stopping over in Chicago on his way to play with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and would be delighted to present us with a recital.

There were only a few days to prepare for the event. As soon as the word was out, we were deluged with phone calls. Our “concert hall” would seat only fifty people, so I decided to clear the floor on the street level, rent two hundred chairs for the overflow audience, and pipe the music up to them from the downstairs room. I hired a crew of experts to arrange the microphones and set up the speakers.

The show did not start with any particular aplomb, and it got worse, for me at least, as the evening progressed. Primrose came early to practice. It hadn’t occurred to me that he needed to. He wanted not only to practice, but moreover a place in which he could do so undisturbed. Since the “concert hall” was swarming with electricians, not to mention the porter setting up chairs while I ran up and down the stairs alternating between a prima donna and a major domo, it looked as though another place would have to be found for Primrose to practice. I therefore took the great violist into a basement storage room that served as a catchall shared by my shop and the drugstore next door. But Primrose settled down happily in the dirty, poorly lit room amid stacks of old bills, Christmas decorations, old shelves and fixtures, empty bottles and cartons of Kleenex and went to work.

In less than ten minutes, a little grey man who filled prescriptions came bounding down the stairs screaming, “Where is Brent? Where is Brent?” He caught me in the hall and continued yelling, “If this infernal racket doesn’t stop, honest to God, I’ll call the police!” It was no use telling him the man making the racket was one of the world’s greatest musicians. He had never heard of Primrose and couldn’t have cared less. The noise coming up the vents, he claimed, was not only causing a riot in the drugstore, but he was so unnerved by the sounds that he had already ruined two prescriptions. While he was howling about his losses, I began howling with laughter. But there seemed nothing to do but get Primrose out of that room.

I moved my star into our receiving room, a messy cubbyhole ten feet wide. He didn’t seem to mind, although now, since he couldn’t walk up and down, he was confined to sitting in a chair for his practice.

Meantime, a crowd far beyond our capacity had swarmed into both levels of the shop. Those who came early got seats. Others sat on the stairs leading down to the hall. The rest stood, and some even spilled out the door onto Michigan Avenue. I couldn’t get from one end of the place to the other without stepping on people. I found myself begging someone’s pardon all evening long.

Then the complaints began. Those seated in the hall were gasping for air. Our cooling system simply wasn’t up to handling that many people. I rushed to the boiler room where the gadgets for controlling the air-conditioning were located and tried to improve the situation. Of course, I made it worse.

Finally I introduced Primrose to the audience and beat a hasty retreat. Almost at once an “important” guest tackled me with his complaints. I beat my way upstairs (those sitting on the stairs discovered they were not able to hear a thing) and after tripping over dozens of feet and crushing against uncounted bodies was confronted by a thin, long woman wearing a turban hat, who seized me and, amid this utter confusion, began telling me I was the most wonderful man alive. Her eyes were burning and every time she took a breath, she rolled her tongue across her lips. I was fascinated, but desperate. “What do you want?” I begged, willing to do virtually anything to extricate myself. “I want you to be my agent,” she said, pressing me to the wall. “I’m an author and I’ll have nothing to do with anyone but you.”

I ducked beneath her outstretched arms, trampled some people, caught my foot in the lead wire to one of the microphones, and fell heavily into the lap of one of the most attractive women I have ever seen. She fell off her chair onto the floor and I rolled on top of her. A folding chair ahead of me collapsed, and before anything could be done, a dozen lovers of music and literature lay sprawled on top of one another, while those not engaged in this chain reaction pronounced menacing “shooshes.” By the time I had righted myself, several friends had come up from the concert hall to complain about the noise upstairs.

Finally the concert ended. I was later told that William Primrose gave a brilliant performance—something to be remembered and cherished for a lifetime. I would not know. All I know is that the “most attractive woman in the world” in whose lap I landed sent me a bill for eighty dollars to replace the dress which I apparently had torn beyond reconstruction. I paid the bill.

There were other fine parties, among them one that grew out of the arrival of a play called “Mrs. McThing,” a funny, whimsical, adroit production which could be the product only of a great goodness of the heart. Helen Hayes and Jules Munshin were the stars.

