Chapter 10 A Highly Curated Collection
A Highly Curated Collection
Edwin and Helen Babcock, the owners of Babcock’s Best Books, met in a graduate-level modern American literature course at
Edwin adored Hemingway, described his writing as “spare and muscular,” and thought he had “magnificent insight into the human
condition.” Helen loathed Hemingway, found his themes repetitive—“No matter how terrible the male protagonist is, no matter
how awful his choices, somehow it is always the woman’s fault, always”—and his descriptions miserly—“Would it kill the man to use an adjective? Is he paying for them by the pound?”
The argument had endured through thirty-five years of marriage and the joint ownership of two bookstores.
Their first store, not exactly a going concern but profitable enough, had been located in Minneapolis. After thirty-one years,
they sold the shop and retired to Virginia to be closer to their only daughter and three grandchildren. When their daughter
started dropping the kids off at their house several times a week, they decided that retirement wasn’t all it was cracked
up to be and opened another bookstore.
“I love my grandkids as much as the next woman,” Helen explained to Margaret when they first met, on the day Margaret bought her copy of Gift from the Sea. “But I’ve served my time. And if I’m going to work, then I’d like to get paid for it. Besides, we missed the books.”
The way she’d said this a little wistfully, in the same tone someone else might have used while recalling the hometown of
their childhood or a dearly departed pet, made Margaret fall instantly in love with the eccentric, opinionated, sixty-five-year-old
bookstore owner. Margaret had always had a soft spot for characters, and Helen definitely qualified.
She was tall and tanned, wore her long white hair in two braids that twined into a crown around her head, and dressed in flowing,
colorful skirts and embroidered blouses with a Southwestern flair. She’d been born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, hometown of
Georgia O’Keeffe. O’Keefe was a good bit older, but the two somehow struck up a correspondence. While visiting the artist
in New Mexico, Helen became enamored of the regional fashions.
The fact that Helen and Edwin had traveled and read so widely cemented Margaret’s affection for the couple. Their collective
knowledge bordered on encyclopedic, and their ongoing argument about Hemingway was earnest but collegial, and utterly endearing.
So was their reverence for the written word. Babcock’s was less a bookstore, Margaret decided, than a highly curated collection
of books that Helen and Edwin passionately wanted others to read.
On the morning of the book club meeting, Margaret dropped by the store to get Helen’s opinion on what the Bettys should read
next. Unsurprisingly, she had multiple suggestions.
Though Helen thought Friedan’s book was a clarion call to the current generation, unlike Charlotte, she didn’t feel it quite
qualified as groundbreaking.
“More like a refining of sod that others broke before—in some cases long before,” Helen said, casting a meaningful glance over the top of her green-rimmed cat-eye glasses.
She handed Margaret a copy of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, penned by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1791.
Margaret added it to the books Helen had already recommended, including The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf.
“Woolf discusses the social and economic barriers for women writers. But in a broader sense, it’s about women trying to succeed
in almost any profession. You should find it particularly appealing, now that you’re a woman of letters,” Helen said.
“Oh, but I’m not really,” Margaret protested. “It’s just a silly column in a women’s magazine.”
The intensity of Helen’s gaze was flattering and embarrassing by turns and made Margaret regret telling her about the contest,
Leonard Clement, and her trip to New York.
“It is a start,” Helen said, laying a hand, pebbled with age spots and knots of arthritis, onto the smooth, suntanned skin of Margaret’s
forearm. “There’s nothing silly about that.”
After choosing her favorites from the nonfiction section, Helen led Margaret to the opposite side of the bookstore. “You need
some novels in the mix,” she said, teal skirt swishing as she navigated a valley of bookcases, pulling volumes deftly from
the shelves without even breaking her stride or pausing to peruse the spines.
“Books sprung from an author’s imagination can be just as meaningful as those based on facts, figures, and events, or even
more meaningful. Novels force you to think—to make your own conclusions about characters and themes, and decide if they’re valid or relevant or true or good, or the
opposite, or maybe somewhere in between. My personal preference is for in between. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who
was all one thing or the other, have you? Most people are a walking bundle of contradictions.”
Margaret, thinking about Charlotte, nodded her agreement.
