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- [00:00]
Virginia Evans
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile.
- [00:02]
Charlie Gibson
Now, I was looking for fun ways.
- [00:03]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
To tell you that Mint's offer of.
- [00:05]
Charlie Gibson
Unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal.
- [00:17]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
So there goes my big idea for the commercial.
- [00:19]
Charlie Gibson
Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [00:22]
Becky Dayton
Of $45 for a three month plan equivalent to $15 per month.
- [00:24]
Virginia Evans
Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of network's busy.
- [00:28]
Becky Dayton
Taxes and fees extra.
- [00:29]
Virginia Evans
See mintmobile.com.
- [00:37]
Charlie Gibson
Well, hello there, boys and girls. It's time for the Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson. And it's good to have you with us again, Kate. It's good to see you again.
- [00:46]
Kate Gibson
Yes, indeed. Boys, girls, cats, dogs, guinea pigs, hamsters, snakes, cockroaches, whoever's listening on this fine Thursday, and we hope it is Thursday that you listen. I am the cake.
- [00:57]
Virginia Evans
Hi.
- [00:59]
Charlie Gibson
All right, all that's out of the way.
- [01:01]
Kate Gibson
Yeah, exactly. Now. And we're done.
- [01:02]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah, and we're done. We have a book for you called the Correspondent. It has been out for a few weeks. I think it came out at the end of April. Virginia Evans is the author. It is really her first successful novel, I guess we could say, and published.
- [01:17]
Kate Gibson
Her first published novel.
- [01:19]
Charlie Gibson
Oh, is it really? I didn't realize that.
- [01:20]
Kate Gibson
Yeah.
- [01:21]
Charlie Gibson
And well, friends of ours who are reading it and we've run into people who are reading it who love it. The Correspondent is the name of it and it is an epistolary novel. And I've been asking everybody since we decided that we would feature it in this podcast. I've been asking everybody what's an epistolary novel? And most people don't know.
- [01:39]
Kate Gibson
Boy, doesn't that just make you want to rush out and be his friend? He gives you book pop quizzes before we have a drink together. Do you know what an epistolary novel is? Do you know what local color is? Yeah, everybody will be looking you up. You know, I, I get when we talk to a few independent bookstores and they all say, oh, you gotta read this thing, and I had lunch, as I mentioned, a couple of weeks ago, I had lunch with a manager of a Barnes and Noble who's a dear friend, and when we were walking through the store, when I picked her up for lunch, she walked by the T, they have a table for the Correspondent. And she said, you wouldn't believe it, we had 50 copies of this book at the beginning of the day, and there were two left. And so I grabbed one of them and I put it on hold while we had lunch. And I bought it after the lunch. And by God, the other copy was gone when I got back.
- [02:25]
Virginia Evans
And I love.
- [02:27]
Kate Gibson
Oh, yeah, I love this book. An epistolary novel. Just in case you didn't pass the pop quiz with Charlie Gibson. An epistolary novel is a novel that is basically just pages and pages of letters. And somehow through those letters, you get a plot or a relationship that is complex or something of that nature. And this book, I have to say, even before we delved into the letters, there's about two or three paragraphs that start the book that just describe the way that Sybil van Antwerp, the main character, sits down at her desk and straightens her papers to start her letter writing process. Doesn't describe her, doesn't say what her hair color is, her eye color is, whether she's tall, thin, short, fat, white. Doesn't describe her at all. But I feel like I know her so well just from those two paragraphs and the way she pushes back her chair and checks on her stamps and looks at her piles of correspondence. I know this woman. And the chances are, listeners, so do you. Okay, you can talk now.
- [03:25]
Charlie Gibson
Thank you very much. When Kate called me, she said, we gotta do this book, dad. First of all, my friend recommended it so highly. But second of all, she said, just in the first couple of paragraphs, I know this woman and I know her. But as Kate says, an epistolary novel, the story is told through communications, through letters, documents, diary entries, et cetera, et cetera. And that's how you learn about the character through his or her writings. And so in this book, you get to know Sibyl van Antwerp, and you also get to know all of the people that she corresponds with. I guess we'll just say, Kate, the most famous epistolary novels are Dracula.
