Her Next Page

CWRU Magazine - Spring 2002 | F e a t u r e

Her Next Page

or many of us, the word “retirement” inspires dreams of rest and relaxation. Cruises. Sunny beaches. Cool drinks decorated with little umbrellas. Not so for Jane Kessler.

In 1990, Dr. Kessler (GRS ’51, psychology) had already enjoyed a busy private and professional life: founding and heading the University’s Mental Development Center (1958 to 1979); teaching psychology at CWRU since 1975; writing a textbook, Psychopathology of Childhood (Prentice Hall, 1966, revised in 1988); and raising a son, Martin, with husband Morris Kessler (MED ’33), a psychoanalyst who died in 1973.

But at age sixty-nine, because of a University policy, she was facing retirement from CWRU, and she didn’t want to retire, exactly. “Doing nothing in particular was not my style, and I knew if I ‘retired,’ I’d just volunteer my life away,” she says. Thus, instead of the sunny beach and the tropical drink, she opted for yet another career.

Book buff: Jane Kessler surrounds herself with books she hopes patrons will like – and buy.

As it happened, as Dr. Kessler’s retirement loomed, Appletree Books, a small one-story brick bookstore in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was on the market. “I’d had fantasies about running a bookstore,” she admits. “My family had always had a lot of books, and I suppose I thought of a bookstore as a sort of storehouse for my books.” She laughingly adds, “There was not a week in between my retirement and buying the store. I thought I’d be able to read all I wanted, but instead of reading books, now I read publishers’ catalogs and book reviews.”

Ten years later, Dr. Kessler is fully immersed in the book business. Early on, she discovered how much dedication her new job required. She and co-worker Susan Jones (“not an employee; more like an alter ego”) each work well over forty hours a week. Dr. Kessler’s son, a music teacher at University School in nearby Shaker Heights, helps when he can. Evening hours (“a must”) make for long days: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays, and 1 to 6 p.m. on Sundays.

Not every working hour is spent in the store. Ms. Jones and Dr. Kessler attend regional education conferences, for instance, stocking tables of books for teachers to purchase. “About half our income is earned outside the store,” says Dr. Kessler. “I’ve become, willy-nilly, an expert on children’s books, a field that’s doing very well.” This field provides a link with her past, since, as a psychologist, she specialized in children’s mental and emotional disabilities.

Plenty of other links with her past are also evident. Appletree Books, located in the Cedar-Fairmount neighborhood, near University Circle, is home to many CWRU faculty, so she sees many of her academic acquaintances, now her customers. They frequently order supplementary books for their classes, or books for their own enjoyment and research.

Dr. Kessler’s academic life seems long ago and far away. Her conversation now turns naturally to subjects such as the future of the publishing business, competition with big chains, and decisions about what books to stock in her 1,000-square-foot store. Her lively and reflective mind ruminates, for instance, on the effect of the Internet on the book business. Not, as you might think, on the power of competitors such as Amazon.co m (“That’s just money, just economics”), but on the very existence of books themselves.

More books are being published and read online, and even more are published to order by local printers. “Books are more ephemeral now. The publishing business itself is in ferment,” she says, worriedly. For the near future, however, she remains confident that readers will still want to read books they are actually holding in their hands.

When asked how Appletree competes with Internet retailers and chain stores like Borders, Dr. Kessler responds, “You can’t, really. I’ve discovered that you lose money selling hardbacks with a thirty-percent discount, as the chains do.” Instead, Appletree marks new hardbacks down twenty percent and has a big July sale with a twenty-five-percent markdown.

Young book buffs: dinosaurs and large trucks for all.

Some things, however, Appletree does better than the chains. “We’re a little bookstore, so we do a lot of little things,” she says. Dr. Kessler caters to “loyal customers who research the books on Amazon and then come in and order from us.” She keeps a specialized inventory. Dr. Kessler explains: “The Cleveland Museum of Art has great art books, so why should we compete with them? Art books are large for us anyway.” Likewise with craft books (“Too many of them”) and computer books (“Way too many, and they become obsolete too quickly”).

So Dr. Kessler stocks what she hopes her clientele will like. She carries plenty of current nonfiction: memoirs, science, and history. Sometimes she has to give up on a favorite that doesn’t sell, but she hangs on to some of those favorites—for instance, The Peabody Sisters of Salem, a 1950 nonfiction work by Louise Hall Tharp about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s wife and her sisters. “I keep some books, especially biographies, that people should be interested in,” she says, smiling.

Trade paperbacks are the store’s bread and butter. “These are the larger paperbacks printed on better paper, the ones that run around fourteen dollars,” she says. Sometimes new movies spark an interest in these titles. Dr. Kessler recommends books when she can, too, especially little-known new fiction. Top on her list now is Martyrs’ Crossing, Amy Wilentz’s novel set in contemporary Israel and Palestine.

Appletree Books has the cozy feeling of an old-fashioned bookstore. Dr. Kessler and Ms. Jones have no need for a computerized list of books; when asked a title, they not only know if the book is in the store, they know where to find it on the shelf. They add the customer’s bill with a paper and pencil, or on an adding machine, which Dr. Kessler insists makes more mistakes than her own computations. She prefers her manual typewriter to a computer keyboard and uses e-mail only under duress. With good service, careful selection, and authors’ readings and book fairs, Appletree is maintaining a modest but adequate profit.

Now eighty-one, the Lucy Adams Leffingwell Professor Emerita of Psychology has plenty to think about and much to do. She enjoyed a weeklong vacation to Cape Cod this past summer, and admits, “A week is all I can manage at one time.” With new and changing concerns constantly arising, customers depending on her knowledge and service, and books, catalogs, and reviews to read, who has time for a long vacation?

A frequent contributor to CWRU Magazine, Kathy Ewing is also a book reviewer living in Cleveland Heights.

Photography by Betsy Molnar; logo courtesy of Jane Kessler

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