Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir

by Anatole Broyard

I was alienated from alienation,

Auden lived around the corner on Cornelia Street and I often saw him scurrying along with his arms full of books and papers. He looked like a man running out of a burning building with whatever of his possessions he’d been able to grab. He had a curious scuttling gait, perhaps because he always wore espadrilles.

To open a bookshop is one of the persistent romances, like living off the land or sailing around the world.