- [04:04]
Kate Gibson
Dracula has some epistolary moments in it. My Personal favorite is 84 Charing Crossroad, which is a correspondence, and I believe it is a true story between Helene Hempf, who was a writer in New York and was very quintessential New York, loud, brash, you know, Frank, and sort of in your face with a very quiet, introverted man who runs a rare bookstore in London named Frank Dole. And he runs a bookstore at 84 Charing Crossroad. And Helene starts to write to him because she has very particular taste in used in antiquarian books. And Frank and she Strike up a relationship over their relation, over their love of antiquarian books. And they don't have a hot and heavy love affair like there are no dirty letters in there. They just. Their love of literature sort of transcends the bonds of regular human relationships. And it's a beautiful book, Just beautiful.
- [04:58]
Charlie Gibson
It's a wonderful, wonderful book. And it inspired Virginia Evans to write the Correspondent. And she has done a magnificent job of doing an epistolary novel. I love these kinds of novels. It's quick reading because there's lots of blank spaces after the letters end. But it's really, really good. And I think. I think you will want to read it after you hear what Virginia Evans has to say. To our conversation with Virginia Evans, the author of the Correspondent.
- [05:30]
Kate Gibson
Virginia Evans, it is such a pleasure to have you in the bookcase. I picked up the Correspondent and fell in deep love with this novel. And I wanted to start with where it started for you. Did it start with, I need to tell the story of this character, Sybil Van Antwerp, that wouldn't let go? Or did you say, I want to write an epistolary novel and Sybil fit the bill? Which was it?
- [05:54]
Virginia Evans
That was perfectly asked, because you're exactly right, it had to kind of be one or the other. And for me, it was the letters I had read. It was during COVID and I had just read 84 Charing Crossroad. And I found that book to. That book did something for me during that time that I needed, which was sort of a healing work or something. That just felt wonderful. I felt wonderful reading that book. It felt sort of is maybe wholesome the right word or digestible or kind or sort of human. I just really enjoyed reading that book. And I finished the book. And that book is so short and. But it's very satisfying. I mean, it's a perfectly executed book, but it's very short. And I thought, I want that. I want more of that. I want that to be that, but more and deeper. And always when I'm starting to write a new book, I try to write the book I want to read. And so that was the book I wanted to read. And so then it was kind of, if I want to write a whole life story in letters, what kind of a person, you know, what kind of a person would write enough letters to. To make that and receive enough variety of letters to sort of put together a puzzle of someone's life? And. And so then the character Sybil, who is the principal character of the book, sort of came and I will Say, she sort of arrived to me, her voice, her way of being, her sort of particular manner, sort of arrived and sat there with me. And then I found her fairly easy to access as I was writing the book.
- [07:26]
Charlie Gibson
I think we all know of Sibyl van Antwerp in our lives. But tell me about her. Describe her for me.
- [07:35]
Virginia Evans
Funny, because I've received a lot of feedback about Sybil. People have very strong opinions about her, and a lot of the words people use are, well, I'll. I'll say what I think. I think she's blunt. I think she's very kind and has a generous spirit, but she is. She's a little prickly. She, you know, somebody who is blunt and very honest is. It can. It can kind of come off the wrong way. And I think sometimes she presents herself in a way that, you know, could be a little bit offensive. And certainly there are things that she says and does that are offensive, and she. And she needs to learn and grow like we all do. But I think the. The. At the heart of her, though her heart is good, she has a good heart, and it's full of generosity and interest in others, and she sort of sees every person in the world as equal. We're all. We're all just people. And so that's why she thinks she can write to everybody that she thinks she should write to. She has every right to write to them.
- [08:35]
Charlie Gibson
And did you know that description of her? Did you have that sense of her when you started to write, or did she develop into that personality as you wrote?
- [08:46]
Virginia Evans
I think she. She kind of came that way. I think she sort of came that way. I remember I wrote the letters in order, you know, kind of the way they're in the book. I mean, some of them in revisions had to be moved to different places in the. In the story, but mostly I wrote linearly.
- [09:03]
Kate Gibson
Were you aware of. Because I think one of the things that really stays with me from this book are the secondary characters, the correspondence with who she writes. Did you have Bassam and Rosalie and Felix? Did you have all of those characters and Fiona in your head when you. When you wrote the book, or did you say, boy, I want to create a correspondent that demonstrates this aspect of Sybil's life? And I can probably do that this way. Like, I guess what I'm asking is how careful of an outliner are you and where did your supporting characters come from? Who are the correspondents?
