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Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co.
For twenty years, from 1977 to 1997, Books & Co. was one of the premier independent bookstores in the country. Stocking a wide range of quality fiction and nonfiction, Books & Co. was the kind of bookstore writers and readers dream about: a place where reading was an adventure, where interesting works would always be available, where writers would congregate to share ideas and discuss their writing. Its closing, in a rent dispute with the Whitney Museum of Art, caused a media sensation as readers and book lovers decried the end of a cultural icon. In Bookstore, Lynne Tillman tells the story of this legendary store and its determined founder, Jeannette Watson, with help from the voices of Brendan Gill, Roy Blount Jr., Fran Lebowitz, Calvin Trillin, Susan Sontag, Paul Auster, Simon Schama, Lyn Chase, Susan Cheever, Leila Hadley, J.D. McClatchy, Richard Howard, and many more. And the story goes beyond the walls of the store itself to explore the state of publishing and bookselling in a time when the very landscape of the book world has shifted radically. A fascinating account of business, books, and writerly aspiration, Bookstore is a vital window into a world so many have fantasized about.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published October 11, 1999
5 people are currently reading
165 people want to read
About the author
Lynne Tillman
121 books382 followersHere’s an Author’s Bio. It could be written differently. I’ve written many for myself and read lots of other people’s. None is right or sufficient, each slants one way or the other. So, a kind of fiction – selection of events and facts.. So let me just say: I wanted to be a writer since I was eight years old. That I actually do write stories and novels and essays, and that they get published, still astonishes me.
My news is that my 6th novel MEN AND APPARITIONS will appear in march 2018 from Soft Skull Press. It's my first novel in 12 years.
Each spring, I teach writing at University at Albany, in the English Dept., and in the fall, at The New School, in the Writing Dept.
I’ve lived with David Hofstra, a bass player, for many years. It makes a lot of sense to me that I live with a bass player, since time and rhythm are extremely important to my writing. He’s also a wonderful man.
As time goes by, my thoughts about writing change, how to write THIS, or why I do. There are no stable answers to a process that changes, and a life that does too. Writing, when I’m inhabiting its world, makes me happy, or less unhappy. I also feel engaged in and caught up in politics here, and in worlds farther away.
When I work inside the world in which I do make choices, I'm completely absorbed in what happens, in what can emerge. Writing is a beautiful, difficult relationship with what you know and don’t know, have or haven’t experienced, with grammar and syntax, with words, primarily, with ideas, and with everything else that’s been written.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 12, 2017
Summary: The story of Jeanette Watson and Books & Co., once one of the premier independent bookstores in New York City, connecting readers with books and their writers until their closing in 1997.
Jeanette Watson is the grand-daughter of the founder of IBM, and the daughter of Thomas Watson, Jr. who built the company into a computer industry leader. A reader from childhood, this daughter of wealth spent her early adult years working in early childhood education, mental health care, and going through one marriage and divorce. She struggled with depression, then faced hip surgery for congenital hip dysplasia. Facing surgery and a long recovery, she reached a turning point:
“I had a dream. The dream came almost immediately after I was told I needed surgery. I dreamed I was in a bookstore, surrounded by books, hundreds of books, and the place had two floors, and it was cozy. It looked like what would become Books & Co.
* * * * *
“Throughout the ordeal, the operation and the long recovery, the dream sustained me. I was determined there would be a bookstore at the end of the tunnel. One day I invited my friend Steve Aronson out for lunch. He was the only person I knew who was actually in publishing. I told Steven I wanted a bookstore that would look very old-fashioned, be like a private home, and carry wonderful books. There would be events, parties and gallery openings” (p. 13).
This book tells the story of the bookstore that came out of that dream, its twenty year run, and how Watson found her own calling in life in the process. The book, though authored by Lynne Tillman, is Jeanette Watson’s narrative of the history of Books & Co. and her own love of bookselling, interspersed with memories from publishers, writers, representatives, other booksellers, customers and celebrities about there experiences at Books & Co. The contributors anecdotes give us a sense of how Books & Co. served as kind of a literary nexus during this time.
It begins with Watson and her father investing in the startup after finding an old brownstone down the street from the Whitney, who owned the property, on Madison Avenue. She links up with Burt Britton, a book trade veteran who she signs on as a partner. The partnership lasted a year and resulted in “The Wall” representing the best of past and present literary fiction. Burt knew no limits to spending or acquiring books and eventually, Watson ended the partnership to try to meet the bottom line.
