For thirty years I’ve kept alive and displayed on the back wall of the student union branch of University Book Store, in the middle of the University of Washington campus, the heart of what I think of as essential classic literature. The basics for the well-read American. What I would expect a bright, intelligent, educated young person to be passingly familiar with. The enduring treasure that needs to be available to the young mind to explore.

But, of course, it also needs to be purchased.

Imagine this: when I first became the book-buyer for the store, I impulsively told the Penguin sales rep that I wanted two each of every single one of the Penguin classics. How’s that for an eager beaver with rose-colored glasses? Now, he reined me in a tad, I’ll admit, I didn’t get them all, but I got a lot. And the point is: it wasn’t a wholesale disaster. Many of them sold.

Were I to perform that same stunt today, I would be automatically scheduling myself a meeting with executive management, not to mention a shrink, the shipment would be returned, and I’d be working in Gift Wrap.

A scary truth I’ve had to face is that the classics aren’t selling any more.

I’ve winnowed through the selection. I’ve cut it down to the basics of the basics. I’ve turned them all face out. Sales haven’t improved.

I’m stuck. Bookstores are a business. I can’t honor what the public doesn’t want to buy. Apparently students no longer want to buy the classics. Why?

Myth: I don’t need to buy the classics. I can always check them out of the library.

This is spoken by someone who will never look at the library catalog to see what’s there. Oh, a sad surprise awaits such folk.

I don’t argue it anymore. Libraries are not infallible, completist institutions. They simply don’t have it all. When a recent Greening book suggested in note #66 to stop buying books and borrow instead from the library (in other words, buy this book and make it your last!) I promptly returned that sucker to the publisher. Only illiterates fail to appreciate the pleasure of building your own empire of the mind. I watch people insist on eating only organic food, but they read marked-down trash from the sale table to save money. They nourish their minds on fast food and leftovers.

When a book goes a year on the shelf and no one buys it, that book can’t be on the shelf. It’s that simple, the hideous Occam’s Razor of the book business. One by one, classics leave the bookstore. The Red Badge of Courage. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Marcel Proust. Virginia Woolf. Why?

Theory #1: Paperback classics used to be the cheapest paperbacks. No longer.

Remember the Signet Classics in their glory days? Racks and racks of obscure, little-known masterpieces. Almayer’s Folly. Jonathan Wild. The Confidence-Man. Readily available, the least expensive of all paperbacks. 60 cents. 75 cents. Any high school kid could afford them. I could. They’ve still got a place of honor in my home. Screw the people who say don’t own the classics, use the library. Go ahead, try to find them in your public library, if you can. I know I can find them in my home.

But that’s the popular perception, and today the classics cost the same as any other book, even though no royalties are being paid to any living author.

Theory #2: Seattle has become more multi-cultural, and the classics of English and American literature are no longer essentials.

No doubt about it, a classic to one culture is simply an old book to another culture. Face it, how many of you have read the Ramayana, like any well-read Indian? Or the Kalevala, like any well-read Finn? Not too many, I dare to venture.

If this is true, then my one chance as bookseller to reach people today with genuine reading enrichment is by promoting books that are living literature as its happening now in the world. People still need literature to be a mirror of their lives, to help them understand their own times.

But that doesn’t solve the problem of the back wall.

Solution: Convert the titles that aren’t selling into half-price remainders, and replace them – as available – with used books.

I’ve started introducing used books into the stock. People don’t seem to mind. Personally I would mind. I love crisp, new, perfect, untouched books. But hey, some people don’t care, and that’s much more sane and practical. The prices are affordable. One more treasure of the past is still available. The content is the same. I haven’t abandoned the educational responsibility of my role as the campus bookseller.

So, maybe I won’t have to dismantle that literature wall, after all.

Maybe the Signet Classics of 2007 are used books. Maybe I can keep classic literature alive under a new look, a little dog-eared, possibly, but cheaper. Anything to keep those old treasures available, where the next curious young eye can spot them, where a human hand can reach out and take them off the shelf.