Pen Pals: Malcolm Donaldson, Dovetail Books
Talking shop (and hoops) with Brooklyn's mobile bookseller
If you’ve passed a weekend afternoon in Fort Greene or McGolrick Park, chances are you’ve happened upon Dovetail Books. Over the last three years, Malcolm Donaldson’s mobile bookstand has become a mainstay of Brooklyn sidewalks — host to a wealth of well-priced, well-maintained art books, vintage paperbacks, cookbooks, and novels-in-translation.
Chatting with Malcolm about Dovetail, I’m struck by the mission of recirculation: acquiring, curating, and disseminating texts among folks who’ll appreciate them in turn. You can’t go wrong with any of the books on the Dovetail table, many of which you’d be hard-pressed to find in a brick-and-mortar store. In our email exchange, we discuss Dovetail’s genesis, suppliers, finances, and the changing of the NBA guard.
Can you tell me how Dovetail got started? What were your goals, and how did you go about building inventory? How have you curated your stock since?
Dovetail got started in January 2023. I was sitting on the couch recovering from having my wisdom teeth taken out, sort of in a daze and dreaming about owning a bookstore. A few weeks later I took a trip down to Baltimore and on the way back I hit some really great rural book barns in Amish country. I bought about 200 books in all and started an online store. Since then I’ve kept a steady inventory of maybe 400 books in total, though I’ve moved away from buying books at other shops and towards book fairs and warehouse sales.
After a couple months of selling online, it was pretty slow going. My friend encouraged me to set up a table on the street as it was getting warmer. I remember being very uncertain; I knew a few people who sold books on the street and they have much thicker skin than me. Looking back on it, I really thought that someone was going to shove a finger in my face and say, “YOU! FRAUD!”
How did you select your vending locations? Did you have to secure permits from the city? Do you, like, pay Eric Adams for sidewalk space? Is the city friendly to this type of operation?
No drama so far on that front. But I think the less said about my financial dealings with Eric Adams the better.
Which books appeal most to passersby? Does this inform your selection?
People tend to race past the table on their way to or from Fort Greene Park, looking for only a second or two. Big, colorful monographs tend to sell quickly: Van Gogh, Georgia O’ Keeffe, David Hockney, Matisse, things like that. Top sellers over the past few years have been Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (easy sell in Fort Greene: “he lived right there” *point over one of my shoulders*), Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, and Consider the Oyster by MFK Fisher. Nabokov almost never sells in Fort Greene but reliably flies off the table in Greenpoint.
Customer requests absolutely inform the selection. One of my favorite parts of doing this is hearing about the books people want to read. I love learning what people are excited about, even if it’s a topic I have no interest in myself. That said, I’ve been burnt a couple times before. Now I’m sitting on a bunch of George Simenon books nobody wants.
Can you share anything about the finances of your operation? Is Dovetail more of a business or a hobby for you?
Last summer I got a phone call from a gentleman, probably about 70 or so, who told me he sat next to my friend on a flight earlier that day. He was given my phone number with the understanding that I buy and sell used books. He was a former editor at a major publishing house for over 30 years. He and his wife were moving out of his penthouse apartment in Lower Manhattan and needed to unload hundreds of books quickly. I remember him saying, “Why don’t you come over at 4pm this afternoon. I’ll be done with my nap by then.”
I gave my name to the doorman in this gorgeous, ornate lobby. He escorted me into the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor. I sailed up and stepped out, then continued up three more floors by stairs. It was the peak of summer in New York on the top floor of a 100-story building, so by this time I looked like a smoked pig. I rang the doorbell once and waited. Rang again and waited. After a third time, as I’m thinking that this must have been an elaborate prank coordinated by my friend, the door bursts open to a wave of ice cold air conditioning. An elegantly dressed older woman said in a Tennessee drawl, “My goodness! You must have been positively baking out there. Why don’t you come on in, sweetie?”
Her husband, the man I spoke to on the phone, intercepted me and brought me towards the study. The two windows overlooked the Brooklyn bridge. Opposite it was a gloriously tall, built-in wooden bookshelf. Mint first editions of hundreds of books by some of my favorite authors. Just then, his wife stepped into the room and said, “would you two boys like to split a diet drink?” tapping lightly on a can of Diet Coke.
So after I finished my diet drink I spent the better part of the next two hours balancing on the tall bookshelf ladder, leafing through signed first editions. My host stood at the foot of the ladder with a half lit cigarette in one hand and a silver ashtray in the other, telling me about the Rolling Stones’ biographer’s tax troubles. I was in disbelief about how I could have possibly gotten this lucky. I asked him, “So, how much are you trying to get rid of?” He said, “We’re moving across the country next week. I need to get rid of everything. You just tell me what you’re interested in and we can make a deal.” I took one book down, practically the first thing I saw and said, “how about this?” He took it in his hand and groaned, “This guy’s a friend. I would feel bad if I gave it away. Maybe not this one.” I handed him another signed first edition. “Ack. This one is probably worth money, right? I should keep it.”
