Micawber Books celebrates its 20th anniversary.
By: Michael Redmond
Micawber Books on Nassau Street first opened its doors on Sept. 7, 1981 20 years ago today. In a town with a history as long and rich as Princeton’s, it usually takes time to be recognized as a community institution. Twenty years isn’t much time, but it’s safe to say that Micawber Books has made the cut.
To celebrate the store’s anniversary, co-owners Logan Fox of Blawenburg and Margaret Knapp of Princeton are having a little fun with Micawber’s display windows.
Exhibited in the main window of 114 Nassau are some newspapers current to the store’s opening date, including The Princeton Packet of Sept. 2, 1981. Prominently headlined: "Petitioners derail garage bond issue." The relevance of the headline to downtown Princeton’s all-too-topical traffic woes is a decision best left to the reader.
Also on display are The New York Times’s best-seller lists of Sept. 6, 1981. No. 1, Fiction, was Stephen King’s "Cujo." No. 1, Nonfiction, was Judy Mazel’s "The Beverly Hills Diet." There, in the window, are copies of Carl Sagan’s "Cosmos," D.M. Thomas’s "The White Hotel" and Shere Hite’s "The Hite Report on Male Sexuality." It’s the Reagan Administration, redux.
Counterpointing this display, in the side window, is a charming layout of children’s books, all having to do with birthdays.
"Naming the store for Micawber was my father’s suggestion," said Logan Fox of Blawenburg, the store’s founder. Wilkins Micawber is a well-known character from Charles Dickens’s "David Copperfield."
"The name represents not only literature, but encapsulates some of the things we were feeling at the time eternal optimism, the expectation that something wonderful was always to be found right around the corner, but also the necessity for penny-pinching," he said.
Like all independent bookstores, Micawber Books is more easily defined by what it is not than by what it is.
First and foremost, Micawber Books is not a literary supermarket. There is a small play area for children in the children’s books section, but no café (play area for adults) although "we let customers bring their coffee in, as long as they don’t spill it," said Ms. Knapp, with a smile.
Micawber Books has its specialities, such as rare books and search services. But it would be inaccurate to describe it as a specialty bookstore, unless one considers a solitary section devoted to "Princeton Authors" a specialty.
No, Micawber’s is a general interest, full service bookshop that derives its identity from a special chemistry between the shop’s owners and staff, on one side, and the shop’s customers, on the other. It’s a relationship that grows ever-rarer as mass marketing dominates more and more businesses and blockbuster facilities sprout up alongside highways.
Micawber’s is a human kind of thing, on a human scale, much like downtown Princeton itself. It seems to be a perfect fit.
"It’s a great thing that the shop is in Princeton," Mr. Fox said.
"We’ve got a very eclectic, smart readership who allows us to fine-tune our selections. Business is a lot more interesting here because our customers push us. They want philosophy, poetry subjects that generally don’t sell all that well."
"This is an unusual town," Ms. Knapp agreed. "Our customers drive us. That’s how we do our marketing. We’re the alternative. People can feel and see the difference the minute they walk through the door."
That’s literally true. Micawber Books is housed in two storefronts on Nassau Street. 110 Nassau sells used and rare books, while 114 Nassau features new titles. Both have a homey feel.
Three years ago, Richardson Smith Architects on Witherspoon Street was brought in to redesign both spaces. En route, 114 Nassau was transformed into a tour de force. The look is sleek yet inviting, formal yet intimate. Book display areas exert the sensuous attraction of museum exhibits. It’s a pleasure to linger in this space.
"Juliet Richardson and Terry Smith are terrific," said Ms. Knapp. "They gave us exactly what we wanted a long table right down the middle of the store, like a ‘Main Street.’ "
This keynote of 114’s layout allows Micawber’s staff to mix and match books in intriguing ways. Like a true Main Street, one never knows what will turn up next. For instance, Galway Kinnell’s "A New Selected Poems" (Mariner Books) is just two titles away from Richard W. Langer’s "Where There’s Smoke, There’s Flavor: Real Barbecue, The Tastier Alternative to Grilling" (Little, Brown). Such offbeat juxtapositions make Micawber’s "Main Street" ideal for browsing.
Micawber’s proprietors do not share a gloom-and-doom mentality about the place of literature in contemporary life.
"Judging from our customers, people are reading more, and they’re getting more sophisticated. But I realize that we’re not typical," said Ms. Knapp.
Mr. Fox estimates that over the course of 20 years, Micawber’s has sold "a total of 105 Stephen King novels. We don’t do Stephen King well. That’s a good picture of our customer base. But we sold more than 50 copies of King’s ‘On Writing’ (a book about the craft of fiction writing). If Anne Rice wrote a treatise on witchcraft, we could sell that, but we don’t do well selling her novels."
Also, Mr. Fox has noted "no decline in (patronage by) non-University students, age 17-25. They’re a sophisticated readership, too. They’re asking for (Jack Kerouac’s) "On the Road," for Nietzsche and Freud. I really enjoy the beginning of the summers, when our younger customers come in to pick up what they’ll be reading. It’s interesting to see what they choose."
Although Micawber Books does not issue its own bestseller list, Mr. Fox estimates that the shop’s "overlap with The New York Times’ bestseller list is about 20 percent." Micawber’s participates in a trade network for independent bookstores called Book Sense 76 (the 76 denotes independence), which periodically issues book recommendations culled from independent bookstores nationwide.
Looking back, Mr. Fox said that he "was trying to remember my expectations when we opened. At the time, I thought that I might spend maybe two years, five years in the business, and then I would be doing something else. But my wife (Ellie Wyeth) told me that all I was thinking about was the next day. Twenty years. I just feel a sense of wonder, and a sense of deep gratitude to the Princeton community."
Micawber Books is at 110-114 Nassau St, Princeton. The shop can be reached by calling (609) 921-8454 and by visiting its Web site, www.micawber.com

