Daily francsan
Kansas Union Book Store
Paperback Edition
Friday, April 20, 1962
Judi Scroggin looks through one of the 7,000 titles in the paperback section of the book store.
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Bibs, Beer Mugs, Books All These in Union Book Store
KU baby bibs to gallon-size beer mugs, books of nursery rhymes to texts for a course in quantum mechanics (whatever that is), penny paper fasteners to $205 electric typewriters—the Book Store in the Kansas Union is the mart of myriad marvels.
A few flights down from the main floor, a right turn past the Hawk's Nest, through the turntable to your left, and you enter that fascinating and unique part of a university world known as The Book Store.
Just ahead are paints and palettes and pastels for the brush and beret set. A giant slide rule hangs on the wall to the left. But all around are the unmistakable signs that this store caters to a wonderful and wacky clientele, the college crowd.
THE NOBLE JAYHAWK AND the seal of the University are everywhere—on sweatshirts, steins, bookends, cigarette boxes and stationery. Perhaps, more than anything else the atmosphere of the Book Store comes from the images of the store's customers studying and relaxing. The merchandise, somehow, seems to mirror the life of the student.
There are the trinkets for the desk or a shelf in the student's room, decorated with some mark of the University. One day, the graduate will perhaps run across a little metal jayhawk tucked in a corner of a trunk in the attic, and fondly recall the wild discussions the cocky little bird witnessed in the fraternity house.
There are typewriters for rent—$1.35 a week or $5 a month—for the student to hammer out his term papers, working far into the night with the keys pounding an insane
The Book Store actually seems to be two stores. On the upper level the student can buy supplies and souvenirs. Here is where he will find the store's cheapest items (you can still buy some things for a penny) and the most expensive items (until recently, microscopes—now, electric portable typewriters).
chant in his ears and the gravel cutting furrows in his eyes.
The Book Store moved into the upper level in 1952, when the new addition to the Kansas Union was finished. For eight years, this level housed the entire stock of the store.
THEERE ARE THE BLUE sweatshirts with "Kansas" lettered on, to be worn with jeans and pincurls as you iron a skirt for a Friday night movie date.
ALL THIS, AND MUCH MORE,
gives the Book Store a special place
in the student's life. It furnishes
him a share of nearly every activity.
Its shelves and counters echo
his lighthearted moments, his inti-
tellectual struggles and his varied
emotions.
All this is packed in less than 8,000 square feet of floor space.
There are the pencils and erasers and notebooks to fill with scribbles and doodles in the long hours of English class. There are the packets of Blue Books, somehow sinister and frightening, for all their empty innocence.
There are textbooks and reference books to gather up in heavy stacks in the frantic crush of registration time. And there are the paperbacks—novels, poems, psychology, history—to fit the mood of any leisure hour.
In August of 1960, the lower level was opened. This is where you will find books covering every subject from aardvarks to zymurgy. The lower level is where the student scrambles for the textbooks required for his courses. It is also where he finds books for pleasure and relaxation—or even to guide him on his summer travels.
THE LOWER LEVEL ALSO contains an amazing array of paperback books, printed by 35-40 different publishing houses. When the Book Store moved into the new section of the Kansas Union in 1952, about six feet of shelf space were devoted to paperbacks. There is now about 700 feet of shelf space, crammed with 7-10,000 titles in paperbacks.
In addition, plans are being made for a small paperback bookstore in the new addition to Watson Library, where students will be able to buy books recommended for their classes.
WHATEVER THE STUDENT buys or rents from the bookstore he becomes, in a sense, a member of a student cooperative. What would, in an ordinary store, be profits is returned to the student in two ways.
First, the student can bring in cash register receipts for a cash refund—currently, eight per cent of his total purchases. Second, a small amount of the "profits"—now two per cent of the gross—is used to help pay for the operation of the entire Kansas Union.
Any way you look at it, the Book Store "pays dividends" to the student as an important part of his life at KU.
1962 Paperbacks Change From 1937
It was about a quarter of a century ago that the 25-cent paperback began to appear in drugstore racks and on bookstore shelves. Few paperbacks can be bought for a quarter in 1962, but that is not the lone difference between books of today and books of yesteryear. It is really a plattitude to say to-
It is really a platitude to say today that there has been a paperback revolution. The New York Herald Tribune predicts a $200 million increase in paperback sales in the next five years. And all one must do is wander through the paperback section in the Kansas Union Book Store to see the revolution in operation.
