Salon.com, that online epitome of what Dwight McDonald referred to as ‘midcult,’ had a nice little fluff piece on the death of the clerk. Specifically, those record, comic, and book store clerks who were the gatekeepers and guides to the worlds of literature, ‘zines, small presses, alternative music, and jazz.

I wasn’t much into comics when I was in high school and I never went to the clerks at RTO for musical advice. I was too much of a quiet browser and have always hated sales pitches.

Later though, I became friends with a couple of clerks at a Barnes and Noble in Montgomery, Alabama (that store is apparently gone now, by the way). One was a bit of an expert in southern literature and hosted occasional poetry groups in the store and also collected ‘found poetry’ with a southern gothic tinge. The other was closeted anarchist with a taste for political lit.

These two probably were the clerks who influenced me the most.

A third was the owner of the used bookstore in Clearwater, Florida, A Blue Moon. He and my mother sometimes went out, so the clerk-customer relationship was a little weird. But he had a wonderfully curated store with a lot of great stuff and he wasn’t afraid to point out interesting books. He also used an old fashioned camera that took ten or twenty seconds to take a picture and required a photometer to use properly.