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Bob Contant, who stubbornly sustained his countercultural bookshop for practically 4 a long time, even because it decamped farther and farther from its punk-rock playground on St. Mark’s Place within the East Village whereas the demand in that gentrifying neighborhood for titles on poststructuralist philosophy and significant idea dwindled, died on Nov. 6 at his house in Manhattan. He was 80.
His spouse, Marilyn Berkman, a poet, stated the trigger was problems of Covid.
A profession bookseller, Mr. Contant opened the St. Mark’s Bookshop in a storefront on St. Mark’s Place with three companions in 1977. It grew to become a magnet for a variety of authors and artists, amongst them Susan Sontag, Richard Howard, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Thurston Moore, Madonna and William S. Burroughs (who was drawn to the store each Saturday to purchase science fiction books and, Mr. Contant as soon as stated, as a result of he had a crush on one of many workers).
Mr. Contant was the principal proprietor and purchaser for the store, which, till it closed in 2016, was typically acknowledged to be the oldest impartial Manhattan bookstore nonetheless owned by any of its founders.
“The shop in its heyday was a literary headquarters for punks, and an outpost for St. Mark’s Poetry Undertaking poets,” Ada Calhoun wrote in “St. Marks Is Lifeless: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Avenue“ (2015). It was, she added, “a refined jewel within the scuzzy crown of the East Village, the place the place numerous aspiring artists purchased their first books by Bukowski or Ginsberg or Sartre.”
Ms. Calhoun stated in an interview: “I take into consideration how many individuals discovered their old flame of nice literature and idea at that bookstore. It’s an unbelievable legacy.”
The St. Mark’s Bookshop, the New York Occasions guide critic Dwight Garner wrote in 2012, “is the place to go when your spirits are sagging, once you want a reminder that the world’s literary tradition remains to be large and peculiar and vibrant and all however unknowable.”
The shop by no means invested in potential income add-ons like common guide gala’s or readings, and it by no means bought used books, provided deep reductions or opened an in-store cafe.
As an alternative, it stubbornly caught to its basic enterprise mannequin. It bought avant-garde literature, books from small impartial presses on topics like queer idea and anarchy, artisanal greeting playing cards, artwork monographs, photograph albums of Russian jail tattoos and a collection of 2,000 magazines and underground newspapers, in addition to booklets that hungry native writers delivered on consignment.
No books, Mr. Contant as soon as stated, that had been “too well-liked.”
Ms. Calhoun described Mr. Contant and his longtime co-owner Terry McCoy as “a type of erudite Abbott and Costello in denims and black sneakers, who gained a status for caring extra in regards to the lifetime of the thoughts than in regards to the particulars of operating a enterprise.”
Over the a long time, Mr. Contant grew bitter in regards to the volcanic upheaval within the East Village’s demographics, from hippie to yuppie. However he remained dedicated to nurturing the fledgling writers and poets who had been devoted prospects and mentees.
Paul Yamazaki, the principal purchaser at Metropolis Lights Booksellers & Publishers in San Francisco, a retailer very very like the St. Mark’s Bookshop, stated in an e-mail that Mr. Contant “shared his enthusiasms with elegant, understated gusto.”
Robert Gregory Contant was born on March 17, 1943, in Rochester, N.Y. His father, Peter, was a chief engineer for Normal Motors. His mom, Dorothy (Wells) Contant, was a homemaker. The couple divorced when Bob was 5, and he moved together with his mom to Maryland, the place she remarried.
He attended the College of Rochester and the College of Maryland and labored in libraries in Washington earlier than marrying and divorcing and relocating to Cambridge, Mass., the place he married and divorced once more and labored within the Harvard libraries. Ms. Berkman, whom he married in 1989, stated he was fired for refusing to dismiss scholar staff who had participated in campus protests towards the Vietnam Warfare.
Whereas managing a bookstore on Harvard Sq., he was lured to New York by advertisements in The Village Voice selling the East Facet Bookstore. He was employed there in 1972, and he and Mr. McCoy, a co-worker, had been later inspired by the supervisor to begin their very own retailer.
After working because the supervisor of the eighth Avenue Bookshop in Greenwich Village, Mr. Contant, together with Mr. McCoy and two different colleagues, Tom Evans and Peter Dargis, opened the St. Mark’s Bookshop in November 1977 in a $345-a-month storefront at 13 St. Mark’s Place. (Immediately, flats within the constructing promote for upward of $1.6 million, and the Thai-inspired dessert emporium on the bottom flooring provides Soku tangerine soju seltzer for $10 a can.)
Because the East Village exploded with punk vibrancy and enterprise boomed, the shop moved to extra spacious quarters at 12 St. Mark’s Place in 1987. Six years later, the 2 remaining companions, Mr. Contant and Mr. McCoy, had been invited by the Cooper Union to relocate close by to the establishment’s new dormitory growth at 31 Third Avenue, a smooth, award-winning area designed by Zivkovic Associates. They had been ready to take action because of a beneficiant mortgage from Robert Rodale, a writer of wellness books and magazines.
However the 2008 recession, mixed with a proposed doubling of the shop’s $20,000-a-month lease, made the area unaffordable, even after assist from Salman Rushdie and Patti Smith, a crowdsourcing marketing campaign that raised $24,000 and a concession by Cooper Union in 2011 to cut back the lease quickly.
In 2014, the shop moved to its fourth and closing house, at 136 East Third Avenue, a aspect avenue, as a business tenant in a metropolis housing mission a half-mile southeast of the unique location. Mr. Contant purchased out Mr. McCoy for $1, and by the point he grudgingly shuttered the bookshop in its final incarnation in 2016, he owed the town one thing like $70,000 in again lease; he additionally owed hefty sums to publishers and wholesalers and a few $35,000 in unpaid gross sales tax. Mr. Contant went bankrupt.
Along with his spouse, he’s survived by a daughter, Daryl Prezioso, from his marriage to Annette Ratteree, which resulted in divorce; his sister, Pamm Houchens; and two grandsons.
“The bookshop turned St. Mark’s Place right into a cultural vacation spot,” Ms. Berkman stated by e-mail. “The shop launched the careers of many writers and launched as soon as esoteric topics like vital idea to a wider readership.”
When the shop lastly closed, Mr. Contant was teary. “It’s been half my lifetime,” he stated. “Terry stated as soon as that it was a calling; I feel that sums it up.”
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