Bookshop's last word a sign of the times

By Vin Maskell
March 12, 2005

A trip to Slightly Bent Books was always an escape from modern retailing for Vin Maskell.

You turn left at the post office and there it is, the empty bookshop. You look through the windows and think of all the good quality second-hand books that were there only a few weeks ago.

General fiction was down the narrow corridor on the left that led to the backroom treasure trove. Children's books were to the right, in the area behind Helen Green's counter. Australian fiction and poetry were near the old stereo that played jazz and classical music.

There was a table at the front of the shop, by the ochre-red door, which displayed newly arrived books, several by local writers.

To the left of the table were the new art, film, design, architecture and photography books: gorgeous to look at but dangerous to open, especially if you couldn't resist temptation.

Slightly Bent Books in Williamstown closed on New Year's Eve. For 13 years it was an oasis for book lovers and a haven for local writers and artists. It is one of many small bookstores to close in the past four years. A second-hand bookshop in nearby Newport closed over the summer, and shops selling new and/or second-hand books have closed their doors in Werribee, Footscray, Kensington, Flemington, North Melbourne, Carlton, South Yarra, Hawthorn East, St Kilda and Brunswick.

Along with its books (and local ceramics, artworks and cards) Slightly Bent had two big art deco armchairs, quiet music and the aroma of fresh coffee.

So, long before Borders and Readings boasted about a retail style that encouraged you to linger, Helen Green's shop was doing exactly that, without the franchise fanfare of a chain store.

This calm yet stimulating atmosphere was also attributable to the absence of modern retail apparatus: there was no electronic cash register, no beeping bar-code reader, no high-tech security. It was how, many years ago, people did their general shopping.

Along with inadvertently providing this glimpse into the past, Helen Green also provided hope, advice and encouragement for local authors (and took much less than the standard 40 per cent commission on their sales).

She published Bruce Tait's Williamstown Mysteries & Other Happenings and also sold many copies of Dorothy Richards' Williamstown memoir An Anthology of Aunts.

When a local bookshop shuts, this grassroots support for often unknown writers disappears, support that can also include book launches, sponsorship of small literary festivals and a meeting space for writing groups.

Helen bought the business 12 years ago because she was asked to by its first owner, who ended up running a bookshop in Broome for a little while. She says she battled the archaic attitudes of a bank, which wanted to know all about her husband's financial arrangements before giving her a loan. Nowadays someone wanting to start a similar business would be battling rising rents and competition from the large bookstores.

When she finally bought Slightly Bent, Helen was living diagonally opposite the shop, in a large art deco apartment that included a rooftop tennis court. The apartment, once a funeral parlour, has since been turned into seven units, a sign of the changing face of Williamstown.

This change has also led to the ever-increasing rents that prompted Helen to close her red door.

There was no big clearance sale to get rid of stock and no big party. Helen tried to close the business without fuss, but over the shop's last three days 75 customers visited to show their appreciation by giving gifts of wine, chocolates, flowers, cards, letters, even a necklace. Two local artists painted portraits of Slightly Bent Books as gifts.

Helen says the shop was always important to her but she hadn't realised how important it was to others.

My favourite part of Slightly Bent was the back room, Helen's warehouse of sorts. I discovered it behind a curtain at the end of the corridor of fiction 10 years ago when I needed to take a toddler to the toilet. The room was stifling in the summer but if you could stand the heat you were sure to find what you were looking for.

Last year I challenged Helen with a request: a wok cooking book suitable for a vegetarian family. She suggested I head out the back, and before too long, before the beads of sweat started dripping, I'd found Quick & Easy Wok Cooking, which included a chapter for vegetarians. Close enough and a bargain.

I bought my last books from Slightly Bent a few days before it closed: a collection of poems from the front table, Rotation, by local writer Janet Howie; a gorgeous art hardback, Sowa's Ark, An Enchanted Bestiary, by Michael Sowa; and Dispossessed, a novella in verse by the late Australian writer Philip Hodgins.

At the time I was not sure why I bought Dispossessed. I had borrowed it from the library several years ago and could have done so again.

But looking back now, and looking through the windows at the empty shop, I sense there may have been something else compelling me to buy the book. Sentiment of a sort, not just for a writer who died young but for a bookshop that was about to close.

And sentiment for the demise of a way of life: for the milk bars that have disappeared in the wake of supermarkets; for the strip shopping centres trying to hold fast as places such as Highpoint and Westfield continue to spread, like some sort of cancer, across the land; for towns and townships that have been bypassed by freeways.

Small bookshops are similar to small publishers. They come and go and as some close, others open, giving heart and hope to readers and writers in the local neighbourhood.

Fortunately Helen Green will still be in the book business, with plans to open a weekend shop in the central Victorian town of Talbot.

She won't have to argue with a bank about a loan, she won't have to worry about rising rents and there won't be a franchise bookstore within cooee. For me it will be rather more than just stepping around the corner from the local post office, but the journey will be well worth it.

Vin Maskell compiles the Kick to Kick column in The Age. His collection of short stories, Jacaranda Avenue, was published in 2003 (Greasy Pole Publishing).

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