On the Literary Front Lines

“It will surely not come as a shock to (writers) to reflect that there are any one of a thousand different things they might be doing which would provide better pay for the effort expended. But still they keep on writing. People who go into bookselling in a small store of their own are only a different kind of fool. They serve, if nothing else, to round out the lunatic picture of the life of letters.”

Pat and Fred Cody started Cody’s Books in 1956, not a year, as they noted, in which “the Republic was bubbling over with enthusiasm for the strenuous life of the mind.” Centrally located in Berkeley, Cody’s became a landmark during the protests of the late ‘60s. In June, 1968, Highway Patrolmen responded to student protests with tear-gas grenades; Fred Cody set up a first-aid station in the back of the store. In February, 1969, Governor Ronald Reagan declared a state of emergency on campus; the National Guard was sent in, a tear-gas canister was thrown through the plate-glass window in front of the store, and Cody’s lost days of business while clearing out the poison gas. In the early ‘70s, employees discovered the bookstore was being used as a drug drop-off when they found white powder in plastic bags behind Wittgenstein in the philosophy section.

The business of selling books went on, and rather successfully. Cody’s moved into progressively bigger stores. In 1970, a union of Cody’s employees was organized, and members demanded that Pat and Fred turn over shares and inventory. “I was hardly a bony-headed capitalist,” Pat remembers, and was “paid less than any of them.” The union’s demands were diverted by protests over the invasion of Cambodia and the deaths at Jackson and Kent State. In 1977 the Codys sold the bookstore to Andy Ross, and in 1983 Fred Cody, having entered the hospital for treatment for lung cancer, died of an undiagnosed heart disease. He is remembered in this book as a fierce supporter of the small press in America, of young writers, and serious writing. A bookstore, Pat Cody writes, is “one of the primary institutions of a good society.”

“Cody’s Books: The Life and Times of a Berkeley Bookstore” by Pat and Fred Cody (Chronicle Books: $11.95) .