- [09:34]
Virginia Evans
Yeah, I'm not an outliner at all, really. I knew. I'm assuming we don't want to say spoilers. But I knew kind of where it would end. I knew how the book would end, and I knew sort of one of the major details of her life, which is probably the most important detail of her life. I sort of knew that was going to be a part of the story, but otherwise, I didn't really know what else there would be. And so, kind of as the story unfolded, I think it's probably in how you were asking the question, the latter end of what you were asking, that, you know, I was trying to go inside of her mind and. And really write something that felt real, that felt actual, you know, possible. And. And so it was sort of a matter of what kind of people would she be writing letters with. Obviously, her brother and then this lifelong friend, but then also, who else might someone with this kind of personality write to? There's a little bit of me in this character. I mean, we're. We're not the same. But I am a big letter writer, and I would say I'm pretty bold. Like, I'll write a letter to anybody I see fit, sort of. And so that does come a little bit from. From my own experiences. And people write back. You. You'll be surprised by the way people will write back.
- [10:47]
Charlie Gibson
Did you always know that this was going to be an epistolary novel when you sat down, or did you think, I can tell this character's story in a more traditional novel? Did you always know it was going to be in this form?
- [11:01]
Virginia Evans
I did. And I had been writing for 20. For 20 years, and I had never had a successfully published novel. And so I had just had a book out on submission, and it was not selling again. And I was pretty gutted. And it was Covid and my book wasn't selling. And you're sort of starting to think, like, what am I doing? What am I doing with my life? And obviously, this isn't working. And so I started writing this book really as an exercise. I did not think I was going to show it to my agent, so I think I just wanted to play. I was playing. I think it was a playful experience of. I liked reading that book in letters. I liked the Color Purple. I liked the Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society. I liked Dracula. I like the letter form. So let me see how I can. What can I do with that? I always think this is a little bit of, like, a madness of. Of an artist, and this is my particular madness. But I'll read something great like east of Eden, and I'll think, I can do this. So I Think I read, I read some of those books and I thought, I can do this. And so the letters was really what I wanted to do. I wanted to try letters. But I have found in reading epistolary novels it's hard to get, I don't know, like a full 360 degree view of something. And so I was really trying to do that. I thought, how far can you take this, this form? Could you really do a good portrait of someone's life? And so, so the letters were really kind of the mainstay.
- [12:30]
Kate Gibson
But that's interesting because in some ways there's negative space in this letter. Like there are some letters you don't see. Like for instance, she writes to a friend begging for forgiveness, and you don't see the friend's response back. So I'm wondering how you decided what letters to include and what letters not to include. And were there some letters that ended up on the editing floor that you could, that you could use to fully fulfill in the timeline?
- [12:54]
Virginia Evans
Great question. You know, this is what's fascinating to me about this book. And what was such a joy to write? It really was kind of a joy to write because it was fun. And the fun of it was the dance of what do you say? What do you not say? What do you say? What do you not say? And that the negative space tells as much about the story as the letters do. All the fill in of time. And what you know, maybe has been said or hasn't been said, that was part of it too. And I, I studied writing under Claire Keegan and Claire taught us that if you ever have a moment when your reader sits back out of the story and says, I don't believe you, to, to the writer of the book, you've sort of lost, you sort of lose the game. Like, that's it for that book. That's books dead in the water if your reader doesn't believe you. And so when I was writing this book, I always have Claire back here behind my head. Like, don't, don't say something that's not believable. I mean, I can like hear her voice. And so when I was writing it, I kept thinking, I have to tell this story. But you can't just shoehorn something into a letter for the plot to go forward or for somebody to understand something for your reader to understand, you have to find a way to authentically make your reader understand the story without spelling it out for them. And that felt really challenging in sort of a fun way as a writer, sort of this playfulness of how do you. How do you do it and how do you use it, and how much can you leave? Not said, you know, And I've heard it said, like, you should always assume your reader is smarter than you are. And so I did. I leaned heavily into that. I leaned heavily into, okay, if I am, like, kind of building out this blueprint or the skeleton or something of her, of this time of her life, that my readers, if I do a good job, will understand what's happening fully in. In all these worlds. In Sybil's world and the worlds of the people she's corresponding with that live far away from her or whatever, there.
