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Introduction
It
would
be
hard
to
write
about
Moe
without
being
tempted
to
call
him
"legendary"
and
"larger-than-life."
It
is
lucky
for
me
that
Moe's
daughter,
Doris
Jo,
has
already
written
a
tribute
volume
for
her
father, Radical
Bookselling:
A
Life
of
Moe
Moskowitz.
In
it,
she
captured
her
father
as
only
a
daughter
could,
and
also
articulated
the
out-sized
importance
of
his
nationally
influential
bookstore,
which
Doris
now
carries
on
with
great
enterprise
and
flair.
In
2007,
Doris
asked
me
to
write
something
for
the
bookstore's
website,
and
the
following
piece
is
essentially
what
I
wrote
then.
In
2016,
it
was
included
in
Doris's
book.
Beyond
the
beloved
anecdotes
and
biography,
on
my
recent
re-reading
of
the
book
I
was
struck
by
the
extreme
tenderness
of
two
remarks
made
almost
in
passing.
In
the
first
one,
Doris
wrote:
"Obviously
[books]
can
be
quite
heavy
if
you
have
a
lot
of
them,
but
there
is
an
art
to
holding
them
one
at
a
time."
In
the
other
remark,
longtime
Moe's
devotee
Jeff
Fort,
wrote:
"Even
just
holding
a
book
can
easily
slip
into
a
sense
of
possessing
it,
having
it,
knowing
it."
Book
People—People
of
the
Book—are
all
kinds
of
people,
all
over
the
world,
but
they
have
in
common
the
feeling
of
reverence
for
even
holding
a
book.
Oakland, California
April 2023
*
"True portrait of Father UBU," by Alfred Jarry.
1942 print made from Jarry's woodblock of 1896 or earlier.
A Life in the Key of Moe's
Lissa Tyler Renaud
I recently heard that Moe Moskowitz played the title role in the 1950s New
York production of "Ubu Roi" by the Living Theatre. This strikes me as
important for two reasons. First, it reminds us that the best work in the
avant-garde theatre has always been done by deeply cultured people.
Secondly, it reminds us that California and New York are inextricably
linked in their artistic goings-on—that the New York cultural scene is
heavily populated by Californians, and the California cultural scene is
saturated with native New Yorkers: condescension expressed by one scene
for the other is essentially posing.
It is also delightful to think of Moe's inhabiting the role of Ubu—gesturing
broadly, roaring out the startling text written by the gifted Alfred Jarry in
the 1890s. To give you an idea: Ubu is related to the traditional Punch and
Judy puppet shows, which in turn evolved from the comic turns of the
Italian commedia dell'arte. Punch behaves abominably, criminally, and
consistently escapes all consequences for his actions. Good "bad-boy" fun.
One thinks Moe would have known just how to do it.
Moe's Books' own Elliot Smith has given us a vivid picture of how Moe may
have brought a little of his New York Ubu to his California Moe's:
We were pleased to see that Judith Malina's Living Theatre is
celebrating its 60th anniversary by opening a new performance space
and reviving Kenneth Brown's harrowing "The Brig." Moe's Books has a
connection to the radical theater's first incarnation in New York in the
1950s. When Malina and her life companion/collaborator Julian Beck
staged Alfred Jarry's scatalogical farce "Ubu Roi" it was none other than
Moe's Book's founder Moe Moskowitz who played the role of the
grotesque Pere Ubu.
It was a role tailor-made for Moe: Pere Ubu is larger than life, a
Rabelaisian creature of vast appetites, and is dismissive of social
niceties and conventions. He was the creation of the self-described
"poet and 'pataphysician'" Alfred Jarry, a major figure in the avant
-garde of late 19th-century France; you can read more about him in
Roger Shattuck's fascinating The Banquet Years. Jarry used to dress as
Ubu, speak nonsense in a deadpan style and walk a lobster on a leash.
His life was his art.
The same could be said of Moe. The counter of his bookstore became his
theatre, where he gave public performances on a daily basis. He was never
shy about sharing his opinions, his good humor or his dim sum. Customers
could find him singing along with the background music, smoking (or later
simply chewing) his cigar, and holding court on the issues of the day.
Beyond the "Ubu" itself, though, the Living Theatre production links Moe
intellectually to many people and art movements. Jarry himself served
as the influence—both as a writer and a personality—on a dizzying range of
cultural phenomena that define the early 20th century: Symbolism,
Dadaism, Surrealism, Cubism; Picasso, Artaud, Ionesco and Beckett. It feels
right to think of Moe as being a part of this challenging heritage, and of
ourselves as having reaped the benefits in turn through his bookstore.
Thinking of Moe in relation to Jarry brings some aspects of Moe to the
fore. Jarry was multi-talented: he won academic prizes in five languages as
well as physics, and wrote novels, plays and stories; Moe was gifted in the
visual arts as a painter and framer, as well as a violinist, performer, social
thinker and all-around champion of books. Jarry was socially outspoken in
his contempt for the bourgeoisie; Moe was politically defiant in his stance
against government incursions on freedom. Mostly, though, both Jarry and
Moe lived their lives in the arts with enormous intensity.
