City Lights Bookstore

Once again, this is not fashion related, but I still wanted to share a few things about my San Francisco trip that I wasn't able to mention in the last two posts.

Another huge passion of mine, next to fashion, is literature. I didn't really get into it until high school, unlike my twin (who has been reading Harry Potter since she was in 1st grade), but it is still in the list of "Natalie's favorite things". Literature is similar to my other passions (music, art, fashion, etc) in the way that it makes a not-so-amazing reality a beautiful one, even if it involves tragedy. This is why I'm more into the arts and aesthetics than math and science. Math and science consists of things that have already been proven in the real world, but my passions are things that must be created to make the real world even better. And books are definitely one of those factors that create a beautiful reality.

To get to my actual story: about two years ago, I was determined to read all of the excellent classics in literature before reading new books. It was not due to a longing for the past, but it was just a goal of mine to read the great books every English professor and book fanatic obsess over. With all the school work and books I have to read, I obviously haven't come anywhere close to finishing this goal (currently, I'm about to read Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, and I still have about ten books lined up on my bookshelf that are in my "book queue"). So I still live in this classic literature world, filled with the angst of living in 20th century America (see J.D. Salinger and Sylvia Plath) and the dark satire that came with the world wars and negative view of life (see Anthony Burgess and Kurt Vonnegut). Along with these authors, I've recently become obsessed with the Beat generation -- the period after World War II that brought a unique culture that included spontaneity and individualism. This included Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, among many others. The weird part about all of this is that I've become more fond of the authors themselves than their books. The only work I truly love from this generation is the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, which includes the infamous Howl and Kaddish. I am more fascinated with the authors' lives -- how they dropped everything just to travel across America, how they did things only out of spontaneity, and how they created legendary (but usually plotless...) works based on their own intricate experiences. I have basically watched every movie there is on this generation (which is far too many), and I've come to realize that if I could meet any dead author, it would be Allen Ginsberg. So this weird obsession was created, and coming across this bookstore in San Francisco definitely satisfied my nostalgic needs.

These photos are just shots I took of areas around City Lights bookstore -- I couldn't get a good photo of the actual store due to awkward angles. But as you can tell, that bookstore influenced the entire area. 

Jack Kerouac, one of the most famous authors of this era (you have probably heard of On the Road) travelled from the East coast to the West by hitchhiking with his author buddies to come all the way to San Francisco. He wrote about these travels in On the Road, but he never talked about himself in first person (he used different characters to represent him and his friends). I loved vicariously living through him by reading this book, but what was even cooler was to be able to step into the actual place he and other authors had literary meetings in. This meeting place soon became a publishing company, called City Lights. Now, City Lights bookstore is in that building. The store was filled with photos of Kerouac and other famous authors who have been published by City Lights, like Charles Bukowski. It was like a novelty bookshop -- everywhere you turned, there would be another shelf of newly discovered novels or old classics that were both of equal quality. My favorite part was going upstairs to the poetry room, which was less hectic and a quiet, spacious place to read. It included some of my favorite poets (like Ginsberg, Plath, Cummings, etc) and newly discovered poets that I had never heard of. It truly was a magical place, 

maybe even more magical than the famous bookstore in Paris called Shakespeare and Company. All my literature dreams came true in the short time we were able to spend in that store, and I can tell all my book-loving friends that I was in the same place that Kerouac had scintillating literary discussions in. To celebrate the moment, I bought Kaddish and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, because he and Jack were definitely writing buddies before Kerouac left for his road trip. This post really makes me sound like a nerd, but I'm not kidding when I say how much I love books. Yes, the "materialistic fashion girl" loves to read. Maybe it is ironic, but the whole passion of reading does go along with my passion of writing.