- [14:47]
Charlie Gibson
Are many people with whom she corresponds. And it seems to me that it is incumbent upon a novelist to make sure, if you're writing an epistolary novel, to make sure that each one of those fellow correspondents is true to its style. You have their own style of writing for each one of them. And that style of writing needs to be consistent as the letters go on. So how do you differentiate characters when you have only letters with which to deal?
- [15:15]
Virginia Evans
That was really challenging. And one of my mentors from when I was in school for writing, he read this book. He. He helps me and reads my. He read an early draft, and he said that to me. He said, there are times when I can't tell who's writing, and I need to be able to tell who's writing even before I see their signature at the bottom. I need there to be a difference of the way Sybil writes to the way Rosalie writes or the way Bassam writes. Sybil's way of writing, which dominates because she's the principal person in the story. That felt like I had that on lock, sort of. I had her voice in my head. I felt. I felt she was easy for me to kind of get into the river of her. Of her writing. The other characters were harder for me, especially characters that were not American and. And maybe English was not their first language. And I wanted to do that authentically, but also in a way that was. I didn't want it to feel contrived or like I was superior or something.
- [16:15]
Kate Gibson
Sybil van Antwerp has lost a child, and one of her correspondents is Joan Didion. And I was interested to see if that was always sort of a through line in the novel for you, or were you, like, I need somebody with whom she can communicate, who sees her, who she sees. I wonder when Joan Didion, in that correspondence, became a part of the novel.
- [16:38]
Virginia Evans
Yeah, thanks for asking. Joan Didion's work has been really instrumental in my life, not, not just as a writer, but as a person, as a human being, as a woman, as a citizen of, of this country. I, you know, I just thought, I'm just writing this book. And Joan Didion, being Cybil's kind of ongoing corresponding partner, was in the very first draft. And it's, and it's very early on. And legally you cannot write in the voice of someone who's living, but you can, you can write in the voice of someone who's no longer living. And so in earlier drafts, there were, before I knew that, before the legal team, like, I, I mean, I said we have to go through this book with a fine tooth comb legally, because I do not want to get caught out. But so there were other people I had written in the voice of, including Michelle Obama. Kazuo Ishiguro wrote back. And then there was one other one, I think, which I had to take out because they, because you can't write in those voices. But, you know, I, I, I did worry a little bit about the Joan Didion thing and wondered if there would be, I don't know. I don't, I mean, maybe there still would be criticism, but mostly people in the literary world have been complimentary and kind to me about it. I, I never met any disrespect by it, and I hope it goes across well.
- [17:54]
Charlie Gibson
So I don't want to give any spoilers, but you said you wrote this book in a linear fashion, and yet the last letter, which she writes to her former husband, is searing. Searing. Not so much in what she says, but in the form of the letter. Had you written that early on or did you get to that at the end?
- [18:15]
Virginia Evans
Oh, that letter, you know, they, they almost, they tried to convince me to take it out. No, no, no, not a fighter. Fighter. But I did fight that. We kept it. I wrote that letter the first time I wrote the book at the end, my first draft. I wrote that letter at the end and then it stayed. And it, I did change it. I, I added a little bit to it. I took away a little bit, I played with it a little bit during the revision process, but that was really there on purpose. And there's something, let's see if I can find a way to say this without giving anything away, but there's something that the last letter you read in the book is out of context in the time that letter was written before. It's written during the book, but you don't see it till the end. It's like a removed from the timeline. And the last thing she says in the last letter is a point of pain. But there's something about that that I wanted to. There's a way that there's grief at the end, that's there's something about the end that I think finds the book in balance, I guess is what I'm gonna say.
- [19:17]
Kate Gibson
When I finished it, my dad had just started it and I called him up and I go, ooh, does she stick the landing? When I finished that last letter and, and I have to say also too, I read it at the same time that I listened to it. The woman who plays Sybil Van Antwerp does a masterful job of performing that last letter. And oh my God, I would have taken up my guns and fought right alongside you.
- [19:42]
Virginia Evans
Thank you.
- [19:48]
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- [21:26]
Charlie Gibson
So yeah, I don't want to give anything away, but that last letter is really is searing. And if you're reading the book, don't jump ahead and read the last letter because you, you really need to read the book in order as she wrote it in order.
