Literary Omnivore - Bart’s Books

from Ojai Magazine Fall 2021

Come for the Kale

An avowed bookworm, whose love of literature is driven by his insatiable curiosity, Matt Henriksen is the general manager of Ojai’s iconic bookstore, Barts Books. He talks about the history of the store, the rare finds he’s selling, and why collecting books doesn’t make much sense to him

by KERSTIN KÜHN

There are few places in Ojai as iconic as Bart’s Books. After almost 60 years, the world’s self-proclaimed largest outdoor bookstore, complete with rickety shelves and signature honor box, has achieved nothing short of cult status. Thousands of book lovers make the pilgrimage to Bart’s each year to rummage through its maze of tomes in the hope of unearthing a literary treasure. Some gush about the store’s historic charm, while others complain about upgrades and prices, but to Matt Henriksen, Bart’s Books’ 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 about the time in their life when they came here and there were cobwebs. Nobody buys books that are covered in cobwebs.”

Bart’s Books came to life in 1964 as the brainchild of Richard Bartinsdale (aka Bart). A veteran and avid bibliophile, he was inspired by the used bookstalls along the River Seine in Paris, France, which he had fallen in love with during World War II. He fashioned a few bookcases along the exterior of his 1930s bungalow on the corner of Matilija and Canada Streets, with coffee cans in place of a cash register allowing passersby to peruse and purchase books, paying what they felt they were worth. Bart’s Books quickly became a sanctuary for literary types and an Ojai institution that survived long after Bartinsdale himself left for his native Indiana. “The history is kind of foggy but Bart didn’t actually have the place for very long,” Henriksen explains. “By 1968 he’d moved away.” It’s unclear who ran the store for the decade following Bartinsdale’s departure, but in 1977 Ojai native Gary Schlichter bought Bart’s Books and went on to run it for 27 years. He eventually sold it in 2004 to the current owners, who as silent partners have entrusted it entirely to Henriksen.

Ironically Henriksen’s first encounter with the store was as a thief in junior high. “I was a troubled kid,” he confides. “School deadened my curiosity so when I was in eighth grade, I frequently skipped class, stole books or went to the library to read. I’m a naturally curious person and read pretty much anything but mostly science fiction and a lot of books about sex and drugs.” After graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a major in philosophy and a minor in art, and traveling to Europe, where he sought out a bookstore in every town he visited, Henriksen returned to Ojai in his twenties and for a number of years was “chronically unemployed.” Then in 2008 he joined Bart’s Books as a part-time groundskeeper and three years later found himself unexpectedly promoted. “The old manager was leaving and the owners had interviewed a bunch of people but hadn’t found anyone they liked,” Henriksen recalls. “So they interviewed me and I think I exhibited a general interest in books and an understanding of the market and so I got the job.”

Over the past decade, Henriksen has truly made Bart’s Books his own. His knowledge of literature is nothing short of encyclopedic as he presides over an emporium of more than 100,000 books. The store is a labyrinth of corridors made up of shelves, hidden rooms, and quiet nooks you can spend hours getting lost in. The main open-air courtyard, shaded by palm trees, features rows and rows of alphabetically ordered fiction, while Bart’s old kitchen now fittingly holds the food and cookbook section, and the erstwhile garage houses books on art and design, architecture, and photography.

From paperback novels priced at 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 discover something wonderful.

The average price for a book at Bart’s Books is $6.50, but Henriksen acknowledges that with used books, cost is a very subjective thing. “We have people raving about how cheap our books are and then we have people complaining about how expensive our books are. Ultimately our books are priced according to what we can get for them,” he says. “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 insists that as a business Bart’s Books could not survive without tourists and reckons that more than half of his customers are out-of-towners. “If we had to rely on Ojai locals alone, we wouldn’t be able to employ seven people and have the quality of books that we have.”

And the level of his inventory truly is amazing. For instance, there’s a signed first edition of Joan Didion’s Play As It Lays, including a handwritten note on the author’s personal stationery, as well as first editions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final novel Tender is the Night and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and a limited edition signed copy of Charles Bukowski’s Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit. Henriksen is particularly excited about a rare catalogue raisonné of the complete works of 20th century American artist Lee Krasner, the abstract expressionist painter and wife of Jackson Pollock.

Indeed, art is close to Henriksen’s own heart. Alongside Bart’s Books, he co-owns Ojai art gallery The Basic Premise together with Ted Nava. Opened in 2017, the space was born out of the pair’s desire to showcase “the kind of art we want to see in Ojai” and, focusing on installations and residencies, it has hosted anything from paintings to collage, sculpture, and performance art. Most recently, the gallery hosted a collaboration by Ojai couple musician, illustrator, and painter Tara Jane O’Neil and dancer, choreographer, and felt-loom artist JMY James Kidd.

Back at Bart’s Books, meanwhile, business is booming, with around 10,000 titles coming in and out of the store each month. Yet with so many books around him, Henriksen finds the idea of collecting them absurd. “I care way more about the content of books than collecting them because I really don’t get attached,” he says. “I’ve been to people’s storage units and homes that are filled with books and they get so emotional letting them go even though they’re covered in dust and haven’t been read in decades. It’s all about stored up emotional energy and to me it’s healthier to just keep it moving.” At Bart’s Books he’s found the place to do just that.