In the end I ended up taking doubles of the books he already owned, charging me $10 a book. I felt a little deflated as I dragged the heavy bags onto the subway in the heat. Looking through them again at home I saw in the first edition of Haruki Murakami’s After the Quake a very cool little eggplant stamp and his signature beneath it. I haven’t sold it yet. If he finds it missing from his collection he can come find me. So… It’s both a business and a hobby.
I saw you’re selling some rare editions on your eBay storefront. What’s the market for vintage collectors? Would you say you have a specialty? Anything you’re looking to acquire?
That’s where I park everything that I might be able to sell for a bit more money. I feel weird pricing things for more than $25 on the table and prefer to sell more in the $7 - $12 range in person anyway. I think of selling on eBay like trying to catch a big fish over the course of multiple days. Whereas selling on the street is like being a bivalve mollusk that exhales books and inhales money. I realize I might be mixing metaphors here, but it’s okay because it’s evocative.
What kind of a reader are you? Any recent recommendations? Do you maintain a personal collection? Is it ever hard to let go of the books you acquire?
I try to push Don Delillo onto people. If I hit it off with the right person, I know they’ll love Underworld or Libra. I went through a rock biography kick over the winter, enjoying both Will Hermes’ new book on Lou Reed and David Yaffe’s bio of Joni Mitchell. I'm working through James Baldwin's novels, most recently Another Country, one of the best books I've read in a long time. I’ve recently learned I love Paul Auster and look forward to selling his books. I think he’s great because you can hook someone into his plots in only one or two sentences. I was recommended Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt, which came out only a couple years ago, twice by two separate people at the table. For that reason I picked it up and I’m really glad I did, highly recommend.
I keep a personal collection, but try not to let it get out of control. I try to pick out one unusual old cookbook at every sale for my betrothed, Savannah. I found a signed copy of one of my favorite books of all time, Light Years by James Salter, for $1 at a church sale. I let myself keep one big monograph by painters about whom I’m trying to learn more. Most recently I’ve hung onto books about Velasquez, El Greco, and Wolf Kahn (a great artist who lived in my hometown in Vermont for many years). I’m on the hunt for any book on Joan Mitchell and / or Joni Mitchell.
Auster feels so apt for this sort of operation, lost relics resurfacing on Brooklyn sidewalks (pretty sure that’s what the New York Trilogy was about anyway). OK so I consider myself a middle-of-the-road DeLillo reader — read White Noise and Mao II many years ago, was floored by the latter, I’m scared to revisit it, it can’t possibly live up to the hype I’ve built. And I adored Zero K, holy shit, what an incredible thing to publish as an 80-year-old man.
Then I tried Great Jones Street — sounded fun, a ‘70s downtown rock novel, DeLillo Heads ride hard for it — and I just could not make any sense of it. Now I’m intimidated by Underworld and Libra, maybe I’m not built for this. Could you convince me to take the dive?
First on Auster – totally, he fits right into the street-selling scene. There are these bursts of interconnected chaos that come out of nowhere in both instances. Speaking of Walt Whitman earlier, Auster goes on this tangent in Ghosts… One of the characters is talking about the history of Fort Greene and the lab that studied Whitman’s brain after he died. The researcher drops his brain on the laboratory floor and it explodes like a melon. I love his non-sequiturs— how deadly serious he is one moment then slapstick the next. Like when a character has a massive revelation and he must concentrate deeply, so the first thing he does is go home and get completely naked.
I don’t want to say it’s necessary, but I think it DEFINITELY helps to enjoy DeLillo if you are a fan of paranoia and conspiracy.. DeLillo said that he tried to use the conspiracy to try and make sense of JFK’s assassination for a nation in grief. I like the idea that conspiracy theories are meant to be a comfort to those who believe in them. His best books have these dense webs of relationships between a dozen or more characters. It’s so much fun to get lost in the madness. It has been a little while since I read Underworld, but I remember it being so all encompassing, so many characters who all had their own private worlds and motivations connected to one another. It’s like Anna Karenina for tweakers. I usually say, “for fans of trash, nuns, baseball, nuclear war, and The Rolling Stones.”
One of your conditions for this interview was that we talk basketball. For obvious, Knicks-related reasons this has been a very exciting spring. Any teams, players, or narratives you’re excited about? Any bold predictions or burning takes?
First of all I will give the disclaimer that I am a Boston sportsfan. Growing up in Vermont and watching your parents weep with joy in front of the television at age 13 will do that to a person. I view my love of the Red Sox and Celtics like a medical affliction. 16 years in New York and I remain loyal.
