"If Prairie Lights is the wheel around which literary life in Iowa City revolves, [Paul] Ingram may well be its hub," Ariel L. Lewiton wrote in a Los Angeles Review of Books essay profiling the bookseller who also became a debut author this fall with the publication of The Lost Clerihews of Paul Ingram.
"Prairie Lights is one of the reasons Iowa City was designated a City of Literature," UNESCO City of Literature director John Kenyon said. "And Paul, a true force of nature, is one of the people that helps hold all of this together."
Ingram, who has been a bookseller for more than 40 years and primary book buyer at Prairie Lights for 25, "has the status of an icon: part master, part mascot. The epithet 'legendary bookseller' is attached to his name so often that it may as well be a formal prefix," Lewiton observed, adding: "On its culture web page, the University of Iowa describes Ingram as 'a landmark inside of a landmark.' "
Prairie Lights co-owner Jan Weissmiller calls Ingram "one of the top five booksellers in the country."
"I've worked at six bookstores, and I've never seen a better handseller than Paul Ingram. That person does not exist," said Matt Lage, book buyer at Iowa Book. "He's institutional memory."
"I try to get people to read books that I know to be incredible, but that they've never heard of," said Ingram. "I like being a tastemaker for the community."
Lewiton noted that "people who've moved thousands of miles away make regular pilgrimages to Prairie Lights just so Ingram can tell them what to read next. He's a master bookseller for his encyclopedic knowledge and quick recall, for the full confidence of his convictions, and for his infectious enthusiasm. But he also exhibits a quality that is passingly rare in retail: a deeply felt concern for his customers as human beings that has absolutely nothing to do with commerce."