- [21:40]
Kate Gibson
And now that I think about it, you know, it must be sort of difficult to end an epistolary novel because, you know, like you don't write in the pit. Think this is the last letter that I just go. I mean like there's, it's kind of hard to know because what happens to those correspondence? How is there a natural ending? And oh my God. I mean this was. Not only did I think she stuck the landing, but I thought, I think she stuck the landing in such a successful way that it was just, it was uniquely wonderful. You know, when my dad and I talk about did she stick the landing? She stuck the landing and then some. Which again, I don't think is easy in an epistolary book.
- [22:16]
Charlie Gibson
So anyway, and as she said, she'd been writing for 20 years, she'd never had anything successfully published or sold and she sort of wrote this as a lark after reading 84 Charing Crossroad and she's got a winner. I mean, I think this is really, really a terrific book. So anyway, we thank Virginia Evans and we'll ask her to stand by and we'll give her some rapid fire questions. Some rapid fire questions for Virginia Evans, Mark Twain or Herman Melville?
- [22:48]
Virginia Evans
Herman Melville.
- [22:49]
Charlie Gibson
Dogs or cats?
- [22:51]
Virginia Evans
Dogs.
- [22:53]
Kate Gibson
Great book. You feel guilty for not having read yet.
- [22:56]
Virginia Evans
Oh, Great Expectations.
- [22:59]
Charlie Gibson
If you listen to a book. Have you read it?
- [23:03]
Virginia Evans
I think if you listened to a book, you listened to it.
- [23:06]
Charlie Gibson
Okay, that's a problem.
- [23:10]
Virginia Evans
I know it's a hot thing, but I say if I listen. I say I listened to. Oh, if I read it, I say I read it.
- [23:14]
Becky Dayton
I listened.
- [23:15]
Virginia Evans
I said, fair enough.
- [23:16]
Kate Gibson
What do you use as a bookmark?
- [23:19]
Virginia Evans
Usually a piece of small art my daughter has made that day. Favorite literary character, Samuel Hamilton from East of Eden.
- [23:31]
Kate Gibson
Lesser known book you recommend to everyone.
- [23:35]
Virginia Evans
I'll say the Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr. This year is the one.
- [23:41]
Charlie Gibson
What are you reading right now?
- [23:42]
Virginia Evans
I am reading Warlight by Michael Ondaatji.
- [23:46]
Charlie Gibson
When you go into a bookstore, what's the first section you go to?
- [23:51]
Virginia Evans
Classics.
- [23:53]
Kate Gibson
Really?
- [23:55]
Virginia Evans
Yeah.
- [23:56]
Kate Gibson
Do you have an arrangement to your book collection?
- [23:59]
Virginia Evans
I have a very beautiful study with floor to ceiling bookshelves and it's all painted a real dark green. And so I, I treasure it all. But the way that it's organized is that there's just general fict and then there's kind of a section for kids stuff that is like was mine as a kid or my. Is my children's and then there's really no nonfiction. I'm not a Reader of nonfiction, which is maybe something I should reform, but I probably never would. And. And then there's a shelf for Irish fiction.
- [24:30]
Kate Gibson
Is there anything on your writing desk that might surprise people? What is the most idiosyncratic thing on your writing desk?
- [24:37]
Virginia Evans
This is so weird. I have a small. It's a small jar full of water and stones. And inside of it is a algae. A slow growing algae ball that will live for 200 years. And it grows a tiny bit fractionally every year. And right now it is in a small state. And I shake it every day because that stimulates growth. And I just like it there. It makes me feel. It makes me feel like, connected to.
- [25:08]
Kate Gibson
Okay, I gotta ask a follow up on that. Cause it's pretty odiousyncratic.
- [25:12]
Charlie Gibson
That's weird.
- [25:13]
Kate Gibson
You're the first person who said algae ball to that question. And I gotta know. I gotta know, where did you get it? And how did this become a part of your life? How did this become a metaphor you live by?
