In South Dartmouth, Mass., brothers Ben and Will Shattuck have reopened Davoll's General Store, the country's oldest continually operating general store, as a "19th-century mall with a tapestry of businesses," featuring groceries, a cafe, a pub and a 300-square-foot bookstore. The general store, Ben Shattuck explained, dates back to 1793 and has sold books at different points in its history.
"Opening this store has not been an exercise in nostalgia but about meeting an imminent community need," said Shattuck. That need was for a place where people can gather and meet each other outside the home, a need that existed before the Covid-19 pandemic and has only been exacerbated since it began.
He saw the store as something like a town square, and he wanted "books to be a part of that." There is also a deep family connection to the store--Shattuck "grew up getting candy there as a little kid," and his grandmother used to shop at Davoll's.
At present, Davoll's sells fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cookbooks and children's books, as well as home and gardening titles. Shattuck, who manages the bookstore side of the business--though he considers himself more of a writer and a painter by trade--has handpicked every title in the store. He said he's turned it into "one big staff recommendation section," from a "staff of one, being me."
There's a large emphasis on "local-ish authors," a category that Shattuck noted spans "both time and space." Moby Dick is included largely because Herman Melville once went through New Bedford, Mass., which is next to Dartmouth. The work of Henry David Thoreau is featured because it encapsulates "agrarian Massachusetts," and Annie Dillard is there because she's from Provincetown, Mass., at the end of Cape Cod. There are also books by Nathaniel Philbrick, Geraldine Brooks and actress Jenny Slate, to whom Shattuck is engaged.
Prior to the store's official opening on July 22, Shattuck recalled, there was a ton of enthusiasm in the community for the greengrocer, cafe and bar sides of the business (getting an alcohol license in particular required a "billion letters of support"), while people thought of the bookstore as a sort of "nice gift to the community" at best. Every day since opening, however, "books have outsold everything in the store." By just the third day, he added, the store ran out of an entire shelf of poetry.
Shattuck said that between the ongoing pandemic and how recently the store opened, few traditional book events have been scheduled, but readings and book launches are absolutely in the works. Through his time spent running the Cuttyhunk Island Writers' Residency, he has ample experience organizing events with authors and has made plenty of connections with writers from Massachusetts.
Shattuck, who lived in Holland for two and a half years, said the store's pub was modeled after a Dutch country pub. It's only open for a few hours in the evening, with the idea being that customers will stop by for a drink after work before heading home for dinner. One event series that's already underway is the very casual Adult Writers' Support Group, where people gather at the bar to "talk about writing and have a Guinness."
He described renovating, reopening and running Davoll's as a process akin to "rigging an incredibly complicated ship," with everything requiring its own procedures and steps. "I hope it starts sailing soon." --Alex Mutter