Steal this book? Damn beatniks!

In the early 1970’s, radical activist, member of the Chicago Seven, founder of the Youth International Party (the Yippies), and Worcester’s own Abbie Hoffman wrote Steal This Book. Despite the fact that (largely because of its title) many bookstores refused to carry it, Steal became a best seller. A quarter of million copies were sold; no word on how many were stolen.

Even when a book is just sitting there, begging to be stolen, the idea of book stealing rankles me a lot more than, say, swiping a can of tuna or a scarf does. (Not that I’m advocating for tuna- or scarf-stealing…) The notion that someone would steal a book especially rankles me when the bookstore where the book is being stolen is the quite wonderful Porter Square Books in Cambridge.

Porter Square is not my bookstore. That would be the equally wonderful Trident Booksellers & Cafe, just a bit over a mile away from my home. But I’ve been to the Porter Square Bookstore many times for readings, and it’s great place.

Alas, PSB has been the target of thieves – and hipster thieves, at that:

At one point, volumes by such writers as Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac disappeared so often at the Cambridge shop, owner Dina Mardell and her staff tried to flip the script and set up a display of the “Most Frequently Stolen Books.”

“It was in a prominent place so that we could see it, but also so other customers could see it,” she said. “And believe it or not, books were stolen from that.” (Source: Boston Globe)

It’s been almost fifty years since I last read Kerouac (another native son, only from Lowell, not Worcester). But I do remember that I much enjoyed On The Road at the time. And I believe I also read and probably liked The Dharma Bums, for the title if for no other reason.

But only a bum would steal from a bookstore. And we’re not talking dharma bum here. We’re talking bum bums.

And speaking of bums, that is a word that comes to mind when I play word association with the name Charles Bukowski, the poet/fiction writer associated with dirty realism and transgressive fiction. (Not that I know what those terms mean – I got them from wikipedia – but I don’t like the sound of either.) I think I tried reading him a few times but got nowhere. Anything I know about him comes from the movie Barfly, which is based on his life. And from the Bukowski Tavern, a mini-chain (Boston and Cambridge) dive bar that my husband and I occasionally dropped in on when on a walk. We’d put up with the hipsters because Jim liked the hot dogs.

Porter Square Books has tried to do something about the theft of books written by true beats (like Kerouac) and wannabeats (Bukowski):

Six months ago, Mardell resorted to more drastic measures. She removed the most likely candidates for theft from the shelves altogether, tucking them behind the check-out counter beneath a cut-out of John Wayne for safekeeping and replacing their spots on the sales floor with small signs explaining their whereabouts.

Which may be one of the few instances of The Duke being associated with the literary world.

Apparently it’s not just Porter Square that’s being plagued by the theft of books by the likes of Kerouac and Bukowski. In big cities throughout the country – including my Trident where “beatnik authors still get stolen”, and the Harvard Book Store in Harvard Square (another excellent shop):

Bookshops are forced to keep a watchful eye on certain novels, namely those by the so-called “Beat” writers, a generation of stream of consciousness authors who bucked literary norms…It could also be that as new generations of youngsters discover these authors, so too do they channel them, disregarding the mainstream and giving “the man” the metaphorical middle finger.

Ripping off an indie bookstore that is never more than a few sales from out-of-business is sure giving “the man” the finger, all right.

How about going to Brooks Brothers and stealing a rep tie? Or taking a five-finger discount on a Callaway putter. Rip off some Tide Pods or a grill at Walmart.

Come on, hipsters, attack d-baggery and capitalism, not indie booksellers.

As far back as 1997, the New York Times reported on ‘“paperbacks by a handful of writers, all of them male, 20th-century, and counter-cultural” being stolen with more frequency than others.’ Their list included – surprise, surprise – William S. Burroughs. And:

“Anything by Charles Bukowski has to be nailed down,” the Times said of the apparent trend.

It seems that the thievery is more associated with locations with a lot of students (and/or hipsters): Boston, Cambridge. The indie bookstore in Brookline, Massachusetts reported that there was nothing particular about the sorts of books they had stolen. And for Wellesley Books, the author you have to ask the clerk for is Danielle Steel, of all things.

Wellesley is a very well-to-do and well-educated Boston suburb. It’s also the home of Wellesley College. Guess the bluestockings don’t want it to go on any sort of record that they actually read Danielle Steel.

Anyway, I’m now playing the desert island game. If I were marooned on a desert island, would I rather have the collected works of Danielle Steel or Charles Bukowski? Guess I’d have to go with Danielle Steel, based simply on volume and variety.

But I wouldn’t be caught dead stealing books by either of them. If I were that desperate that I needed to steal to read, I’d have to give the nod to Kerouac.