{"id":121042,"date":"2018-02-01T11:00:33","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T16:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=121042"},"modified":"2018-02-01T16:24:06","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T21:24:06","slug":"raising-glass-fred-bass-strands-iconic-owner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/01\/raising-glass-fred-bass-strands-iconic-owner\/","title":{"rendered":"Raising a Glass to Fred Bass, the Strand\u2019s Iconic Owner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Fred Bass with an oil painting of himself painted by artist Max Ferguson.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

This past Friday, a hundred or so people milled about the second floor of the Strand sipping wine, picking at cheese platters, and talking about death. A celebration of the life of Strand Book Store owner Fred Bass, who passed away earlier this month at eighty-nine, was scheduled to begin in a few moments, but the death on everyone\u2019s lips was not Fred\u2019s. Instead, the chatter concerned the loss of two other New York City staples: the Lower East Side movie theater Landmark Sunshine Cinema had closed that past Sunday, and farther uptown, Lincoln Plaza Cinema was slated to shutter at the end of the month.<\/p>\n

That the Strand is still standing seems almost a miracle. It has endured\u00a0nine decades of metropolitan metamorphosis and been passed down through three generations of Bass owners. Of its peers on Book Row\u2014a cutesy nickname for the cluster of used bookstores along Fourth Avenue in the twentieth century\u2014the Strand is the lone survivor. Perhaps one element of its longevity was Fred himself, the tireless figurehead, who one employee described as \u201cnot just the Strand\u2019s brain but also its heart and soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photos of Fred topped the display tables. Some of them showed him bouncing a kid on his knee, or grinning with his arm around a fellow soldier during his two-year stint in the army, but many depicted him hard at work. Fred got his start at the Strand at thirteen years old, sweeping the floors of what was then his father\u2019s store. Nancy Bass Wyden, Fred\u2019s daughter and successor, told me later that her father had usually worked ten hours a day, six days a week, for most of his life. \u201cI want to stop,\u201d he would say with a wink, \u201cbut my daughter will not fire me.\u201d Legend has it that Fred was buried at sea in a vintage red Strand sweatshirt.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Straddling my backpack between my feet, performing the New York City awkward duck shuffle, I waited for the event to kick into motion. I struck up a conversation with a woman named Diane, an environmental-science professor at NYU Tandon. She had frequented the store for years, and though she\u2019d never met Fred, she said she\u2019d probably passed him countless times. We each grabbed a plastic-cupped gin concoction\u2014Diane remarking that she didn\u2019t usually opt for liquor\u2014and turned our attention to the stage.<\/p>\n

Bewildered tourists stumbled up from the first floor, blinking at the crowd and the cups set out in neat lines. Crusty Washington Square Park types lingered in corners, fraternizing with chic career editorial assistants. Curled up against a bookcase, headphones nestled in her ears, a teenager read a tattered copy of The Catcher in the Rye<\/em>. Oregon senator Ron Wyden, Nancy Bass Wyden\u2019s husband, emceed the tributes. Before handing the microphone over to the evening\u2019s speakers, he established some ground rules. \u201cThere are two things you should know about Fred,\u201d Senator Wyden said. \u201cHe hated long speeches, and he loved parties.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that spirit, the seven tributes that followed were short and sweet, illustrative of a man whose passion for books was surpassed perhaps only by his love of people. One employee recalled how Fred had allowed him to come in late for his Monday shifts during the summer so that he could spend the weekends on Fire Island\u2014a getaway that was extremely important for the employee, a young gay man recently transplanted to the city. A longtime friend of Fred\u2019s remarked that even when his routine tennis matches and long walks became difficult, the book master never once complained. And Nancy relayed stories of Fred in his final weeks, shouting out song requests to the family\u2019s Amazon Alexa and serenading his wife of sixty-seven years with \u201cThe Girl from Ipanema.\u201d<\/p>\n

