Radical Chapters: Pacifist Bookseller Roy Kepler and the Paperback Revolution

21 Book Wars

365 21 Book Wars Roy built the Kepler’s brand over half a century, in some ways effortlessly . He simply went about his life, embodying his principles, and Kepler’s Books & Magazines was the natural consequence. Roy was tolerant, curious, unconventional, and brave, and that is what his store became. Once manifested, though, Kepler’s Books & Magazines had a life of its own. After Clark took over, he had to sustain it while adapting to new circumstances. Cobwebs needed sweeping. Systems needed updating. The bookselling competition required attention, more than ever. Even the most loyal Kepler’s customer could be tempted away by a chain store’s killer prices. Clark instituted regular catalogs mailed to customers. He expanded the store’s lecture series and computerized the inventory system. He was not particularly active politically while growing up, as Patricia preferred to keep radical activism out of the home, but Clark sought to keep the store engaged. In February 1989 Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini condemned Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses. A multimillion-dollar bounty was placed on Rushdie’s head. Some stores responded prudently by pulling Rushdie’s book from their shelves. Kepler’s responded defiantly, hosting a public reading of The Satanic Verses. More than one hundred people crowded into the store to hear Ira and, in a surprise appearance, a guitar-toting Joan Baez. Two plainclothes Menlo Park police officers stood watch, while Joan sang Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side.” The Salman Rushdie event summoned the good old Kepler’s spirits : courage, song, and protest. It was also one of the last big events 366  Radical Chapters held at the Victoria Lane store. With the big chains encroaching, the 5,200-square-foot store was no longer big enough to compete. Across El Camino Real, developer Russ Collier was creating what he called Menlo Center, a block-long project on the east side of the busy street. It included a 10,973-square foot location, where Kepler’s could shelve its 70,000 titles and then some. Clark wanted a book-lover’s maze with many tall, full shelves where customers could lose themselves amid the books. The new store would not provide coffee, but a congenial establishment called Café Borrone moved down from Redwood City and opened about a month after Kepler’s moved in. The latest Kepler’s opened on September 1, 1989, in time for the store to celebrate its thirty-fifth anniversary the following May. It was the last big store celebration the store’s founder would know. Roy had been in serious decline through the eighties. Randy Kehler, recruited by Roy inside Santa Rita jail in 1967 to work for the War Resisters League, recalled driving up to Grass Valley sometime early in the decade. He found Roy periodically frozen in mid-conversation, at an extended loss for words. It’s aphasia, Roy was finally able to tell him, rather matter-of-factly. It came with the Parkinson’s disease. This was his condition, and each year it got worse. The direction was irrevocable . Over time, Roy began shuffling. He lost the ability to button his shirts and trousers. Roy’s physical deterioration was all the more painful because so many knew him for his remarkable energy. Mandy Carter, who had first started working with Roy through War Resisters League/West in 1969, recalled seeing him sometime during the 1980s at a WRL event. Everyone was standing about chatting, allies from the common cause, old comrades to hug and reminisce with. Then Roy was ushered into the get-together in a wheelchair, barely able to speak. “I didn’t even recognize him,” Carter said, “and I sort of wish I hadn’t seen him that way.” By 1989 Roy’s family had placed him in College Park Convalescent Hospital on Crane Avenue near downtown Menlo Park. It was close to the store and Bay Area physicians but far from the family’s Grass Valley home where Patricia lived. The Bay Area location made it Book Wars  367 easier for friends to visit. Roy would want to talk in the worst way, but the words were incarcerated. Longtime Kepler’s employee Betty Sumrall would attend Roy at the convalescent home, and sometimes translate his garbled speech for others in the room. Molly Black, though since separated from Ira, would visit both with Ira and by herself. When...