Watson realized her dream. She created a two story bookstore that included a green sofa on the second floor, and a curated collection of books centered on literature, philosophy, art, and children’s literature. She became renown for the authors who appeared and did readings in her stores. The list of those who did readings which appears at the back of the book is a snapshot of the literary world in New York in the from the late 1970’s to the late 1990’s. She was an aspiring writer’s friend, and introduced writers, and works she liked to the literary world, and underscored the important role booksellers play in promoting great writing.
Perhaps her greatest joy was connecting people with books, everyone from Woody Allen and Michael Jackson to ordinary residents of the city. Watson comments:
“There’s a significance too–almost a drama–in introducing readers to books. Dramatic because books can and do change people’s lives. I’ve felt that importance as much as I’ve felt it about introducing new writers to readers. Burt used to say, ‘It’s just as easy to read a good book as a bad book.’ If people were given the right book, they could experience something wonderful. One woman told me that she wasn’t a reader until the bookstore opened, but because of my suggestions, she was reading Balzac. It’s what I’m most proud of doing over the years” (p.52).
The book chronicles not only the joys but the struggles of bookselling. Apart from a few boom years in the 1980’s, it was a constant struggle to break even and Watson put a lot of her own money into the store. We get a glimpse behind the scenes of working with publishers representatives and making decisions about book acquisitions, working with distributors and staff, paying bills and making returns.
We also see the beginnings of a transformation of the book trade. Readers interested in the serious works sold by a store like this seemed to be aging and their numbers declining. The advent of the big chains like Barnes and Noble and Borders (!) began to erode sales as people turned to booksellers who discounted. Amazon was just new, and not yet perceived as the force that would threaten them all. E-books were still in the future. But the internet was dawning and cable and video were supplanting reading.
The death knell of this great indie was rent. For many years the Whitney and Books & Co. enjoyed a symbiotic relationship, with people often visiting both. The Whitney was landlord, and as Madison Avenue rents were rising, it became necessary for the Whitney to raise rents on its properties to attend to their own bottom line. These rents became increasingly difficult to meet. There were negotiations, explorations of a merger with the Whitney, all coming to nought. After Christmas in 1996, Jeanette Watson announced the closing of the store on May 31, 1997. Some attempted to save the store, but it was not to happen. The last part of the book is painful in some ways, as the attempts to sustain the life of a dying patient.
Reading the book brought to mind the wonderful encounters I’ve had with great bookstores over the year, especially the ones where the booksellers knew their books and loved connecting their customers with books they would love. I wish I had visited this one. It also reminded me of the passing of so many of these, each like the death of a friend.
At the same time, the pronounced death of the indie bookstores seems premature. Their number is actually growing while Borders is no more and Barnes and Noble is struggling. People are still reading Jane Austin and Dostoevsky, and so much else.
This autobiography, of Watson and her bookstore gives a glimpse into what it takes to make a great bookstore. There is one wrinkle in the book that may be off-putting to some. Watson, like so many bibliophiles, has a curiosity for everything and writes with more fascination than some might find comfortable of inter-species sex and every form of human sexuality, as well as an author’s study of cannibalism. Clearly, this is written in the progressive (and transgressive?) literary milieu of New York City. At the same time, we see the power of books to introduce us to so much of the world beyond just our own experience and the wonderful gift bookstores like Books & Co can be to writers and readers.
Jeanette Watson’s new memoir, It’s My Party, was released October 10, 2017. A video interview with Watson on her book is available on YouTube.
Jeanette Watson is the grand-daughter of the founder of IBM, and the daughter of Thomas Watson, Jr. who built the company into a computer industry leader. A reader from childhood, this daughter of wealth spent her early adult years working in early childhood education, mental health care, and going through one marriage and divorce. She struggled with depression, then faced hip surgery for congenital hip dysplasia. Facing surgery and a long recovery, she reached a turning point:
“I had a dream. The dream came almost immediately after I was told I needed surgery. I dreamed I was in a bookstore, surrounded by books, hundreds of books, and the place had two floors, and it was cozy. It looked like what would become Books & Co.
* * * * *
“Throughout the ordeal, the operation and the long recovery, the dream sustained me. I was determined there would be a bookstore at the end of the tunnel. One day I invited my friend Steve Aronson out for lunch. He was the only person I knew who was actually in publishing. I told Steven I wanted a bookstore that would look very old-fashioned, be like a private home, and carry wonderful books. There would be events, parties and gallery openings” (p. 13).
