10 JUNE 27-JULY 3, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | The Next Chapter COLORADO AUTHORS ON THE PLOT TWIST OF BARNES & NOBLE BUYING THE TATTERED COVER. BY TEAGUE BOHLEN The recent history of the Tattered Cover is a real page-turner: After forty years of fi erce independence, legendary owner Joyce Meskis sells the bookseller to handpicked successors, who face tough competition from chains and then the pandemic, and sell it again to a local group that winds up fi ling for bankruptcy. The top bidder? The biggest chain of all, Barnes & Noble, which bids $1.8 million; a deadline of July 2 has been set for any objections. We reached out to Colorado authors to get their take on this plot twist; their responses are sprawling and surprising, full of angst, sorrow, nostalgia and, yes, hope: Tattered Cover is dead; long live Tattered Cover! Mario Acevedo, The Nymphos of Rocky Flats For local writers, having a book launch for your debut novel at the TC was defi nitely a bucket-list publishing goal. I had mine back in 2006 at the LoDo TC, and the event was quite the heady experience. Over the years, my interactions with TC has had its ups and downs, and I wish only the best for those bookworm employees who’ve hung in there. Nick Arvin, Mad Boy By the dollars involved, the Tat- tered Cover’s role in Denver isn’t a big thing. I don’t know anything about the Tattered Cover’s oper- ating budget, but I would guess that the bottom line isn’t much more than the salary of a single mid-level Broncos player. And yet…everyone in Denver knows the Tattered Cover; everyone has been there to wander the aisles, touch the books and wonder what’s inside. The bookstore is where we go with our best self in mind. Who will I become if I read this book? Or that one? In any city, the largest independent bookstore is unique, quirky, an icon and a repository for the city’s imagination and as- pirations. I have nothing against Barnes & Noble, and I hope that the Tattered Cover, or whatever it’s to be called, will continue to be a fi ne place to fi nd great books. But as it becomes a number in the spreadsheets of a fi nancial portfolio controlled by a corporation headquartered 2,000 miles away, it’s hard to believe it will still feel like the soul of the city. Mark A. Barnhouse, Tattered Cover Book Store: A Storied History I’m happy that, unlike some Denver in- stitutions (El Chapultepec, Celebrity Sports Center, Racines, a half-dozen department stores), Tattered Cover will remain on the scene. It’s not Joyce Meskis’s Tattered Cover, however — institutions have to evolve lest they become irrelevant. The negative changes are even more subtle and hard to quantify, other than the obvious one: There’s not enough staff and not enough inventory, not by a long shot. Joyce retired, but so, too, have several other key people who gave Tattered Cover the personality it had in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, and I hope that under this new own- ership the store will cultivate new, creative buyers who will build on the legacies of Joyce and others, including Margaret Maupin and Cathy Langer (to mention just two of many). Tattered Cover has been an important part of my life for more than four decades. I still remember my fi rst trip to the original Second Avenue store in early August 1980. I was on a mission to read every novel written by Charles Dickens, and was frustrated by my inability to fi nd all of them. I read (in Westword!) about Tattered Cover, so I went down there on my bike, went inside and had my mind blown. Books were piled everywhere — under tables, on top of bookcases, even on the stairway. I walked upstairs to the fi ction section, and there was every single novel Charles Dickens ever wrote, from Pickwick to Drood — every single one. At Waldenbooks or B. Dalton, all I could ever fi nd were three or four titles, and not even my old standbys, ABC Books in University Hills Plaza and Hatch’s Books in University Hills Mall, had more than fi ve or six. I remember many nights stopping by after work, spending ninety minutes or two hours browsing and buying. The place just made me happy. Working there for the fi ve and a half years I attended UCD was a wonderful period of my life, probably my favorite job ever (I once sold a copy of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses to Peter O’Toole! I got to meet David Foster Wallace!). I had many wonder- ful co-workers who made every day fun and interesting. And when I became a published author, Tattered Cover was the fi rst place that hosted a book signing for me, in August or September 2010, in LoDo’s second-fl oor events room, working with the kind and gener- ous Charles Stillwagon, who used to run their events. Writing Tattered Cover Book Store: A Storied History was icing on the cake. Jon Bassoff, Beneath Cruel Waters As a kid growing up in Boulder, it was always a special day when my family drove to the immense Tattered Cover book- store in Cherry Creek. We would spend hours wandering through the giant rooms fi lled with tens of thousands of books and would all come home with armfuls of books, books that we couldn’t fi nd in the shopping mall chain stores. In fact, it was at the Tattered Cover where I discovered Jim Thompson, a 1950s crime fi ction writer who inspired me to write my fi rst novel. Years later, seeing one of my own books on the shelves near those Jim Thompson novels was one of the great thrills of my life. So, yeah, it feels as if something crucial is be- ing torn away from the city and my past. I now live in Longmont, and I’m thankful that we have our own little inde- pendent bookstore, Barbed Wire Books. I’m hopeful that one won’t be gobbled up as well. Dan Beachy-Quick, Of Silence and Song I grew up outside Denver, and the Tattered Cover, from high school through my college days, was where I went to discover poetry, and to begin to fi gure out being a poet myself. In those years it had an incredible collection of poetry and literary journals, and it was a kind of wondrous education to browse the shelves. I remember reading George Oppen there for the fi rst time, a poet who changed my life. It’s a real sadness to me to know that a corporate entity has taken over a beloved independent bookstore, but its shelves, cafe and comfy seats all will still be the very archetype of what a bookstore is for me. David Boop, Straight Outta Tombstone TC fi lled a specifi c niche in Denver’s literary space. I saw and met many big-name authors in a classic-style atmosphere. TC’s signings/readings felt more like a library than a bookstore. It was more intimate than a BN. Not that everything about TC was per- fect. I always had a hard time getting them to carry any of my titles, even those distributed by major publishers. They charged way too much for a book signing, which scared away a lot of smaller publishers from setting up events there. That didn’t take away the magic from being in any of their locations, though. Before I built my creative collective, I used to hop around to different places to write. I loved writing both at LoDo and Colfax. The ambience of being surrounded by so many books and readers was conducive to creating. Plus, they made a killer chai latte! R. Alan Brooks, The Mask in Your Dreams TC has been a home for local book lovers, with a passionate staff that has excitedly sup- ported my work as an author. Under previous owners Len Vlahos and Kristen Gilligan, my fi rst book, The Burning Metronome, was enthu- siastically recommended to customers, and I was invited to partici- CULTURE continued on page 12 KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS Inside the East Colfax store. The Tattered Cover’s fl agship store is now on East Colfax. MOLLY MARTIN TATTERED COVER