Happily, there are limits, too, to parallels between Jarry and Moe. After all,
the picture of Jarry riding through town on his bicycle using a pistol to
clear his path speaks of a different era. Jarry starved himself into a stroke
in his early 30s, and died a tubercular alcoholic at 34; Moe smoked and
drank to whatever extent during years when these served as the social
"signs" for hyper-intellectuality—and then achieved enough moderation in
health matters to enjoy a full family life and a successful professional life
. Moe's meaningful excesses were in matters of culture—and on this point
he sounds not so much like Jarry himself as like Jarry's mother. Todd
London, sometime Literary Director of A.R.T. wrote, "[Jarry's mother]
valued music and books in a way that seemed improper to her pious
Catholic neighbors, and regularly made a public spectacle of herself… going
out in what Alfred [Jarry] later remembered as Spanish toreador clothes
." Rather than see Moe in Jarry's excesses, we had better see in Moe the
professional success of the actor who played Ubu in Jarry's own production
of his play in 1896. That is, after pausing to play Ubu for Jarry, Monsieur
Firmin Gémier continued on with his successful careers as both actor and
director, and then headed the legendary Théâtre de l'Odeon in Paris; after
playing Ubu for the Living Theatre, Moe made a bookstore that became and
remains a significant force in the intellectual life of the country through its
patrons.
*
"Pere Ubu," by Jeffrey Kessler, 2020
.
Redwood, copper, walnut, Honeywell gauge
Writer Harriet Halliday Renaud—a native New Yorker, a close
contemporary of Moe's, and my mother—writes:
As far back as my Berkeley memory goes, most queries got answered by
a swift, mantra-like chant of two words: "Try Moe's." Having landed
here from far away, throughout my early Telegraph Avenue
indoctrination, whether I was on the prowl for an early American
dictionary or a Phillip's screwdriver, it seemed to me I was relegated to
Moe's.
Eventually, I learned that you went to the funky, musty, crowded huge
store for books—old, new, out-of-print, beautifully bound, paper, in
-your-face on the counter, unreachable, hidden on another floor, found
with luck. And what everybody knew when they sent you to "Try Moe's"
was that there was the bookstore where you would find the book you
wanted, and pretty often the book you loved.
When I was in elementary school in the early- and mid-1960s, Telegraph
Avenue was a destination for an evening walk. My family would pile into
the station wagon after an early dinner, and we'd make our way down from
the Hills over the university to Telegraph Avenue, to stroll. My parents
strolled in front, holding hands, and my two brothers and I strolled behind,
punching each other. Just above the Avenue, we'd stop in at George Good's
shop, where my father would know all about sleeve buttons and vents on
beautiful men's jackets; along the Avenue, we'd enjoy the trees and window
shop; down the Avenue, we'd wander around entranced in Fraser's, the
design shop to end all design shops—elegant, playful, spacious, an
education for the eye. And the climax of The Stroll was inevitably Moe's
Books.
While Moe and my parents chatted, I looked around the store and formed
ideas about Life. The goal of Life, I could see plainly, was to have a home
lined with bookshelves full of books mostly from Moe's Books, to have
expressive paintings on the walls—including maybe some of one's self—to
have classical or jazz music playing, to have knowledgeable people around
and at the ready to help, and to enjoy good conversation with a stream of
visitors. I can't say those ideas have always made my Life easy—but I can
say that they have never really changed.
I was 12 in 1968, and after school my friends and I would walk through the
broken glass from the riots around the University, in bare feet with
psychedelic drawings on our hands. Our destination, Moe's. It was always
open, even when everything else on the street was closed from the tear
gas. This was the place to go to spend allowance money. We studied the
used records in the big boxes, learning about Ma Rainey and Antonio Jobim
and spoken word—and buying up what we could for one dollar apiece or
less.
In high school, we went to Moe's to find out how much a book cost. Our
interest in the cost wasn't in the price itself. The cost of the book told us
its value—told us where it stood in the field. A tiny hardback with a high
price told us that, even if we didn't know what it was, it was special and we
should pay attention. On the other hand, if a big book by an author we
loved had a low price, it meant it was a minor work and we should keep
moving.
As an undergraduate student at U.C. Berkeley, my classmates and I went to
Moe's to buy the books for our classes. Out-of-towners not in-the-know
bought new books in the student bookstores; we sidled down to Moe's and
bought on the cheap—using the money we saved for obscure books of
poetry, and coffee around the corner at the Renaissance Café.
As a doctoral student at Berkeley, Moe's was simply a second home. I lived
in a graceful apartment a block away, and did my research at Moe's on the
early European avant-garde, moving between the new books in the Art
section and the collectibles on the 4th floor. It is from that time that I own
an original volume of poems by Isadora Duncan's brother, Raymond,
inscribed in his own hand as a gift to Maurice Maeterlinck, and an original
program for a Diaghilev ballet. At Moe's, I had resources among the best in
the world, and that fact gave me important confidence in my studies.
In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, I was running an independent theatre
arts program, and Moe was warm and respectful of my work. I would come
into his shop, and catch him behind the counter, perhaps at a
curmudgeonly moment—then see his face soften when he saw me. He was
always interested. Next to the shop helpers helping, and visitors visiting,
we'd have a Good Conversation among the walls lined with books, chatting
over the music, with the painting of him looking down at me from over his
shoulder. And he'd tell me which floor and where I could find the book I
was looking for.
It's a toss-up whether Moe's always had the books I wanted, or whether I
learned what books to want from Moe's.
Taipei, May 2007
*
VIEWING
Moe's Books' owner, Doris, gives a terrific overview of the store. With just
-right photos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vRW8YTbRyU&t=2s (3:23)
Found at the dump by a Moe's patron, "a forgotten 16mm film of infamous
Berkeley bookseller, Moe Moskowitz at the opening night party for his
legendary Telegraph Avenue store in 1965."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USdrpE7ZyeE&t=821s (16:27)
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