I Gave at the Bookstore

SOS, the message read: Share Our Strength.

On September 22, 1992, some 170 bookstores around the country took part in “The National Reading: Writers Harvest for the Homeless.” Proceeds went to SOS, “the largest national private hunger relief foundation in the United States.” Dutton’s Brentwood was one such bookshop, with Gloria Naylor its featured author.

People began to assemble at the store around seven o’clock on an especially warm evening. They lined three walls of the shop’s brightly lit, neatly kept front room. As body heat upped the indoor temperature, eclectic hand fans were improvised: a copy of the New York Review of Books, a KCRW program guide.

It was a smart-looking, courteous, multi-ethnic, multi-gender, multi-generation assembly. Men wore baggy shorts and sandals. Women carried literate shoulder-bags (“25 Years of Vintage Books”).

These were Naylor fans, eager for the novelist’s inscription on her new fiction, “Bailey’s Cafe.” Many held copies of her earlier works as well. Mostly these folks seemed unaware of the evening’s connection with Share Our Strength until an announcement was made, but collective approval was then apparent.

Gloria Naylor was aware. She wore the chicest tee shirt in the room: a handsome Share Our Strength all-cotton. The writer sat behind a table and signed her name, pleasantly answered questions and graciously accepted compliments. Then everyone moved outside into the patio/courtyard for a reading from “Bailey’s Cafe.”

Naylor’s new work seemed obliquely appropriate to this hunger-relief occasion. As the author explained of her book’s fictional restaurant, “Bailey’s Cafe is for people who are at the end of their rope. It’s the next-to-last step before you topple off the edge of the world. Because the rear door of the cafe opens onto a void.”

Thirty minutes later and a few blocks away, a man stood on the traffic island at San Vicente and Wilshire and asked politely for money from a motorist waiting to make a left turn. Did the driver say, “Thanks, but I gave at the bookstore”? No. He gave at the stoplight, too.