- [25:25]
Virginia Evans
Oh, my gosh. It's so weird. I was in this really beautiful kind of garden plant home store, and they. They sell all kinds of weird plants and stuff, and I was mesmerized. They had a few of these. And I said, what is this thing? And he was explaining it to me and he was so lovely and so like, he ex. He explained the whole connection to the earth. These algae balls live for 200 years in stream beds in Japan. And they love to be shaken and moved and they love to sit there. I mean, they're just very hearty. And he said, you know, take this thing home and you can pass it on to your children, and they can pass it to their children. And this thing could just keep living on at somebody's desk forever. And I just love that idea. I think it's called a marema.
- [26:13]
Kate Gibson
Anyway, it's catchier than algae ball. And which one in your will, if you've written it yet, which one of your kids gets the algae ball? And have you named the algae ball? Like, is it Simon or Frank or Jane or.
- [26:29]
Virginia Evans
It has no name. I'm not that weird. I'm okay. My daughter will definitely get the algae ball. She's the weird one.
- [26:36]
Kate Gibson
Like me.
- [26:36]
Virginia Evans
My son. My son would like throw it away if I died.
- [26:40]
Charlie Gibson
Thank you ever so much, Virginia Evans. So. So an algae ball. I mean, that's a. I must say, algae ball is not something that ever came to mind.
- [26:56]
Kate Gibson
No. And I think it's a metaphor for something. But it really. But like, even the way she describes It. It sounds slimy and small and sort of creepy and like she has a little monster living in a jar on her desk. But didn't it make you sound like you wanted to have an algae ball in your burial?
- [27:13]
Charlie Gibson
No. No, it didn't.
- [27:14]
Virginia Evans
It didn't.
- [27:15]
Kate Gibson
It's. It's slimier than a pet rock, and you can pass it along the generations. I. I guess I don't know what else to say about that.
- [27:24]
Charlie Gibson
Anyway, our thanks to Virginia Evans. We have a bookstore, the Vermont Bookstore in Middlebury, Vermont. I was interested. I just looked up what states have the highest degree of literacy among citizens. What would you guess is number one? Number two? Number three? Got a guess.
- [27:41]
Kate Gibson
I don't know how to do this and not sound like a snobby.
- [27:44]
Charlie Gibson
Very concentrated in New England.
- [27:46]
Kate Gibson
Okay. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
- [27:49]
Charlie Gibson
You got it. One, two. My goodness.
- [27:51]
Kate Gibson
Get out. Yeah.
- [27:52]
Charlie Gibson
One, two, and three.
- [27:53]
Kate Gibson
Now, in fairness, listeners at home, for those of you that did cry, that's, you know, Northeast bias, Do remember those are smaller populations.
- [28:01]
Charlie Gibson
Yes.
- [28:02]
Kate Gibson
It may mean that there's like 10 people in the state and all of them are illiterate.
- [28:05]
Charlie Gibson
Well, there's a few more than that, particularly in Massachusetts. But, but I know. I was interested to see that. I've seen different lists, but all of them, 1, 2, and 3 have New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont. And this is the Vermont Bookstore in Middlebury, Vermont, which is a wonderful town, home of Middlebury College. And we talked to Becky Dayton, who, Who owns the Vermont Bookstore. Becky Dayton, good to have you with us from the Vermont Bookshop. How long has the Vermont Bookshop been in business?
- [28:38]
Becky Dayton
75 years, Charlie.
- [28:40]
Charlie Gibson
You're not that old. You're not that old.
- [28:43]
Becky Dayton
I am not that old. I am. Next week, in fact, I will celebrate my 20th anniversary. The shop's owner.
- [28:49]
Charlie Gibson
Oh, that's great. Now, how did this come about? How did, how did you. If the shop's been around that long, how. How did you come in possession of it?
- [28:57]
Becky Dayton
Well, when it was under the ownership of its second owners, I was. I had just sent my younger child to kindergarten and was feeling profoundly bored. I was a stay at home mom, and I felt that the bookshop. This is. I'm admitting to hubris here, which makes me very uncomfortable, but I felt that I could do something more with the bookshop in a college town, and having no experience whatsoever in retail or books or publishing, I made an offer and it was accepted. And I very quickly found myself the owner of an institution. And I climbed onto a very steep learning curve. And I was Very lucky that there was a legacy staff that supported me in that time. And the rest is history.
- [29:45]
Kate Gibson
What was your history with the bookstore up until that point? And was a bookstore something you had always sort of dreamed of owning?