I loved every minute of the play, and in addition to being entranced by Miss Hayes’ remarkable performance, thought Jules Munshin to be extraordinarily comical in his role. One of his telling lines was, “Let’s have a meeting,” no matter what the situation that provoked it. The problem might be entirely trivial, but before a decision could be made, a meeting first took place. As things do happen, the morning after the play opened in Chicago, Mr. Munshin walked into the shop along with another member of the cast. It was impossible to greet him with any other words, but, “Let’s have a meeting!” We became friends instantly, and when the play neared the end of its run, we decided there should be a farewell party for the cast. Jules asked Miss Hayes if she would come, and I was properly thrilled when she agreed.

So on closing night they all came to the bookstore, along with about thirty people Jennie and I had asked to join us. The program did not have to be planned. There was singing, reciting, story-telling. Then, quite by surprise, Miss Hayes’ colorful husband joined us. The fun really began, not only in heightened conversation, but when the MacArthurs’ daughter sat at the piano with Chet Roble and played and sang. Roble is another Chicago “original”—an artist of the blues and a superb personality and musician who has been playing over the years at Chicago hotels and night spots and always attracts a large and appreciative following. He was part of the cast of Terkel’s famous “Studs’ Place” show. He represents an almost lost art not only in his old-time jazz musicianship, but also in terms of cabaret entertainment—the performer who genuinely loves his work and his audience and who will remember ten years later the face of someone he met in a noisy night club crowd.

It was an all-night party. I talked with Miss Hayes about Ben Hecht, who had collaborated with Charles MacArthur on “The Front Page,” which opened quite a new page for the American theatre. She agreed that Ben could talk more sense, more dramatically than any author we knew. I had had an autographing party for Ben’s book, _Child of a Century_, an autobiographical study of his life and development as a writer. We sold almost 800 copies of the book that night. Ben came with his wife and daughter and sat behind the desk with a cigar in his mouth, his eyes dreamy, his mind tending toward some distant land, but he was most affable, while repeating over and over: “I’ve never done such a thing in my whole life. And I’ve been writing for forty years!”

Later Hecht had taken me to the old haunts of the Chicago literary scene. We sat in a tavern he had frequented while working on the now defunct _Chicago Journal_. He showed me where Hemingway took boxing lessons. We went to the building where Ben had lived on the fourth floor and Hemingway on the floor beneath. It was a time not long past, yet far away and long ago.

We viewed the former locale of the Dill Pickle Club, the famous literary tavern. Ben talked to me with personal insight about Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Maxwell Bodenheim, Covici Friede, and others, among them, some of whose fame lay in tragic ends—death by drink, suicide, or merciless twists of fate.

Not long ago, I phoned Ben at his home in Nyack, New York. Red Quinlan, the television executive, had an idea for a series of literary shows to be called, “You Can’t Go Home Again.” He had talked to me about being narrator, and I in turn had suggested Ben Hecht for the first interview.

“Ben,” I said, “this is Stuart Brent. Do you remember me?”

There was a flat, “Yes,” as though he didn’t, really.

“I’m calling to tell you,” I said, “that we have a great idea for a TV show and I want to interview you for it. It’s called....”

“I don’t want to hear it,” he said. “I don’t want a living thing to do with TV. Don’t tell me what you have to say. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “you haven’t given me a chance.”

“I don’t want to give you a chance,” he said. “I have no use for TV or anybody who writes for TV. It’s worse than snaring little girls away from home.”

“You still don’t understand,” I said.

“Look mister,” he said, “I understand. I just don’t want to hear your proposition. I want nothing to do with you or television. Is that clear?”

“Wait a minute, Ben,” I said, “this is Stuart Brent from Chicago, don’t you remember?”

“Oh, Stu. Where are you calling from?”

“From Chicago.”

“Oh my God. Why did you let me run off like that? I thought you were some two for a nickel joker from a television agency. I’m sorry. How are you, baby?”

“Fine,” I said, “but I do want to talk with you about a TV series that I hope I’m going to do.”

“Sorry, baby, the answer is no. Not for any money in the world.”

“Well, how are you financially?”

“Ach, you know. Same damn thing. But I don’t care. I’m busy, killing myself with writing. I’ve got a hot book coming out soon. Be sure and get a copy. It’s really hot.”

