The Bookseller Who Helped Transform Oxford, Mississippi

Again then, there was no motive to consider that Howorth would assist preserve the household’s literary custom alive. He wasn’t a lot of a reader—or, for a very long time, a lot of an something. There are 5 Howorth brothers, and Richard is the center of them. Two moved away, one to turn out to be a lawyer on Wall Road, the opposite to turn out to be an architect in New Orleans; two stayed in Oxford, one overseeing admissions on the College of Mississippi, the opposite working a legislation observe on the town earlier than serving three phrases because the Lafayette County Circuit Courtroom choose. Howorth wasn’t positive if he needed to remain or go, and he wasn’t positive what he needed to do along with his life.

“I used to be directionless,” Howorth mentioned. “Fortunately, my older brother at all times had these massive concepts and schemes about what we must do, like becoming a member of the circus.” David, that brainstorming massive brother, had at the least one barely extra sensible thought: all all through their childhood, he had mentioned that the city of Oxford actually must have a bookstore, partly due to Faulkner and partly due to the college, however principally as a result of any city price residing in wanted to have a spot to purchase books. “I used to be by no means a very good scholar in highschool or faculty,” Howorth mentioned, “however I managed to graduate, and I saved occupied with David’s bookstore.”

“David’s bookstore” turned Sq. Books, in 1979. Satisfied it might want foot visitors to outlive, Richard went in search of a retail house however couldn’t discover something appropriate till one other one among his aunts, Vasser Bishop, provided a second-floor walkup subsequent to Neilson’s division retailer. The daughter of an English professor who as soon as gave Faulkner a D, Bishop charged her nephew lease, however volunteered her time on the bookstore.

Lisa, Howorth’s spouse, took shifts as nicely. Initially from Chevy Chase, Maryland, she had discovered her strategy to Oxford from San Francisco within the early seventies by way of a Volkswagen bus, ditching the California scene after it acquired “very darkish and really bizarre,” heading South on a lark after remembering how a lot she had beloved studying Faulkner in highschool. “I didn’t know a soul right here,” she mentioned. “I fell in with a handful of hippies. They’d a home close to the college, an outdated home the place we had a bunch of events, and that’s the place I met Richard one loopy evening.”

Howorth wasn’t a daily at that social gathering or some other, however he was taken by the intelligent, lanky woman with the home cat she had skilled to do tips. Inconveniently, he was about to take off for the very coast Lisa had currently deserted: “I had this buddy whose sister lived out in Oregon, and we went on the market and labored at a window-shade-manufacturing plant,” Richard mentioned. “I used to be afraid I wouldn’t ever see Lisa once more, so I wrote her this letter, saying I needed to remain in contact, and I left it for her on the massive home. And, the following morning, I rise up on the break of day to drive West, and there’s this letter on my windshield, and I inform my buddy that I’m not opening it till we’re a couple of states away.”

Howorth learn the letter as quickly as he crossed the third state line. Though her emotions matched his almost sufficient, it nonetheless took him a couple of weeks to name the quantity she’d given him. When he got here residence to Oxford a couple of months later, the very first thing he did was go away once more, for Washington, D.C., the place Lisa had returned to be along with her household. She finally got here again to Oxford with Richard, and so they acquired married there earlier than settling for some time in Washington, the place they acquired their begin in bookselling, at Georgetown’s Savile E book Store. “Extra cease than begin,” Richard jokes, since a part of what the couple did throughout their two-year apprenticeship was assist shut the place down. “It was an amazing retailer in its day—it actually was, but it surely was on its final legs, and after they determined to shut the shop we stayed lengthy sufficient to shut it.”