“Take a look at this.” Helen plucked a book with a red title and a decoration of white daisies from the shelf.
“The Group by Mary McCarthy. It came out a couple of months ago. Reviews were mixed, but I loved it. It’s about eight women who become friends at Vassar and what happens to them in the seven years after graduation, which is everything—marriage, divorce, childbirth, heartbreak, madness, betrayal, retribution—you name it. The setting is primarily the 1930s,
but the plot rings true today. Perhaps because so little has changed.” Helen sighed. “Anyway, you really should consider it.”
That was exactly what Helen said about the rest of the novels she recommended as potential book club picks, including Herland—written in 1915 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman about what happens when a society populated and run entirely by women is infiltrated
by three male outsiders—as well as A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, a collection of short stories by Flannery O’Connor, Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis, and Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
“Not specifically focused on female protagonists,” Helen said of the last two, “but they’ve got lots to say about the stifling
nature of excess conformity, something the powers that be in Concordia cannot seem to get enough of.”
Helen stepped behind the checkout counter. “Did I tell you? The association sent a letter saying we had to remove the terra-cotta
flowerpots we had outside the shop door because orange isn’t an approved color in the Concordia master plan, and phlox isn’t
on the list of approved plants. Ridiculous!”
Margaret put her books down on the counter. The stack nearly reached her nose.
“Oh, I know. Yesterday Charlotte went outside and found that somebody had planted an eastern white pine in her yard. She thought
it was a mistake, but then the head of the landscaping department told her it’s part of the master plan too. Charlotte is
livid.”
Helen gasped. “What? It’s her house! How can they tell her what to plant?”
Though the bookstore was located in the town center, Helen and Edwin didn’t actually live in Concordia.
Instead, they’d bought a small house on three-quarters of an acre about a mile from the farm where Margaret had bought her Christmas turkey, so Helen wasn’t entirely up to speed on the community’s regulations.
“Because every home buyer in Concordia signed papers saying they’d abide by the rules,” Margaret said. “I guess there are
pluses and minuses to it. If the association hadn’t put in our landscaping, we wouldn’t have anything but grass. But the irony
is that they planted birch trees in my yard, and that’s what Charlotte wanted in hers.”
“Corrosive conformity. Conformity for the sake of it,” Helen declared, silver and turquoise bracelets jangling as she stabbed
a finger in Margaret’s direction. “Tell Charlotte that she must read Revolutionary Road. It’ll speak to her on multiple levels.”
“All right. But . . .” Margaret cast her eyes toward the tower of books. “Helen, these are all wonderful suggestions, but
I don’t think I can—”
“Afford all this?” Helen flapped her hand before Margaret could answer. “Don’t worry. You’re borrowing, not buying. Look them
all over when you get home, take your favorites to the meeting so the Bettys can vote, and bring back the rejects. All I ask
is that you try not to break the spines or spill on the pages.”
“But . . . what if we do?” Margaret asked anxiously, remembering a coffee splotch on page 28 of her once pristine copy of
Gift from the Sea.
Helen shrugged. “Then the book goes to the discount table. Cost of doing business. If I wanted to get rich, I wouldn’t have
opened a bookstore.”
“Are you sure I can’t leave some sort of deposit?”
“Only if you’re planning to commit a felony and skip town to stay one step ahead of the law. You don’t seem like a woman bent
on a life of crime, so I’m willing to take my chances. Oh, by the way, I’ve got a present for you.”
Helen reached beneath the counter and pulled out a slim, somewhat worn volume with two rose petals on the cover.
“Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s latest, Dearly Beloved. Came out last year. I’ve already read it three times, so it’s a little beaten up. But I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Margaret picked up the book. “Helen, you’re the best!”
“No. Just a book lover who enjoys sharing a good thing. Back in Minneapolis, the store had twenty book clubs. The Bettys are
our first in Concordia. Hopefully it’s the start of a trend.”
Margaret hoped so too, and not just for Helen and Edwin’s sake. She’d come to think of the bookstore as its own sort of club,
a place to share conversation and companionship with people who were curious about the kinds of things she was curious about,
an island of ideas amid a sea of conformity. Margaret couldn’t imagine Concordia without Babcock’s and didn’t want to. The
fact that she was the only customer in the store that morning was worrisome.