Ex Libris: Pequot Library Booksale-MPEG-4 - Webcasting.mp4

In the summer of 1993 I had a video camera and time on my hands (there was a recession then, too, come to think) and I decided to chronicle the Pequot Library Booksale, a unique event in Southport, CT that draws thousands from all over the region and beyond (Martha Stewart dropped in to promote it one year). The "sale" happens in July, but is a remarkable process that goes on all year, accumulating mass as it goes. I was pretty close to it and the people involved, having worked as a volunteer for years (This is my homage to them). What comes across in this video, if you watch the entire hour, is the peculiar attraction, passion and hunger people have for books, and in this event, a unique ecology of books in which the culture gets circulated from one hand to another, a lot among people who would otherwise not have access to it, and then somehow the whole thing replenishes itself to come back another year. Think about this as people tell you nowadays that books are going away, like newspapers, and this might be of more poignant historical value than I thought. A lot of the good people in this film are gone, but the sale goes on (it goes on now as I speak) as it has for over 50 years, and hopefully will continue long after printed books are "dead."

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Pequot Library
• Booksale
• Book Sale
• Southport
• CT
• used books
• used book dealers
• Stanley Crane
• Mary Freedman
• annual
• documentary
• ecology
• used
• books
• Alexander Kulcsar