This book tells the story of the bookstore that came out of that dream, its twenty year run, and how Watson found her own calling in life in the process. The book, though authored by Lynne Tillman, is Jeanette Watson’s narrative of the history of Books & Co. and her own love of bookselling, interspersed with memories from publishers, writers, representatives, other booksellers, customers and celebrities about there experiences at Books & Co. The contributors anecdotes give us a sense of how Books & Co. served as kind of a literary nexus during this time.
It begins with Watson and her father investing in the startup after finding an old brownstone down the street from the Whitney, who owned the property, on Madison Avenue. She links up with Burt Britton, a book trade veteran who she signs on as a partner. The partnership lasted a year and resulted in “The Wall” representing the best of past and present literary fiction. Burt knew no limits to spending or acquiring books and eventually, Watson ended the partnership to try to meet the bottom line.
Watson realized her dream. She created a two story bookstore that included a green sofa on the second floor, and a curated collection of books centered on literature, philosophy, art, and children’s literature. She became renown for the authors who appeared and did readings in her stores. The list of those who did readings which appears at the back of the book is a snapshot of the literary world in New York in the from the late 1970’s to the late 1990’s. She was an aspiring writer’s friend, and introduced writers, and works she liked to the literary world, and underscored the important role booksellers play in promoting great writing.
Perhaps her greatest joy was connecting people with books, everyone from Woody Allen and Michael Jackson to ordinary residents of the city. Watson comments:
“There’s a significance too–almost a drama–in introducing readers to books. Dramatic because books can and do change people’s lives. I’ve felt that importance as much as I’ve felt it about introducing new writers to readers. Burt used to say, ‘It’s just as easy to read a good book as a bad book.’ If people were given the right book, they could experience something wonderful. One woman told me that she wasn’t a reader until the bookstore opened, but because of my suggestions, she was reading Balzac. It’s what I’m most proud of doing over the years” (p.52).
The book chronicles not only the joys but the struggles of bookselling. Apart from a few boom years in the 1980’s, it was a constant struggle to break even and Watson put a lot of her own money into the store. We get a glimpse behind the scenes of working with publishers representatives and making decisions about book acquisitions, working with distributors and staff, paying bills and making returns.
We also see the beginnings of a transformation of the book trade. Readers interested in the serious works sold by a store like this seemed to be aging and their numbers declining. The advent of the big chains like Barnes and Noble and Borders (!) began to erode sales as people turned to booksellers who discounted. Amazon was just new, and not yet perceived as the force that would threaten them all. E-books were still in the future. But the internet was dawning and cable and video were supplanting reading.
The death knell of this great indie was rent. For many years the Whitney and Books & Co. enjoyed a symbiotic relationship, with people often visiting both. The Whitney was landlord, and as Madison Avenue rents were rising, it became necessary for the Whitney to raise rents on its properties to attend to their own bottom line. These rents became increasingly difficult to meet. There were negotiations, explorations of a merger with the Whitney, all coming to nought. After Christmas in 1996, Jeanette Watson announced the closing of the store on May 31, 1997. Some attempted to save the store, but it was not to happen. The last part of the book is painful in some ways, as the attempts to sustain the life of a dying patient.
Reading the book brought to mind the wonderful encounters I’ve had with great bookstores over the year, especially the ones where the booksellers knew their books and loved connecting their customers with books they would love. I wish I had visited this one. It also reminded me of the passing of so many of these, each like the death of a friend.
At the same time, the pronounced death of the indie bookstores seems premature. Their number is actually growing while Borders is no more and Barnes and Noble is struggling. People are still reading Jane Austin and Dostoevsky, and so much else.
This autobiography, of Watson and her bookstore gives a glimpse into what it takes to make a great bookstore. There is one wrinkle in the book that may be off-putting to some. Watson, like so many bibliophiles, has a curiosity for everything and writes with more fascination than some might find comfortable of inter-species sex and every form of human sexuality, as well as an author’s study of cannibalism. Clearly, this is written in the progressive (and transgressive?) literary milieu of New York City. At the same time, we see the power of books to introduce us to so much of the world beyond just our own experience and the wonderful gift bookstores like Books & Co can be to writers and readers.
Jeanette Watson’s new memoir, It’s My Party, was released October 10, 2017. A video interview with Watson on her book is available on YouTube.