“I wish you’d hear what I have to say. It’s really a fine idea.”

“Sorry, no. How’s the bookstore?”

So we talked of books and the time I nearly blew a gasket when Ben autographed his book, _Charlie_, at another Chicago store. He had sent me a carbon copy of his manuscript on that talented and lovable bum, Charles MacArthur, and I had told him I hoped we could raise a stir with a real party when the book came out. He agreed, having been considerably impressed with the first party we held for him. Ben was in Italy writing a movie scenario when the publication date of _Charlie_ was announced. Upon receiving a cablegram requesting a Chicago autographing party date, he wired, Yes, thinking it was to be at my bookstore. It wasn’t ... and for weeks after the event was held, nobody dared get near me.

“I’m still sorry about that mixup,” Ben said. “Well, o.k., baby, take care of yourself. When you get to New York, give me a ring and I’ll meet you for a drink at the Algonquin.”

I remembered my original purpose and tried again. “For the last time, you won’t listen to me about this TV thing?”

“Absolutely, irrevocably, no. Goodbye, Stu.”

I was left pondering about the strange and rather terrifying creature that is Ben Hecht, a wise, witty man of the world with the disarming gentleness of a tamed jungle beast. I thought again of our sentimental revisiting of Hechtian haunts ... the small tavern across from Bug House Square where Ben paced off the original setting: “In this corner was a stage, here were the tables, and there were the two chairs that belonged to Charlie and me. Here, in this corner, we wrote _The Front Page_.”

Suddenly he put down his beer and said, “Let’s take a taxi over to the campus. I want to show you where Carl Wanderer lived.”

We hadn’t traveled far before Ben changed the course and directed the cab driver to let us off near the Civic Opera building. We walked down a few stairs into another tavern and Ben stood, cigar in mouth, looking. There were a few men at the bar and the bartender, leaning on outspread arms and returning Ben’s look inquiringly.

“Have you seen John Randolph or Michael Brown or Rudy York?” Ben said.

No one there had ever heard of them.

Ben muttered under his breath. “I guess they’re all dead,” he said. “I used to work with them on the _Journal American_.”

We sat down and ordered a beer. “I think this must be the place,” he said, “but I might have it mixed up. We had good times together. We had a real ball with this character, Wanderer. Do you know the story?

“Well, Wanderer was an ex-army officer who discovered that his wife was pregnant. He didn’t want the child because he feared it would interfere with resuming his army career. He wanted to re-enlist. So he arranged for a fake holdup on Ingleside Avenue. That’s where I want to take you now.

“Anyway, he got a bum off Clark Street and gave the guy a few dollars to make this holdup, assuring him it was just a trick to be played on his wife for fun. Wanderer took his wife to the movies that night, to a theatre, if my memory is correct, called the Midway. And on their way home, they have to walk almost half a block along the side of a school yard. The streets are poorly lit, and this bum sticks a gun to Wanderer and yells, ‘This is a stick-up!’

“The bum never had a real gun. But Wanderer did. He pretended to struggle with the guy and then shot him ... turned the gun on his wife, too, and killed her instantly. Then he wiped off the gun and shoved it into the bum’s dead hand. It looked as though the robber had been resisted and somehow shot in the fight. Wanderer became a hero overnight, and the newspapers played him up for all it was worth.”

Ben and Carl Sandburg, who was then a reporter on the _Journal_, were eventually responsible for breaking the case. They went to interview the hero and came away with mutual misgivings which they confided to the police. It was a triumph worthy of _The Front Page_, but I think it was the irony of the world’s readiness for hero worship that made pricking the Wanderer balloon such a satisfying episode in the life of Ben Hecht.

In spite of all our efforts, the lectures and concerts in our downstairs room did not continue to draw indefinitely. Sometimes we couldn’t get fifty people to come out of an evening to hear good music for free (and one of the finest chamber groups in the city was providing us with a series just for the chance to play.) Saturday afternoons were idle—people seemed to have become too busy to spend time in simple conversation.

Book sales dropped, too. Price cutting hurt the psychiatric mail order business, although we held out for several years. Finally we discontinued the catalogue, in spite of its definitive value as a listing of significant books in this field.