As its name suggests, Mother Foucault’s is not a typical bookshop. Or rather, it might’ve been a typical bookshop in, say, early-20th-century Paris. Thousands of used books weigh down teeming shelves, while hundreds more are stacked waist-high on tables, desks, upholstered chairs, the floor—everywhere. An upright piano stands in one corner, also burdened with heaps of books. The news program Democracy Now! plays quietly from a small vintage radio as Walt Curtis, the “unofficial poet laureate of Portland,” rhapsodizes nonstop about poetry while sharing a bottle of red wine with the shop owner, Craig Florence, who will likely offer you a glass as well. Mother Foucault’s, in other words, is a bibliophile’s paradise.
Florence, who grew up in Portland, worked at Shakespeare and Company for a spell in the 1990s, and…
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Journal of Alta California (Digital) - 1 Issue, Summer 2022