June 3, 2010
Interesting approach to writing a "biography" of a fabled NYC literary bookstore and its owner. There's no explicit timeline given and the biographical sketches are in the form of anecdotal comments and memories about the store. It manages to be both interesting (if a bit hard to get into) and depressing. If an independent bookstore financed by an IBM heiress (this comes up a lot) and patronized by Fran Leibowitz, Carlos Fuentes, Jeannette Moreau and Woody Allen, among others, can't make it, what indie bookstore can?
That said, there's a lot of name dropping - I know I'm supposed to know who all these people are and I'm a New Yorker, but I was often without clue. The lack of timeline and overall context was also kind of irritating. That said, it's an interesting experiment and worth checking out.
That said, there's a lot of name dropping - I know I'm supposed to know who all these people are and I'm a New Yorker, but I was often without clue. The lack of timeline and overall context was also kind of irritating. That said, it's an interesting experiment and worth checking out.
November 8, 2007
Jeanette Watson is an amazing woman and this book is a fun read. Makes you sorry the store is gone.
August 27, 2024
I did not expect to be so enraptured by the oral history of a long-defunct bookstore I’d never heard of before. As a long-time worker at and patron of bookstores, though, I thought every part was fascinating, and the long reach of Tillman’s interviews - with fellows from extant shops like Square, Prairie Lights or City Lights, and still kicking literary eminences like Silverberg, Galassi and Lebowitz (and also Susan Sontag and Woody Allen) making it feel more like a primary source of an era of American books, the late 90’s, from the crucial perspective of the shop.
Which is where buyer meets book, and is indispensable for any kind of real discovery outside of direct connection and received knowledge, the perceived randomness that I love about literature in particular of all the arts. The cameos are insane (Michael Jackson, Derrida, Lucien Freud and Chatwin blowing through) and indicative of a smaller NYC with all culture in Manhattan and some actual culture uptown, but what makes it a durable book is all the once-eminent writers they are proud of who are out of print, all the book buyers who formed literary opinion without any recognition, and the deeply familiar way a bookstore, the most important part of any town, will always be run.
Funny how intimidating the chains were back then, and how the indies actually won that war. Most shocking whiff and unforced error is Powell of Powell’s Books saying offhand that “Amazon is not a heavy enough hitter to survive” the chains’ discount war. Fucking lmao!
Which is where buyer meets book, and is indispensable for any kind of real discovery outside of direct connection and received knowledge, the perceived randomness that I love about literature in particular of all the arts. The cameos are insane (Michael Jackson, Derrida, Lucien Freud and Chatwin blowing through) and indicative of a smaller NYC with all culture in Manhattan and some actual culture uptown, but what makes it a durable book is all the once-eminent writers they are proud of who are out of print, all the book buyers who formed literary opinion without any recognition, and the deeply familiar way a bookstore, the most important part of any town, will always be run.
Funny how intimidating the chains were back then, and how the indies actually won that war. Most shocking whiff and unforced error is Powell of Powell’s Books saying offhand that “Amazon is not a heavy enough hitter to survive” the chains’ discount war. Fucking lmao!
March 6, 2022
This is something between a memoir, a biography, and an oral history of Jeannette Watson and her bookstore Books & Co.
The way the book was organized felt a little jumbled to me. Sort of... Here, you reader, are all my notes and interviews for this book. Have at it.
That is fine. I'm a fan of Studs Terkel, so I like oral histories, but this back and forth...first Jeanette speaks...then someone else adds a piece...felt oddly disjointed to me.
But, the subject matter is one I love, books about books, and there are lists, including a list of every author reading that happened in the store.
So for that, it receives four stars.
The way the book was organized felt a little jumbled to me. Sort of... Here, you reader, are all my notes and interviews for this book. Have at it.
That is fine. I'm a fan of Studs Terkel, so I like oral histories, but this back and forth...first Jeanette speaks...then someone else adds a piece...felt oddly disjointed to me.
But, the subject matter is one I love, books about books, and there are lists, including a list of every author reading that happened in the store.
So for that, it receives four stars.
December 11, 2023
Have you ever gone out with a group of people who you know but they know each other better? And the whole time they engage in specific conversation that you can't contribute to and excludes you? That's what reading this book was like. It is not so much a story of a bookstore as it is about a culture surrounding a bookstore that can't be understood unless you were there. Plus, one of the owners is the grandson of Margaret Sanger and leads her hideous organization - so tell me that someone is an awful person without telling me they are an awful person.
