Radical Chapters: Pacifist Bookseller Roy Kepler and the Paperback Revolution

Epilogue

379 Epilogue Love and moxie resurrected Kepler’s Books & Magazines. But tears came first. Menlo Park City Councilwoman Kelly Fergusson could not believe her ears on August 31, 2005. As a Stanford undergraduate studying applied earth sciences in the mid-1980s, and then as a doctoral student in civil engineering, Fergusson had often escaped to Kepler’s for her favorite fantasy and science fiction books. The store was a festive getaway, a place like no other. Once she saw Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. Three decades after Jerry Garcia noodled folk songs in Kepler’s backroom, Hart showed up to discuss his new book on anthropology and percussion. Where else but Kepler’s could that happen? Now, hearing the store had closed, Fergusson showed up to see for herself. The evidence was unassailable. On the plaza, people wept. “It looked so forlorn, with the door chained shut and paper covering up the windows,” Fergusson recalled in a 2010 interview. “Then and there I resolved myself that Menlo Park could not lose this community treasure, that was so much a part of, and inseparable from, our city’s heritage and identity.” Fergusson tried without success to reach Clark by phone and e-mail, finally resorting to leaving a note at his Menlo Park home. Until then, she had known him only slightly. Others too were reaching out. Daniel Mendez had been eating breakfast at Café Borrone the day Kepler’s closed. The cofounder of Visto Corp., a mobile e-mail business, Mendez had made a habit of bicycling with his children to the Kepler’s and Café Borrone complex on weekends. He was one of the dispossessed in the plaza that morning, wondering what had 380  Radical Chapters happened, but the Harvard graduate and holder of several computer science–related patents was accustomed to confronting problems. He began talking, casually at first and then with more focus, about what might be done. He knew Fergusson slightly from her city council campaign, and they conversed. Then Mendez managed to get in touch with Clark with an e-mail that cut straight to the point. “I have talked to a number of my friends and neighbors in Atherton and Menlo Park,” Mendez wrote, as Inc. magazine reported in 2006, “and I can in short order put together a syndicate to purchase all or a portion of the operation from you . . .” Clark agreed to meet, though he perhaps was a little conflicted. Clark had been living with the numbers for weeks, months, years. Net pretax profit margins, once livable at 2 percent, had been getting sliced ever thinner. The swell of chain and Internet competitors was driving publishers to press for quicker turnaround and payments. Kepler’s annual revenue had been declining precipitously by 25 percent a year since 2001. Clark might count his own errors, but Kepler’s clearly had been caught in a whirlpool not of its own making. Maybe Kepler’s time had simply passed. But Kepler’s also had unique advantages. People would be willing to fight for it; they wanted to fight for it. It was a cause. The public sentiment became publicly apparent on September 6, a week after the store’s closing. Fergusson and others had organized a pro-Kepler’s rally on the plaza outside the closed store. Menlo Park city staff provided logistical support, a sympathizer cut a check to pay for sign supplies , and some 250 people convened. They brandished signs: “Read Globally, Shop Locally” and “Menlo Park is not Menlo Park without Kepler’s.” Some brandished specific ideas. Fergusson urged the demonstrators to pull together, and for God’s sake to stop buying at Amazon . Seeing the support, Clark confessed to feeling a glimmer of hope. “We are not dead yet,” Clark told the crowd. “I hope to bring you good news sometime soon.” Many demonstrators then walked the quarter-mile to the Menlo Park City Hall for a special council meeting. Speaker after speaker claimed the microphone and had their say. There were “lots of Epilogue  381 heartfelt expressions of love for the business, its history and legacy,” Fergusson recalled. Some thought the airing of sentiments sweet but a bit long-winded; it was time to get down to the nitty-gritty. This would have been a familiar scene for Roy, who had spent a lifetime in do-gooder meetings where, as he once wrote, activists “wore...