{"id":93987,"date":"2016-02-01T15:07:31","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T20:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=93987"},"modified":"2016-02-01T15:20:53","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T20:20:53","slug":"bon-voyage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/02\/01\/bon-voyage\/","title":{"rendered":"Bon Voyage"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

The shop closed last year.<\/p><\/div>\n

Not long ago<\/a>, the Complete Traveller Antiquarian Bookstore\u2014one of New York\u2019s increasingly rare single-topic booksellers\u2014shut its doors. And now its longtime proprietor,\u00a0Arnold Greenberg<\/a>, has died at eighty-three.\u00a0\u201cThere is no villain in this story,\u201d the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0was quick to assert when reporting on the Complete Traveller\u2019s closing. This was not the story of a small business driven out by rising rent, although the rent\u00a0had<\/em>\u00a0gone up, and it\u2019s surely an exhausting challenge to run any such independent enterprise in today\u2019s Manhattan. But the store was not forced to shutter; rather, Mr. Greenberg and his wife, Harriet, had simply decided to retire, having run the shop for more than thirty years. This was not an end to make you angry, then\u2014just sad for the natural end of things.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Complete Traveller was a wonderful place. It sat at the corner of Thirty-Fifth and Madison. Even if you didn\u2019t have an antiquarian collector\u2019s budget\u2014and I speak from experience here\u2014the owners, both retired travel writers, were happy to share their knowledge of guides and maps and changing places and perceptions. They were happy to talk about my own niche interests\u2014books like\u00a0Where to Dine in \u201939<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Knife and Fork in New York<\/em>\u2014but could have talked about a thousand other things, I imagine, with equal authority.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was my mom who started the family practice of giving antique travel books as wedding gifts. If a couple was honeymooning in Fiji or Niagara Falls, my mom would pay a visit to the\u00a0Complete Traveller\u00a0<\/em>and emerge with a gorgeous illustrated atlas or a travel guide to the same place. Granted, this was certainly the projection school of gift giving\u2014my mom couldn\u2019t imagine anyone preferring, say, half a dozen wine glasses to an antique book, because she <\/em>had no such preference\u2014but it was a lovely idea, and I like to think people still treasure those books as memories long after a glass might have been broken.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s so much to be angry about and saddened by when one thinks of closing businesses\u2014the erosion of character, the diminishing book market. Here is the rare case where that need not overwhelm the good memories. And fittingly, the Complete Traveller knew better than anyone the value of the past.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Not long ago, the Complete Traveller Antiquarian Bookstore\u2014one of New York\u2019s increasingly rare single-topic booksellers\u2014shut its doors. 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