MAX LERNER'S "AMERICA IS a Civilization"—which was a 1,000-page-or-so blockbuster costing $10—is out in a two-volume paperback. It is likely to become a standard for many students in American universities. William L.Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," which also was a costly hardback item, is due this spring in paperback form.
Adventures in reading and seeing are being provided that once were restricted to those who could afford expensive hardback volumes. Take the many books on art. These are frequently well bound; almost all are beautifully illustrated, with sections of color plates.
The books no longer are merely reprints of "Topper," "Lost Horizon," the Jeeves novels of P. G. Wodehouse, and the courtroom adventures of Perry Mason. There isn't much now that not available in paperback. Paperback quality has changed, too. Those who enjoy history can read Bernard De Voto's "The Year of Decision: 1846" and "The Course of Empire" in a "clothback" that has qualities of both paperback and clothbound books.
One can build a lifetime library—as the ads put it—from such volumes. There is an enduring look to many of the new paperbacks. Some of the covers have style and flair. Instead of screaming by way of blurb and near-nude girl, the books are tasteful representations of the contents one will find inside.
SUCH A VOLUME IS THE paperback of Henry James "The Tragic Muse," a well bound book that looks as enduring as a hard-back. There is the Scribner Library line—restrained, attractive volumes that give us the writings of such one-time Scribner people as Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and such contemporary Scribner people as C. P. Snow and Alan Paton.
American Century books likewise have an enduring quality, and they offer such titles as Mahan's "The Influence of Sea Power upon History" and Steffens' "The Shame of the Cities." Such firms seem to be making a conscious effort to provide, in paperback form, books that had been shunted aside.
It is difficult these days to find titles of classics that have not appeared in paperback, except for such giants as "Les Miserables," available only in an abridgment. One of the early revelations in the "paperback revolution" was the fact that Shakespeare and Homer would sell—and it wasn't necessary to undress Juliet or Helen on the cover.
NOW SHAKESPEARE AND Homer are found in many editions—expensive and otherwise. Some provide textual notations. Some have introductions by distinguished academic names. The other great writers are available, too.
"Tom Jones." comes with an attractive cover, good binding, good
paper. So does “Vanity Fair.” At least three of Scott's Waverley novels are available in several guises. There is much of Dickens, and more is sure to come. Henry James has been given a workout, and even William Dean Howells. For a small expense one can read the novels of Cooper, Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Hardy.
Dell has a Laurel series on several authors—Austin, James, Doostevsky, Drieser. The comprehensive Doubleday Dolphin line brings many of the great writers of the past. Bantam and Signet have been in the classic business for several years; these firms now have reached the point where such forgotten tales as "Elsei Venner" are being revived for the public.
STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY of Kansas are well acquainted by now with the fact that paperbacks have changed textbook patterns. A student studying American literature now can buy his own, inexpensive volumes of Hemingway and Willa Cather. Western Civilization is almost based on the concept of paperback volumes of the philosophers.
A class that once required only one expensive hardback text now may require several paperbacks. Histories are available in paperback; a bright-looking reprint of Matthew Josephson's "The Robber Barons" recently made it to book-store shelves.
Bruce Catton's Civil War histories, Henry Nash Smith's excellent "Virgin Land" Cashs "The Mind of the South," Whyte's "The Organization Man," Lubell's "The Future of American Politics," Rovere's "Senator Joe McCarthy," Sandburg's Lincoln (in a boxed set)—these are titles now available.
A few years ago one could only wish, wistfully, that he could afford Henry Adams’ “Mont-St. Michel and Chartres.” Now there are paperbacks of the book available. Plato’s “The Republic” comes in a volume worth keeping. So does Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” One may find Marquis James’ biography of Andrew Jackson, Walter Prescott Webb’s “The Great Plains,” Darwin’s “The Voyage of the Beagle,” and the natural history writings of Theodore Roosevelt.
THAT GRAND OLD PAPERback name, Penguin, still keeps producing -drama, poetry, philosophy, science and medicine, art and architecture. Pocketbooks, the pioneer of them all in America, produces on a more popular level, but also provides excellent guides and attractive, inexpensive classics.
Bestseller to paperback has become a familiar pattern, to the frustration of many who purchase the hardback volumes. The recent Pulitzer Prize-winner, "To Kill a Mockingbird," is available. Strong recent sellers have been "Hawaii," "Advise and Consent," "Profiles in Courage," the Vance Packard books.
In these pages, elsewhere in this Relays issue, and as a continuing policy in the University Daily Kansan, reviews of paperbacks may be found. Such paperbacks are proving irresistible to lovers of good books, who find it hard to walk through a bookstore these days without purchasing a few new volumes before leaving.