June 1, 2023
This book is about a bookstore in NYC that opened in 1977 and made it 20 years before having to close in 1997. All of the contributing commentary bits got a little tedious, but this book gave me a glimpse into the workings of a bookstore. One of the lines I highlighted: “When someone’s gone home with a good book and reads it, the world is a better place.”
December 29, 2025
Interesting story of Jeannette Watson and her creation of the iconic New York independent bookstore, Books & Co., as well as its challenges and final demise. Lots of quotes from staff members and customers that were interesting but did not always correlate with the story as told by the owner
July 19, 2010
Although it is a little dry, the 20 year history of of Books & Co. was well worth reading.
Don't skip the Preface or the Introduction. You'll be sorry you missed them.
Jeannette Watson wanted to create a bookstore that was a warm and welcoming place where authors and readers could meet and talk about books, where new authors could be mentored while writing and new readers could be introduced to good literature. Bookstore is the story of why she did it, how she did it, and how it affected the people who entered it.
The story is told as a series of interviews of Jeannette, everybody who ever worked there, most of the writers who read their works there, book publishers and distributors, and a lot of the customers. It provides, not only a picture of how an independent bookstore works, but also a lot about the time and place the bookstore was in. Over time, it embraced many of the cultural fashions, while managing to remain focused on providing quality literature and poetry.
I'm sorry I never got to go there.
The end of the book has Jeannette's list of 50 top sellers from her store and another list of all the readings held there. Just what everybody needs: More lists of books to read!
Don't skip the Preface or the Introduction. You'll be sorry you missed them.
Jeannette Watson wanted to create a bookstore that was a warm and welcoming place where authors and readers could meet and talk about books, where new authors could be mentored while writing and new readers could be introduced to good literature. Bookstore is the story of why she did it, how she did it, and how it affected the people who entered it.
The story is told as a series of interviews of Jeannette, everybody who ever worked there, most of the writers who read their works there, book publishers and distributors, and a lot of the customers. It provides, not only a picture of how an independent bookstore works, but also a lot about the time and place the bookstore was in. Over time, it embraced many of the cultural fashions, while managing to remain focused on providing quality literature and poetry.
I'm sorry I never got to go there.
The end of the book has Jeannette's list of 50 top sellers from her store and another list of all the readings held there. Just what everybody needs: More lists of books to read!
July 11, 2008
A biography of an iconic New York City bookstore. Or maybe it should be called an oral history--it's written by journalist Lynne Tillman but told in the voice (and presumably the words) of store founder and owner Jeannette Watson, interspersed with quotes from literary luminaries, former employees, and (somewhat randomly) other owners of independent bookstores. The store sounds like it was an amazing place in its heyday, but the book was just so-so. After awhile it seemed primarily to be a vehicle for name-dropping, and unfairly or not, it was hard to sympathize with the money woes of Watson, an IBM heiress.
March 16, 2016
I envy Jeannette Watson.
For almost twenty years,
she ran an independent bookstore
in New York City patronized by the country's
greatest writers and thinkers.
She writes, "There's a significance...---
almost a drama---in introducing readers to
books. Dramatic because books can and do
change people's lives."
For almost twenty years,
she ran an independent bookstore
in New York City patronized by the country's
greatest writers and thinkers.
She writes, "There's a significance...---
almost a drama---in introducing readers to
books. Dramatic because books can and do
change people's lives."
June 21, 2009
The story of the 'most interesting bookshop' in NYC and the woman who started it and ran it. It consists of comments and stories from famous authors and customers. Anyone interested in the inner workings of a bookstore will be interested.
April 6, 2009
One of the best books I ever read. Believe it or not, this account of a one-time New York City bookstore is extremely interesting and very readable. A must for lovers of books and book people.
June 17, 2010
This is an oral history-style memoir of the famed-but-sadly-now-defunct Manhattan bookstore Books & Co. And I read it because I'm a nerd.
April 22, 2011
If ever a model for today's bookstore exists this is it. Fascinating and tedious all at the same time. Susann lent it to me and I am not able to put it down. Well mostly not able to put it down.
April 28, 2011
This book recalled some fond memories of a store [and staff] with which I had a close association for a number of years.
Most sadly, it is now gone. All hail Jeanette and Peter!
Most sadly, it is now gone. All hail Jeanette and Peter!
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews