Matt Henriksen
A literary omnivore, whose first brush with Bart’s Books was a book thief in eight grade, Matt Henriksen is the defiantly dispassionate general manager of Ojai’s iconic used bookstore. We talked about buying and selling books and why having favorites doesn’t make much sense to him.
Matt Henricksen outside Bart’s Books in Ojai. Photo by Emma Larkan
There are few places in Ojai that are as iconic as Bart’s Books. Listed in just about every travel piece ever written about the town and featured in TV documentaries and even a Hollywood movie, the almost 60-year-old second-hand book store has achieved nothing short of cult status.
Each week, tourists flock to the self-proclaimed largest outdoor bookstore in the world, flooding Instagram with pictures of its sidewalk-facing bookshelves that still operate with the signature honor box and rummaging through its maze of books in the hope of unearthing a literary treasure. Some gush about the store’s historic charm, while others complain about upgrades, but to Matt Henriksen, Bart’s Book’s defiantly dispassionate general manager, it’s all the same: “Sometimes people come in and say: ‘Oh I miss the old Bart’s when it had cobwebs.’ But they’re really just feeling nostalgic for the time in their life when there were cobwebs here. Nobody buys books that are covered in cobwebs.”
Bart’s Books came to life in 1964 as the brainchild of Richard Bartinsdale (aka Bart), an avid bibliophile who opened the place inspired by the used bookstalls along the Seine in in Paris, which he had fallen in love with during the Second World War. He fashioned a few rickety bookshelves along the exterior of his 1930s bungalow on Matilija Street, with coffee cans in place of a cash register allowing passersby to peruse and purchase books and paying what they felt a title was worth. Bart’s Books quickly became a kind of sanctuary for literary types and an Ojai institution that survived long after Bartinsdale himself left to return to his native Indiana. “The history is kind of foggy but Bart didn’t actually own the place for very long,” explains Matt. “By 1968 he’d sold it and moved away.”
Matt’s first encounter with Bart’s Books was as a thief in junior high. “I was a troubled kid,” he confides. “I found school to be a place that deadened my own curiosity so when I was in eighth grade, I frequently skipped class, stole books or went to the library and read. I’m a naturally curious person so I read pretty much anything but a lot of science fiction and mostly books about sex and drugs.”
After studying philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara and traveling to Europe, where he sought out a bookstore in every town he visited, Matt returned to Ojai and was “chronically unemployed” for a number of years. He joined Bart’s as a part-time groundskeeper in 2008 and three years later found himself unexpectedly promoted when the former manager left. “The owners had interviewed a bunch of people but hadn’t found anyone they liked so they interviewed me,” he recalls. “I think I exhibited a passion for books in general and a knowledge of what that market looks like so they offered me the job.”
Matt Henricksen describes himself as a literary omnivore. Photo by Emma Larkan
Today, Matt manages a team of seven employees and presides over an inventory of more than 100,000 new and used books. The store is a labyrinth of corridors made up of shelves, hidden rooms and quiet nooks you can spend hours getting lost in. While the main open-air courtyard, complete with palm trees and a recently deceased grapefruit tree, holds rows and rows of alphabetically ordered fiction, Bart’s old kitchen fittingly acts as the cookbook room and the erstwhile garage houses books on art, design, architecture and photography. From paperback novels priced just 50 cents to valued tomes, such as an 1817 American first edition of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey at $4,000, you’d be hard pressed not to find something wonderful. Right now there’s a signed first edition of Joan Didion’s Play As It Lays, including a signed note on the author’s personal stationery, for instance, as well as a large collection of signed Henry Miller books. Matt says that over the years he’s too many signed books to list but some of his favorites were some by William T. Vollman, while notable first editions have included Gravity's Rainbow, Slaughterhouse Five, The Importance of Being Earnest and The Grapes of Wrath.
“I will buy any book that’s good and will meet the demand. But the nature of selling used books is that you don’t always get to decide what that is.”
While the famous honesty box rarely draws in more than $30 a month, business at Bart’s Books is booming. Matt estimates that around 10,000 books move in and out of the store each month, although the more expensive titles, like Austen’s first edition, tend to move slowly. “Sometimes we have books like this for 10 years,” he says. The average price of a book at Bart’s is $6.50 and Matt admits that the price of a used book is a very subjective thing. “We have people online enthusing about how cheap our books are and then we have people complaining how expensive our books are. Ultimately our books are priced according to what we can get for them.”. Of course, unlike ordering a title online, when you buy a book in a bookstore you’re paying for more than just the title and overheads including rent, salaries, utilities and upkeep have to be taken into account. “People don’t think about that and people don’t want to pay for that,” Matt says indignantly. “That’s why we’re lucky to be in a tourist market. People are always prepared to spend a little more when they’re on a trip.” He adds that Bart’s Books could not survive without tourists and reckons that more than half of his customers come from out of town. “If we had to rely on locals alone, we wouldn’t be able to employ seven people and have the quality of books that we do.”
Bart’s Books during the 2018 Thomas Fire
As far as curating the store’s offering, Matt says that he doesn’t have all that much input: “I will buy any book that’s good and will meet the demand. But the nature of selling used books is that you don’t always get to decide what that is.” Meanwhile when it comes to buying books he adds it’s mostly about recognizing what offers value. He applies a series of “heuristics” to determine a book’s merit, of which he says the most significant is its condition. “A book in poor condition is worth next to nothing regardless of what it is,” he explains. Next, it’s important to understand how a book’s publisher relates to the market. “For instance if something is from City Lights or New Directions I know it will sell because it’s the hipster ‘60s and ‘70s stuff that everyone loves.“With contemporary books it’s a bit harder. You can’t guarantee something will sell just because it’s published by Penguin.” And despite the old idiom warning against judging a book by its cover, Matt insists that a book’s design also plays a major role in whether it will sell. “It needs to be eye-catching and representative of its time.”
With so many books around him, Matt says he’s more of a literary omnivore than ever before and will devour just about anything that’s interesting. But to him the idea of collecting books is absurd. “I’ve been to people’s storage units and homes that are filled with books and they get so emotional letting them go even if they’re covered in dust and haven’t been read in decades,” he says. “It’s all about stored up emotional energy and it’s healthier to just let it move.”
Article Published June 2021
