Number 298
Fall 2006

Stocking Books Against Adversity (circa 1981)
JOYCE JENKINS
Copyright © 2006 Poetry Flash


Five massive sheets of glass
Three facing East
Two facing North
Spacious windows
Set with books…
(Herman Berlandt, “The Sanctuary,” from Cody’s Fair)

A mecca for local literati and prominent literary figures, Cody’s (2454 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, California) is an undeniable presence on the bookselling scene in Berkeley. Founded on July 9, 1956, the store will celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary this summer. Fred and Pat Cody owned and ran the store until July 9, 1977, and it was during those years that Cody’s matured into a cultural landmark. They were the first West Coast retailers of the then controversial Evergreen Grove Press Books, the publishers of Beckett, Jean Genet, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and others. Committed to the ideal of an easily accessible literature through the paperback revolution, the Codys stocked only about six hardcover books in their entire store, at a time when paperbacks were still rare. Early participants in Berkeley politics of the sixties, such as organizing nonviolent crowd control for demonstrations, or working with the Berkeley Free Clinic, the Codys felt the need for a responsible interaction with the tumultuous community whose minds they served. When San Francisco police arrested a City Lights employee for selling Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, a prelude to his famous obscenity trial, Fred Cody stocked copies of Howl from floor to ceiling, “as a gesture of refutation and dissent.” But the climate for the act was right; Berkeley’s tradition of intellectual freedom held fast, and no arrests were made.
Under the Codys the bookstore published works which could not find a publisher. Typed by Fred instead of typeset, several books of poetry and a play about male sexuality, Hold Me Until Morning, as well as a Thoreau calendar and posters were produced. “People should master as much as they can of technology,” Fred said just after selling the store. “I am interested in people using printing as a means of political and personal expression. It is one of the protections we have against what could become a monopoly of corporations.”
To Fred Cody, small was beautiful. Even though he developed the system of each bookstore employee stocking and maintaining an individual section to give them “psychic satisfaction” in their work, he always believed in synthesis, saying often that the progress of humanity could be measured by the elimination of sections.
The Codys first experimented in the display of small press books, a practice still continued, by putting a large table of them right in front of the door. An upstairs room, which has also been a photographic gallery and is now a children’s book room, was left with clean floor space for author appearances and the Wednesday Night Poetry Series which has run continuously since the early seventies. Coordinated by Susan Lurie of the Berkeley Women Writers Workshop, Clive Matson of Neon Sun Press, and Alan Soldofsky, it provides one of the few regular reading series of consistent quality in the Bay Area. The room holds about one hundred and fifty people. Folding chairs and podium are pulled out of the closet; the lights are dimmed, and some of the country’s most interesting poets and writers hold forth. The author appearances are free, and the poetry readings ask a donation which goes to the poet.
Reminiscing about the first author appearance in the store, held for Anaïs Nin’s Memoirs, Vol. 1, in 1956, Fred remembered for the Oakland Tribune:“We had a party for her. She was standing in a room in a beautiful white dress. Lawrence Ferlinghetti had gone up to the Berkeley Rose Garden and stolen a big pail of rose petals. He dumped them on her, and they clung to her hair and her shoulders. And she just went on talking, completely poised. As if it were an everyday occurrence.” Pat added: “There was a person who wasn’t afraid of taking risks.”
Graceful risk-taking is a quality that the Cody’s would admire.
Questioned about poetry, Fred Cody said: “Bookstores should do as much as they can for new poets. Anyone can run with a Roots or a Passages or Blind Ambition, but the real challenge is to get people to believe in and buy the work of local poets.” A reporter once wrote of him, “He rattled off a string of Berkeley poets like some people list their favorite sports heroes.” The Codys have been credited with the sale of hundreds of books of poets such as Gary Snyder, Robert Bly and Robert Creeley, as well as Herbert Marcuse, before they were known to the reading public.
But Cody’s isn’t a dull place under the new ownership either. Bought by Andrew Ross, with a good head for business, a penchant for opera and the spontaneous recital of Shakespeare’s best lines, Cody’s has carried on the traditions of attention to small presses, author appearances, poetry readings, and more personal involvement in ordering than is usually tolerated in bookselling. All this continues while experimentation goes on with their new IBM computer. Dubbed Ming the Merciless, it has been programmed to help them keep current on over sixty thousand titles.
David to the Goliath of big chain bookstores who can buy in tremendous quantity to improve their discounts and coop advertising deals, and sweeten their profits, Cody’s is still a vigorous independent. The antithesis of those boring bookstores dealing mostly in travel remainders and gothic romances, it is a vital, lively place, which still respects and encourages new ideas and poetry by frequently accepting unproven work for sale.
Having won the paperback revolution long ago, and stocking them over the more expensive cloth whenever possible, the store has come full circle to the display of the hardcover book as a lasting and beautiful object. Even though the present owner wears a button which says: “Oppose Book Worship,” it is one of the few places where new hardcover poetry books can be bought or ordered. Consignments are easy to place. Suggestions are welcomed, and most small press titles are quickly available from nearby Small Press Distribution or Bookpeople.
The bookstore no longer publishes books, but last year Andy Ross republished the 1980 Cody’s Calendar of Contemporary Poets, edited by Alan Soldofsky. An aesthetic if not financial success, the calendar included poems and photos of John Ashbery, Philip Levine, W.S. Merwin, Josephine Miles, Susan Griffin and Muriel Rukeyser, to name a few.
Whether it’s a Nixon clone announcing that, “I am really Leonid Brezhnev,” to non-promote RN, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, a line stretched around the block to see Tom Robbins, or an appreciative audience gathered to hear the likes of Ntozake Shange, Galway Kinnell, Ishmael Reed, John Logan, Jana Harris, Robert Hass or Robert Pinsky, something is always going on at Cody’s. But the best part is that by opening their space to poetry organizations such as the Berkeley Poets Co-op, the San Francisco International Poetry Festival and Poetry Flash, the Bay Area’s Poetry Calendar and Review, and by consistently supporting the sale of poetry books, Cody’s has proven that poetry and small press books can carry their weight in a progressive general subject bookstore.