Paperback Dreams

Patrick de Freitas of Waking Owl Books

An Interview with Patrick de Freitas
Waking Owl Books (now closed)
Salt Lake City, Utah

What’s the story of your bookstore. How did it start, how did you get involved, why do you keep doing it?
I started Waking Owl Books in 1977. It died 22 years later. I stopped when it became unsustainable.

How has bookstore culture in Salt Lake changed over the years?
The changes basically reflect the larger cultural changes in SLC. Who would have thought tattoos were so closely related to literacy?

Talk about free speech and bookselling. Talk about experiences where you’ve faced free speech issues in your stores.
In 22 years I can remember only three issues. A man objected to the fact that I stocked Karl Marx, a woman objected to my selling “101 Uses for a Dead Cat,” and someone else objected to one of the greeting cards we sold, saying it was offensive and tacky. Which it was — and I removed it. I’m sure there were others, but time has blurred the memories.

Remind us why it matters. What is it that independent bookstores bring to the cultural landscape that is unique and that merits support?
In my ideal of a good independent bookstore, you can walk in and ask the staff what’s good to read and get answers that actually relate to your own interests. There are chain stores and indeed independents where the customer is seen mostly as a nuisance who gets in the way of staff & their relationships.

Talk about the importance of locally owned businesses. What sets them apart from the chains?
What may be most important is the ability of locals to respond to local concerns quickly. No one decides about what gets onto the shelves except the local owner who probably knows the area better than a buyer in NYC.

What you may be missing in all these questions is the fact of Amazon and other online ordering. That’s probably what killed my store. (One block from the University; university people are Early Adopters — you do the math.) There are other reasons, of course, having to do with the social changes wrought by the internet generally. My sense is that people read just as much as they used to, maybe even more, only they do it online, not in books.