I hardly knew ye

The Gotham Book Mart in Manhattan is closed. All right, those of you in the know will say; that's hardly news. Well, it's news to me. The shock waves of its closing, liquidation auction, etc. in 2007 did not reach me in my cozy Chicago home. while the aura of its storied past and, especially, that famous photo of about thirty famous authors posing there which I encountered numerous times while working on the Gore Vidal papers at Harvard, kept it alive in my heart. Last August, I tried to take my uncle there on a broiling hot day, and a little sign on the door merely said that it was closed for inventory. Some inventory--like counting the bones on a corpse. Well, I guess I can go to the Strand if I have to.