I wonder how much of the current surge of Knicks fandom will last and now much is bandwagoneering. Ownership has traded away 100 first round picks for a player whose most exciting quality is that he eats Chipotle every day. So this could be the crest. The Knicks aren’t my least favorite team in the league by any stretch, but I feel like all five starters are the same archetype– probably cultivated in the frat houses of Villanova. They’re missing a hard nosed player who draws like 5 technical fouls a game and makes his opponent feel like they’re drowning. A psycho, basically. It’s one of the reasons I love Anthony Edwards so much and why I think people call him “the face of the league” so often even if he has a habit of botching it in the playoffs. He’s unpredictable and outrageously charismatic. I loved watching that clip of him looking like he was about to square up against Obama on his way to the bar to order a mocktail.
I feel like we are split between generations in the NBA right now. The old guard (Lebron, KD, Steph, etc) need to make way for the new. So, my hot take is that, after the season they turn 35, every player should have to face a Retirement Tribunal hosted by Inside The NBA. On a torch lit stage, the group watches the player’s highs and lows from the previous year. If the hosts unanimously decide the player is washed, then they get flushed down the tube like in that game show The Weakest Link. Then, hopefully it’ll be on the new generation (Shai, Haliburton, Wemby) to develop a little more edge. They haven’t gotten the real primetime scrutiny because these shows fill up so much airtime asking if Lebron’s still got one more in him (he doesn’t). I want some real beef between young up-and-comers. The spotless, media-trained press conferences are such a snoozefest.
Oh yeah, and Adam Silver absolutely rigged the Draft Lottery for Dallas. Not even a hot take. An inside job for sure. Something is not right there. As a New Englander, I feel very uncomfortable with the number one pick coming from Maine. “Cooper Flagg”? Sure.
Totally agree with you on the Bridges trade — it was only three years ago the Timberwolves traded four firsts for Rudy Gobert, and everybody was like what the hell. Well, the Knicks gave up five firsts and change for Bridges, who is not Rudy Gobert. I’ve sort of justified it because Jalen Brunson took a massive pay cut (love you Jalen but what is the players’ union even for?), so they’re playing with house money. Even the KAT trade felt suspect, his offensive output had been declining for years, but what can you say about that guy? He pulls up from the logo and led the Eastern Conference in rebounding.
So it’s the sort of win-now shit that backfires long-term, but we went to the Conference Finals, this is what it’s all about, right? We punted two seasons for friggin’ RJ Barrett. A lot of Knicks fans checked out during the decades of scandal and dysfunction — can’t blame them — and Being In The Playoffs feels like such a novelty. They were genuinely hard to watch for months at a time this season, but by springtime they were locked in, such great energy!
I guess there’s an old-school charm about the Thibs Knicks, which is why they fall short — every game ends with Brunson backing down a bigger defender, Josh Hart pinballing around, glaring at the refs. I’d argue Hart, KAT, even Brunson and Mitch Robinson are psychos in their own ways, but Anthony Edwards feels like a throwback compared to these media-hungry dudes with their podcasts and fashion spreads.
It’s tempting to criticize Shai and Wemby as dorky foreigners, but then a guy like Tyrese Haliburton is such an insufferable try-hard, I can’t decide which is worse. We’ve got this brutally optimized Basketball Product that favors Europeans and prep-school dudes, which is inclusive in a sense — more accessible, Steph Curry is better television than Xavier McDaniel — but also vaguely threatening. What does it say about this country, this culture, when guys like Gary Payton and Rasheed Wallace can’t play pro basketball anymore?
About three years ago it occurred to me how much I’ll miss LeBron, Steph, and Kawhi, so if anything I’ve become more appreciative and apologetic of them as I’ve creaked into my thirties. Lastly, I am tickled that Cooper Flagg has a less-heralded twin brother named Ace, who just enrolled at the University of Maine. Feels like more people should be talking about that.
Perfectly optimized is a great way to put it. High-percentage three point shots are a sure path to victory as well as Yawn City. I am pretty bored by this Finals match-up. I wish there was just a little more sauce on the table.
And of course since you sent this response Thibs got canned with no replacement waiting in the wings. And I wish Desmond Bane didn’t have to buy a house in Orlando. The NBA gives us so much. The conversation could go on forever.
previously: Mike Donovan (Old Books Hudson) | Cynthia Weiner | DJ Rude One | John Ross (Wild Pink) | Jo Hamya | Joseph Rathgeber (Caltrops Press) | Eli Schoop | T.M. Brown | Drew Millard
this was SO fun to read!
lovely interview! always been very intrigued by the lives of booksellers and this interview does a great job of encapsulating it!