- [29:53]
Becky Dayton
I definitely had not dreamed of owning a bookstore. I was an infrequent customer of the bookstore when I made the offer to purchase it. You know, I confess to using Amazon a lot at the time. It was, it was 2005, so my reading habits had really ticked up when my children were small. And I think I felt that I wanted something different in my community.
- [30:18]
Kate Gibson
But I would imagine there are unique challenges as well and advantages both of being an independent bookstore in a college town. Talk to me if you could, a little bit about your relationship with students, with alumni, like, what is it like being the independent bookstore of a college town?
- [30:35]
Becky Dayton
It's great. College families come through and they love to find an independent bookstore in the town that their kids are going to school in. A lot of people are coming from places where there isn't an independent bookstore any longer. I hear lots of people sort of exclaim on their way in, oh, it smells so good. What a fantastic bookstore. Visitors are far freer with their compliments than locals are. We have an amazing group of really loyal customers locally. But I think there's a tendency for people to take for granted what they have in their own communities. So I do love the seasons when we have lots of visitors because they're very free with their compliments.
- [31:18]
Charlie Gibson
That's interesting. First of all, college bookstores have changed because you're not carrying textbooks of any kind. Courses don't assign books anymore. Everything seems to be online or whatever.
- [31:31]
Becky Dayton
Middlebury College doesn't even sell books in its store any longer.
- [31:34]
Charlie Gibson
Is that right?
- [31:34]
Kate Gibson
Really?
- [31:35]
Becky Dayton
None at all? No.
- [31:37]
Charlie Gibson
Wow, that's interesting. So you said when you took the store that you made some changes. I would suspect if you have a 75 year old bookstore over 75 years, that you need to modernize it. When you came in, what were your ideas of how you wanted to adapt the store?
- [31:55]
Becky Dayton
Well, it was just the physical fixtures were pretty tired and they all needed a coat of paint. And, you know, the first changes I made were just cosmetic. We painted things, moved things around. There was a lot of pegboard, a lot of unfinished bookcases. So yeah, it was just a lot of cosmetic stuff and there was really no place for people to sit and the floors were pretty dirty and it hadn't been dusted in a very long time. So those were the kinds of changes I made right away.
- [32:27]
Charlie Gibson
Vermont is an idiosyncratic, individualistic state. How does the store reflect that?
- [32:34]
Becky Dayton
We have an interesting selection. I put a lot of value on having sort of deep cuts, the things that people don't really expect to see. So we have a lot of interesting titles on our shelves. And Vermont is a very surprisingly educated state. So we sell a lot of literary fiction, a lot less commercial fiction than you might expect. We definitely, like sometimes people will come in and ask, well, where is your New York Times bestseller display? And I'm like, we don't have one because those aren't our bestsellers. Titles about nature. Robert McFarland's new book is a River Alive? Has been a terrific seller. Robin Kimmerer's book is Braiding Sweetgrass is our bestseller of all time. It's not what's on the New York Times bestseller list.
- [33:26]
Kate Gibson
You mentioned the new Robert McFarland and braiding sweetgrass, which are two great recommendations. But what are are there any new titles that you're excited about that are coming out? I always love to give booksellers an opportunity to sell us some books.
- [33:37]
Becky Dayton
Oh, gosh. I wrote down some things. That Susan Orleans memoir is coming out in October. I don't know if you're familiar with her, but she's at New Yorker staff writer. She wrote the Orchid Thief, which was turned into a very odd movie. But she is a fantastic writer. And her book Joyride is coming out in mid October. Just an amazing memoir of what it's like to be a writer and how she became the writer that she is. Fiction book that's coming out at the end of this month that I'm really excited about is Lily King's book Heart the Lover. And I don't know if you're familiar with Lily King, but she is just a beautiful, beautiful writer. And Heart the Lover is a story about grief and love and personal history. And it is has connections to an earlier book of hers called Writers and Lovers, and I'm very excited. That will be a very popular book in my store. And then the other book that I'm really excited about, another memoir, is Arundhati Roy's memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me, which is also coming out in October. And she is a Booker Prize winner, an Indian woman.
