After nearly 20 years of working at college bookstores, Sevenair has developed an innate sense of what his community of readers and buyers - mainly Brown folks and East Siders - is interested in reading about.
Giggling like a schoolboy on Christmas morning, Peter Sevenair is picking out his favorite books from the fiction section of the Brown Bookstore. "I can't pass up this one ... oh, that one's great, then there's this one..." After piling up about five of his top 10, I notice that none of the books are by Brown faculty. "If I say [Robert] Coover, then [Michael] Harper will be after me," he says with a chuckle.
By his own estimate, Sevenair reads 50 to 100 books each year, and "looks at" hundreds more. As general books buyer for the Bookstore, it's his job to read books, publishers' catalogs - and the market he buys for. "I buy all the first-floor books," he says, meaning fiction, non-fiction - everything from art to zoology - and every New York Times bestseller in between.
After nearly 20 years of working at college bookstores, he's developed an innate sense of what his community of readers and buyers - mainly Brown folks and East Siders - is interested in reading about. "At the University of Chicago, there is no Afro-American studies or women's studies programs," he notes, "so I wouldn't buy a lot of Cornel West," author of the best-selling "Race Matters."
One reason he knows his audience so well is because he's one of them. Sevenair graduated from Brown in 1968, after "majoring in something different almost every semester." A physics and math whiz in high school, he nevertheless explored literature, philosophy and political science. He placed out of first-year physics and never took a physics or math course. "By then I decided I didn't want to be a scientist," he says, adding with a glint in his eye, "Changing majors a lot is a great advantage for buying books."
After graduating, he taught junior high school in the South Bronx in New York City. It was a government-sponsored program, so he was able to avoid the draft. "I was an idealistic young kid - I thought I could make a difference," he says. Two years later, he "retired" from teaching, disillusioned. "It didn't make a difference; even the better students were being put into reform school. ... I was disappointed personally and disillusioned at how formidable the structural barriers were, how little a difference one can make."
While applying to various graduate schools, he took a job at the College Hill Bookstore on Thayer Street. At the time, the Brown Bookstore didn't exist. Textbooks for courses were sold out of the basement of Marston Hall and all non-course books were available in the basement of Faunce House. Sevenair had found his niche. "The book business is very interesting - it's a good cause, it cultivates dialogue among the community. ... It kept feeling more and more comfortable and was always being renewed."
In the academic book-buying business, Sevenair's considered one of the best. Harvard University Press has put him on its short list of bookstore buyers nationwide who decide what books are going to sell and which ones aren't.
"I enjoy a lot of the books, the new ideas, the new stories, the new theories about the world," he adds. "I've learned a lot about this business and have met a lot of interesting people. It's a rather civilized business; not cutthroat capitalism."
The accomplishment he is most proud of is getting Cornel West to do a reading and discussion session for a fraction of what West usually charges for such appearances. Sevenair arranges all of the book-signings at the bookstore, making the pitch to the publisher or marketing executive. "You have to pitch Brown, pitch the place, the audience - you definitely have to pitch. A lot of authors don't like to do this at all," he says. Hundreds turned out to hear West speak in Leung Gallery in Faunce House, and his publisher, Routledge, underwrote most of the cost because it was arranged as an author-signing and not as a speaking engagement.
This man who reads for a living is legally blind in one eye from a childhood bout with encephalitis. He compensates by moving his head from side to side, holding books and papers closer and using other visual cues. He sees well enough to drive and to play center field for the last 15 years with the Brown summer softball league. "I seek out books about people with only one eye," he says. "I found this one about a Japanese fighter pilot who got shot down and lost an eye and then went back and flew again ... and one about Dave Bing, a basketball player with the Detroit Pistons ... you find books that speak to you."
Sevenair's Top 10 Favorite Books
(fiction and non-fiction, in no particular order)