Vendor shares love of literature - on the sidewalk

Mark “the bookman” Givre, 58, sells books ­— every genre from romance to science fiction and politics — on the corner of West 231st Street and Broadway. Photo by Samantha Katzeff

‘I try to make life a little better for people if I can,’ said the bookman, otherwise known as Mark Givre. ‘People tell me I’m the last bookstore in the neighborhood.’

By Kevin Deutsch

On a dreary morning last week, the bookman awoke bleary-eyed in his Kingsbridge apartment, packed up seven shopping carts and suitcases full of books, and, one by one, lugged and pushed them through the rain to the corner of Broadway and West 231st Street.

The customers arrived slowly, peering through the drizzle at the bookman’s two tables worth of fiction classics, French military treatises, pulp novels and works from countless other genres. They thumbed through pages penned by Borges, Stanislavski, Vonnegut and Steinbeck. Others went straight for the romance or Western sections, plucking out the latest by Danielle Steel or an old Louis L’Amour title.

All the while, the bookman doled out suggestions, summed up plots, and offered nuggets of literary knowledge with the expertise of a man who’d spent too many sleepless nights reading. Then, for $2 a book or three for $5, he sent customers away with promises of adventure, enlightenment or spine-tingling horror. For a time, caught up in the promise of escape between paperback covers, the bookman and his patrons seemed to forget about the rain, the blaring horns, and the long workday stretching out ahead.

“I try to make life a little better for people, if I can,” said the bookman, otherwise known as Mark Givre, a 58- year-old former food wholesaler and divorced father of one whose street corner bookstand is among the last bastions of literary small-talk in Riverdale and Kingsbridge. “People tell me I’m the last bookstore in the neighborhood. They ask for certain titles, they want recommendations. They treat it like a real bookshop, so I do my best to get them what they want.”

On a noisy block lined with street hawkers peddling everything from cheap perfume to knock-off handbags, Mr. Givre slings a loftier product: tales of political intrigue, ancient history, and some of the world’s greatest literature.

His bookstand is different things to different readers: a place for commuters to pick up a book for that long subway ride; a spot where young men and women who never got out of high school can read the same classics studied at Harvard; and a kind of refuge for street-corner philosophers, long-struggling writers, and down -on-their-luck loners just looking for someone to chat with.

Denis John Brady, 58, said Mr. Givre’s bookstand has given him a modicum of pleasure in an otherwise troubling time. A few months ago, he was forced out of his Manhattan residence when the building’s owner renovated it and turned it into a motel. Mr. Brady refused to leave, even as construction workers hammered and drilled all around him. Finally, with his walls literally crumbling, Mr. Brady moved to Riverdale.

On a recent afternoon, he sought Mr. Givre’s recommendation for a book that matched his dark mood. He walked away with one called The Natural Depravity of Mankind: Observations on the Human Condition.

“I’ve lost all optimism,” said Mr. Brady, who is trying to become a writer. “But I’m still addicted to books.”

Other customers say they’re learning things from Mr. Givre’s books they might have never been exposed to otherwise.

“He’s the man. He’s helping me get an education,” one young customer said of Mr. Givre, whom he knows only as the bookman.

The bookstand has stayed afloat, in part, because of the closure of another neighborhood favorite, Paperbacks Plus. When that shop shut its doors last year, local bookworms rued the fact they would have to leave their neighborhood to find a great read.

Mr. Givre, meanwhile, was having his own troubles. In need of money, his career in food wholesale and dairy delivery behind him, the Riverdale native struggled to find his niche in a plummeting economy. His Kingsbridge apartment, swarmed with piles of books, had become impassable. His roommate begged him to get rid of some.

So Mr. Givre loaded up a few grocery carts and suitcases, boarded the No. 1 train, and scouted out a high-traffic spot on Broadway and 112th Street. Customers quickly began bringing him their old books. Others invited him to their homes to collect them. In time, he had hundreds of titles, most of which he read during the weekends so that he’d be able to make intelligent recommendations.

With his marriage over, and his 19-yearold daughter living upstate, Mr. Givre said he found himself lying awake at all hours. His books kept him company.

“I’m able to sleep less and less as I get older. I read more and more,” said Mr. Givre, who also writes short fiction and poetry.

Unhappy with the brisk business Mr. Givre was doing, established booksellers in upper Manhattan began coming by to intimidate him, he said. Their tactics, combined with the long subway ride from Kingsbridge, led the bookseller to move to his current location.

Some days, his work can be lonely and frustrating, with nary a passerby stopping to browse his tables. Getting customers to part with $2, even for the likes of Cervantes and Tolstoy, can be daunting in this economy.

Weather can make bookselling difficult, too. On Friday afternoon, the sky opened up and doused Mr. Givre’s inventory. He had neglected to bring his plastic covers, trusting instead the weatherman’s promise of sunshine.

“Terrible luck today,” the bookman said, shaking his head at the dampened stacks.

But on a good day, Mr. Givre can be seen smiling and chatting up customers, working to find them just the right book.

“I try to be positive,” Mr. Givre said. “It’s easier to accept life that way.”

Some longtime customers linger to share with Mr. Givre their own life stories; the circumstances that brought them, like their favorite bookseller, to this noisy street corner beneath the el.

“You know how they say there are 10 million stories in the naked city?” Mr. Givre said. “I get 8 million a day.”

This is part of the July 2, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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