- [34:52]
Charlie Gibson
You know, one of the wonderful things of owning a bookstore, I suspect, and it's certainly one of the wonderful things that Kate and I have run into, is being able to read books in advance and knowing what's coming and being excited about books that aren't on the market yet. I love getting all these arcs that Katie orders up. So, Becky, I wander into the store, I'm just an idle customer, and I find out you're the owner of the store. And I say, I've always thought about owning a bookstore. What would you tell me are the great strengths and advantages of it, and what are the downsides?
- [35:24]
Becky Dayton
Well, it's like running any other business. You have to think about payroll and, you know, scheduling and all the headache stuff. Who's going to take out the garbage? And we have a lot of cardboard this month to get. To get rid of. I mean, it's. It's got the. All the same headaches as any small business. It definitely has perks. Advanced reading copies are one of them. And, you know, you get to spend time around books. My favorite thing about owning a bookstore is engaging with people and talking about books. And I love to see Kate's just grinning because it's clear that you really love to talk about books, too.
- [36:00]
Kate Gibson
I do.
- [36:00]
Becky Dayton
I just get really excited about connecting with people. I mean, I have. I'm sort of a lifelong introvert. And I think that buying the bookstore and being forced into public exchanges with people has opened me up a lot personally. And those kinds of conversations with people about things that we mutually enjoy are really gratifying. We live in a world where there isn't a lot of space for that, and I really value it. So I get a little bitter sometimes when I have to spend my days in the basement, you know, looking at edelweiss all day long. And I love it when somebody asks me to spell them on their shift on the floor, because that's. That's where I, you know, I feel like I shine.
- [36:44]
Kate Gibson
Yeah.
- [36:45]
Becky Dayton
And where I get to do the work that I really love to do.
- [36:52]
Charlie Gibson
So our thanks to Becky Dayton of the Vermont Bookstore. You'll find it at 38 Main street, right there in Middlebury, which is a beautiful little town. And that's it.
- [37:03]
Kate Gibson
And. And there you go. Actually, that's not entirely it, because if you're a loyal fan of this show, and I'm sure you are, I hope you are. We usually let the author give us a coda, and we usually let them pick their coda. And we did that here. And Virginia Evans gave us a lovely coda. But here's the thing. We also had her do a reading from the Correspondent. And one of the things the Correspondent does beautifully is write about writing in some ways. And I said this to her. It didn't. We didn't include in the interview, but it reminded me of the book we did, a Write for your Life by Anna Quindlen about why it's so important to write letters, emails, correspondence, keep a diary because it is a piece of history. And you you know, I still have letters my grandfather wrote me and my father wrote me, just because they're things I can hold that I know that they touched. And so at any rate, the main character, Sylvia Van Antwerp, often talks about why letter writing has become so important to her in her life. And in some ways it's become the most important thing in her life. And so we had Virginia Evans read one of these beautiful passages and that's how we will end the book today. So do stay tuned after we remind you of the folks that pay for the podcast.
- [38:11]
Charlie Gibson
No, they don't pay for it. They make it possible.
- [38:13]
Kate Gibson
The book Case with Pete and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our Executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, Arielle Chester at Good Morning America, and Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Follow the bookcase wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to listen, rate and review. If you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this episode, we have them linked in the episode Description I write slowly.
- [38:43]
Virginia Evans
A letter might take me an hour or more. I do not rush. I think through each sentence. My hand does not get tired. You mustn't rush. When you rush, you pen things you didn't mean and you tire. It takes patience to say exactly what one means and to think of the right word. Sometimes I write a draft and mark it up, then write a clean copy to send. I believe one ought to be precious with communication. Remember, words, especially those written, are immortal. Sometimes, Caroline, the easiest inroad is to begin with a thank you for a gift or a kindness or a letter, you know, and then take it from there. Answer every question they've asked and ask your own and you will have created a never ending circuit of curiosity and learning.
- [39:43]
Kate Gibson
You've seen the headlines, heard the debates.
- [39:45]
Becky Dayton
The three point ball has created a monotonous rhythm to the game.
- [39:48]
Charlie Gibson
Has the three pointer ruined basketball? And how did we get here?
- [39:52]
Kate Gibson
The rise of the three point shot can be partially traced to an eccentric Kansas genius named Martin Manley, whose story.
- [39:59]
Charlie Gibson
Didn'T turn out quite the way he imagined. I decided I wanted to have one of the most organized goodbyes in history. 30 for 30 podcast presents Chasing Basketball Heaven Available now wherever you get your podcasts.