Strand jumps the shark ...

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Perhaps the strangest party at last weekend’s BookExpo America in New York was the 80th birthday celebration of the Strand, the venerable lower Broadway bookstore — “eighteen miles of books,” promises the signage — where disorganization has always been a virtue and the only way to find anything is not to look for anything at all. The party’s sponsors were Publishers Weekly and (yes) AARP, which may be a reflection of the shifting demographics of the industry, and the guests of honor included Pete Hamill, Art Spiegelman, Fran Lebowitz and former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who served as master of ceremonies.

But if the Strand has never been a party space — guests mingled in dense clusters throughout the second-floor stacks, eating deli sandwiches and birthday cake — the store has cleaned up considerably in recent years, appearing shockingly organized. New paperbacks were stacked on tables in the front of the store, and there’s now an elevator to get upstairs, where children’s literature (at the Strand?!?) is sold along with Strand T-shirts, Strand tote bags and Strand onesies for infants with a literary bent.
What’s happened here? It’s as if your bohemian uncle had become a banker, as if Joe Gould actually wrote his imaginary history and flogged it on Oprah Winfrey’s show. Don’t get me wrong: The Strand is one of the finest and most idiosyncratic bookstores in America, and its survival bodes well for all of us.

Yet there’s still an irony at work here, for what was missing at this 80th birthday celebration was the true guest of honor — the anarchic, sprawling, incomprehensible soul of the Strand itself.
— David L. Ulin