established 2016
I have a lifelong relationship with the printed word. I was encouraged as a child to read and explore any subject guided by my insatiable curiosity. I read every book I could find in the library on the Haudenosaunee people. The James A. Michener branch of my county’s library system was a favorite indoor destination. Like many of my generation I read horror by Stephen King and Peter Straub at too young of an age. I read Nietzsche at a precocious age but could just as easily be found with a well-loved copy of Mad Magazine or memorizing the back of a Topps baseball card. I lived Mitch Hedberg’s joke: “Any book is a children’s book if the kid can read.”
I spent the start of this century consulting offset printers, the skilled craftsmen who make books possible. I witnessed the transition from film to computer to plate technology, the automation of presses, and the integration of bindery equipment.
I majored in English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan where I read and wrote my way to a degree. I found time to read much of the supplementary reading suggestions and the literature that had the most profound impact on my tastes.
I have since raised a son who works with his hands and reads fiction and non-fiction to learn more about the world around him. His intellectual journey, nudged by teachers and the examples of his parents perhaps, is his own. In many ways my efforts to curate the books I sell at Genesee Books is with him in mind.
I believe that the printing press is one of the greatest inventions ever. I believe that the preservation and curation of the analog world is a bulwark against ignorance and the downstream consequences of forgetting centuries of knowledge, wisdom and stories.
My biases and lifelong interests guide what I curate. Literature has always been an important way for me to live more lives and understand more perspectives. Poetry is its more efficient sibling. I don’t draw big distinctions between genre fiction and serious literature. I stock both. I stock books on baseball and boxing, two sports that I’ve followed my entire life, that I believe lend themselves to great writing. I have a shelf of books on the Lakota as the story of Crazy Horse is a well that I will revisit the rest of my life. Books on music, artists and the offbeat and underground figures of 20th century American will always be stocked. Books on hoboes, carnies and anarchists, to name but a few, will always find a place in my store. I care less about military history and presidents and my collection will reflect that.
My shop aims to be eclectic. I am mostly interested in preserving the neglected and will feature my favorites of authors that are either out of print or less common in conventional collections - Jim Tully, Charles Willeford (https://tinyurl.com/3a3j4uvp) and Gerald Kersh (https://tinyurl.com/yvwk2f5f) - but I will always look to stock perennial favorites like The Left Hand of Darkness of books by J.R.R. Tolkien (https://tinyurl.com/2v6m33kv).
I've called Rochester New York my home for now more than half of my life. I have a great collection of local history and titles with fascinating local provenance. We are the home of the camera, the first canned beer, the hoodie and the tin foil hat. Frederick Douglass, Son House and Emma Goldman all lived here. Theirs and thousands of other local stories can be found at Genesee Books.