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Forty years on
(by Kara Krekeler - December 08, 2009)
In 1969, a group of socially progressive 20-somethings, fresh out of college, founded Left Bank Books, a tiny counterculture bookshop just south of the Delmar Loop.
In 1975, a young bookseller at that idealistic bookstore, Kris Kleindienst, began sharing her job with Barry Liebman, a former teacher and Peace Corps volunteer. They’ve continued to share their job for 34 years, as booksellers, bookkeepers and co-owners.
Forty years after its founding, Left Bank Books now has two locations, in the Central West End and Downtown St. Louis, and Liebman is closing the book on the Left Bank chapter of his life. His last day as an employee of the bookstore is Dec. 31.
A collective effort
The store, which started with donated books and no money, soon became a center for progressive politics and culture in St. Louis, fighting sexism, racism and the Vietnam War through experimental literature.
It was that idealism that attracted Liebman to Left Bank, who met the store’s founders in 1968, when they were Washington University students protesting the Vietnam War.
“If you go to a regular bookstore, it’s so different from the sort of bookstore that Left Bank wanted to be,” Liebman said. “It’s the idea that culture in itself can stimulate people to take action.”
For Kleindienst, she started at Left Bank in 1974, when she simply needed a job; she had no intention of it becoming a lifelong vocation. In fact, a year later she strongly considered going back to school at the University of Iowa, and it was only when she couldn’t find a place to live in Iowa City that she realized she wasn’t all that interested in leaving St. Louis.
Over the next couple of years, the Washington University bookstore expanded drastically and another independent bookstore, Paul’s Books, opened in the Loop, making business rough for Left Bank. The owners, brothers Bob and Steve Zeffert at that point, decided to move the store to the CWE in 1977, although “we couldn’t afford to make the move,” Kleindienst said.
So on the suggestion of a customer, the Left Bank family solicited donations from neighbors and customers, raising enough money to get a loan to finance the move.
“We raised $5,000 in donations of $25 or $50. We took it to the bank and said, ‘We have a community that wants us.’ The bank gave us a loan based on that,” Liebman said.
Soon after the move, Kleindienst and Liebman, with Justin James, bought the store — or took on its debt, as Kleindienst put it. “Barry and I had been talking and fantasizing about ‘if I owned the store’” before buying it, Kleindienst said, noting that none of them knew anything about business. “We weren’t business people. At best we were cultural workers … We always saw it as a resource for progressive points of view, for literature not necessarily available at other places.”
For several years, Kleindienst, Liebman and a rotating gallery of owners ran the business as collectively as possible, switching jobs every six months so that when big decisions had to be made, everyone was equally informed. “It was very empowering, but very inefficient,” Liebman said, noting that it often took a full month for him to get his bearings when switching from ordering to bookkeeping or vice versa.
But because of a recession in the late 1980s, the merry-go-round of jobs came to a halt in 1990, and everyone simply stayed with the job they had when the decision was made. Liebman wound up handling the store’s finances while Kleindienst did the ordering, “because that’s where we were,” Liebman said.
Sticking it out
In its 40 years, Left Bank Books has seen many other independent bookstores become smothered by national bookstore chains and, more recently, by big-box stores and internet retailers like Amazon.com. On the surface, it wouldn’t seem that a store like Left Bank would manage to survive.
“We were the smallest and least financially viable from the very beginning,” Liebman said. “There was no capital. There’s never any capital.”
Part of what’s kept Left Bank afloat for 40 years is sheer force of will, a phrase used by both Liebman and Kleindienst; part of it is simply an inability to know how to quit. “I think closing a store, ending a business, is a skill that neither of us have. So we just keep going,” Kleindienst said.
But the biggest thing keeping Left Bank open is simply the support of its loyal community.
“Each time when things looked most dreadful, people came along” to help Left Bank carry on, Liebman said. “Community, more than luck, is what keeps us going. We’re lucky that people value a place like this.”
In the spirit of those 1977 donors, in the late 1990s, some longtime customers founded the Friends of Left Bank Books Society, a membership organization that was the first of its kind for an American bookstore.
While the members pay dues of $35 to $100 a year, Kleindienst and Liebman said that it’s the responsibility to those Friends that matters the most.
“It’s not just a business for us. That was never the primary reason we did this,” Kleindienst said.
‘Cranky old married couple’
Underneath it all is the long friendship between Liebman and Kleindienst — one that inspired adjectives such as “deep,” “vibrant” and “dedicated” from both parties.
“We’ve known each other continuously for 35 years; I’ve never spent that much time together with anyone else,” Kleindienst said.
That friendship has been marked by “a long and semi-infamous career of fighting,” according to Kleindienst. While Liebman said that arguing was a minor part of their relationship, with occasional disagreements over the direction of the store or the literary merit of particular books, Kleindienst referred to their relationship as that of a “cranky old married couple” that is constantly bickering. “If he says something’s black, I say it’s white,” she said.
“Over 35 years, you have to have your arguments,” Liebman said. “We’ve been through a lot together.”
But what’s made them persevere is a shared love of Left Bank Books: both said they have always been committed to making it the best bookstore possible. That mission won’t change when Liebman leaves at the end of the year, thanks in part to new co-owner Jarek Steele, who has been with the store for seven years and is taking on many of the responsibilities Liebman has handled.
“We’ll carry on, we’ll be OK. But it will be really different,” Kleindienst said. “[Liebman leaving is] hard for me to talk about, I get upset, I get really sad. He’ll leave a big hole. Nobody’s ever going to fill his shoes.”
Liebman said that when he first started on at Left Bank, he had no idea how long it would last, just that he “wanted to make it last as long as it could.” Now, at the age of 65, Liebman said he thinks it’s time to call it a day.
“I’ve been thinking about it since I turned 60. Would I still want to be running up and down those stairs at 95?” he said.
After he leaves work on Dec. 31, Liebman won’t leave St. Louis, at least not right away. But sometime in 2010, he and his wife, Caroline, will pack their bags and move to Whidby Island, a picturesque island in Puget Sound near Seattle.
Liebman said that while Whidby has a “wonderful little bookstore,” and that he will certainly need to get a job, he’s planning on seeking employment elsewhere.
“It’ll be nice to just be a customer,” he said.
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