A rare hatless Gay Talese took the stage to praise the humbling effect of being surrounded by thousands upon thousands of books by other writers. Paul Krugman called the Strand the greatest bookstore in the world, adding, \u201cWhat you find in a great bookstore is what you weren\u2019t looking for.\u201d When Fran Lebowitz took the stage, my new friend nudged me. \u201cThere\u2019s your celebrity,\u201d she said. \u201cThere she is.\u201d In between a formal request for Senator Wyden to replace Chuck Schumer and a plea for Paul Krugman to explain Bitcoin, Fran lauded Fred, whom she had known since she was twenty. \u201cYoung people say to me, Fran, where\u2019d you get those vintage glasses?\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I say, They\u2019re not vintage; I just still have them. I felt the same way about Fred. Fred\u2019s such an old-school guy, they\u2019d say. Well, Fred\u2019s not an old-school guy, I\u2019d say. We just still have him.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what struck me more than the literary celebrities was the appearance of minor figures from my own New York history: there was the tiny, fuzzy-lipped older woman who would browse Golden Books at the shop I used to manage in Cobble Hill. And here was the chipper Penguin sales rep who played shuffleboard in my neighborhood every\u00a0Monday night to \u201cblow off steam.\u201d I shuddered as I slipped past the Strand employee who once passed judgment on me for flipping art books for cash. \u201cWhat you find in a great bookstore is what you weren\u2019t looking for,\u201d as\u00a0Paul Krugman would say.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo call the Strand an institution almost feels wrong,\u201d Diane said to me at one point during the night, and I think I agree with her. Institution<\/em> is a cheap word. It would be more apt to call the Strand a black hole, a monolith, a red giant. As a center of gravity in literary New York, its pull is inescapable. The beauty of something as big as the Strand, as ubiquitous, is that it acts as a screen upon which any wayward reader can project their life. As much as I complain about its crowds and its erratic selection, the Strand is a part of my life, and that will be the case for as long as I choose to be a part of this city.<\/p>\n

As the night wound to a close, I introduced myself to Nancy. Our conversation was interrupted by a British man with spectacles. \u201cI doubt Fred would remember me,\u201d he began. He proceeded to tell her that when he was a student, he\u2019d needed a book for his thesis. The book in question was long out of print, and the school library\u2019s copy had been stolen. He was able to track down a copy at the Strand, but the price tag was hundreds of dollars. He pleaded with Fred to lower the price, and Fred offered to simply lend him the book free of charge. \u201cThat sounds like Fred,\u201d Nancy said. She told me\u00a0that, all night long, people had been\u00a0regaling her with stories of Fred lending them money or books, particularly during the AIDS crisis.<\/p>\n

Fran Lebowitz stopped by to bid Nancy farewell. \u201cYou\u2019re keeping the store, right?\u201d Fran said. \u201cIf not, I\u2019m taking it back.\u201d The Strand belongs to no one and to everyone. Rest in peace, Fred Bass. Long live the Strand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Brian Ransom is the social media manager at The Paris Review.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  This past Friday, a hundred or so people milled about the second floor of the Strand sipping wine, picking at cheese platters, and talking about death. A celebration of the life of Strand Book Store owner Fred Bass, who passed away earlier this month at eighty-nine, was scheduled to begin in a few moments, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2574,1528,32774,18125,20537,5865,32776,32777,504,125,4681,32775,1660,20814],"class_list":["post-121042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam","tag-bookstores","tag-fran-lebowitz","tag-fred-bass","tag-gay-talese","tag-in-memoriam","tag-independent-bookstores","tag-landmark-sunshine-cinema","tag-lincoln-plaza-cinema","tag-literature","tag-new-york-city","tag-paul-krugman","tag-senator-ron-wyden","tag-strand-bookstore","tag-used-bookstores"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRaising a Glass to Fred Bass, the Strand\u2019s Iconic Owner<\/title>\n<meta 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