Booked Up, Inc.

pictures and commentary by Eric Isaacson

On Monday, March 29, I drove through Archer City, Texas, and encountered a remarkable used bookstore owned and personally managed by Larry McMurtry, a celebrated author and screenwriter.

Archer City is the site of the movies "The Last Picture Show" and "Texasville", scripted by McMurtry. You can see in this picture the ruin of the theater shown in those movies, at the right end of a row of storefronts at the north side of the courthouse square. At the far left is Building 4 of Booked Up, Inc., McMurtry's store.

I took this picture peeking into the window of building 4 of the bookstore, before it opened for the day. Many of these tall bookshelves were visible inside.

Here is the main building of the bookstore, about a block south of the courthouse square.

Building 2 is just across the street. I didn't see building 3.

Larry is there most days, processing the endless number of incoming books. But today he was away travelling. I encountered his sister Sue working on shelved books in Building 1. Sue was very friendly, and showed me around the building.

All the buildings are warehouses with very tall ceilings. Just about all the books are in the same kind of tall shelving, painted white. In a large room in building 1, there is a garage door for deliveries, leading to a staging area for received boxes of books. Here is a pile of 1800 boxes of books, from a bookstore in Mesa, AZ, whose contents Larry had recently purchased. Larry will spend the next 3.5 months, personally pricing every book in this collection. His assistants will then carry the books to the appropriate section of the shelves, and place them there.

In addition to the used books, Larry also has his own books and videos on display and available for sale.

A huge Goldwater sign dominates the relatively small room at the front of Building 1.

In that front room there are also a few cases containing rare books and papers.

A few bits of movie memorabilia are framed on the wall. Here is a set of autographs from "The Last Picture Show".

This view inside building 2, of a relatively small room, gives a sense of the enourmous capacity of the store. There are several hundred thousand volumes. They must be rivalling the bookstore in Hay-On-Wye, near the English-Welsh border, for the title of largest used bookstore in the world.

Ten Often Asked Questions and Their Answers...

Q. Are the books for sale?
A. Of course.

Q. How are the books arranged?
A. Erratically/ Impressionistically/ Whimsically/ Open to Interpretation

Q. Do you have a list of these books?
A. No.

Q. Where's the bathroom?
A. There are customer restrooms in buildings 2 and 3.

Q. Where do I pay?
A. The checkout is located in building 1.

Q. Are the prices negotiable?
A. The price in the book is the price you pay.

Q. When will Mr.McMurtry be here?
A. At his whim.

Q. What's the pig mean?
A. Mr. McMurtry's partner likes pigs.

Q. When do you close?
A. We close promptly at five.

Q. Are you on the Internet?
A. Our e-mail address is bookedup@wf.net. We do not always answer email requests.

Thank you.
Booked Up Staff

Booked Up

Building 1

African Studies, African American Studies
American History, Texana, and Western Americana
Genre fiction (Mystery, Horror, Sci-fi)
Law and True Crime
Lit Crit and Bio
Native American Studies
Natural Hislory, Ranching and Farming
Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology
Religion (Easterin and Western) and Occult
Sports

Building 2

Art, Architecture and Photography
Cbildren's Books
Fiction, Poetry and Galley Proofs
World History and Military History
Sex and Humor
Books about Collecting

Building 3

Books about Books
Classical Studies
18th and 19th Century Books
Fiction (before 1925)
Foreign Books and Translations
Pamphlets

Building 4

Ancient History
Anthropology, Pre-Columbian Studies and Mythology
Linguistics and Reference
Dance, Drama, Film, Television and Music
Art Catalogs
Economics and Finance
Journalism
Cookbooks
Medicine
Science
Travel