A Visit to Black Spring Books with Simona Blat

Tucked into the ground floor of a low brick building on Driggs Avenue, Black Spring Books looks as if it’s been a fixture in the neighbourhood for decades, but the truth is that the shop has only been around for a few years. Inside, the place is piled high with dusty classics, avant-garde must-haves and tantalising obscurities. A folding street sign reads: LIVE NUDE BOOKS. By the register, watching over the true gems and first editions, is the proprietor, Simona Blat.

A bit like Audrey Hepburn’s Jo Stockton in Funny Face and sporting a similar haircut, Blat is reticent when it comes to herself but effusive about all things printed.

The name of the store is borrowed from Henry Miller’s mostly forgotten novel of his childhood growing up in turn of the 20th-century Brooklyn, Black Spring. Miller had been a lodestar for Blat since she discovered his infamous auto-fictional Tropic of Cancer, so when her landlord mentioned that he’d been been born next door, she took it as as sign and named the store in his honour.

Miller’s portrait greets visitors, along with a quote by the author: “I am the hero and the book is myself.”

The shop came to be through an unlikely chain of events, she explains. Blat got her start as a bookseller under the New York literary impresario Michael Seidenberg, who sold books and hosted literary salons out of his unassuming Upper East Side walk-up apartment. At the time, she was working at Soho Press as an editorial assistant and was invited to tag along after a late night book launch.

“It was like walking into a different world,” she recalls. “It’s two in the morning, it’s bustling. It felt like the world that I had dreamed of: intellectuals, artists, floor-to-ceiling books, tobacco smoke, whiskey, it was just heaven.” Blat and Seidenberg clicked right away, and in their first conversation, he announced that they were kindred spirits. “I woke up the next morning and I was like, ‘Did I dream that?’” But she didn’t rush back because she told herself, “I don’t want to tarnish this memory.”

One day, Blat found herself aimlessly roaming the streets on her birthday. She had been thinking about Seidenberg and his place for the past year. He had given her his phone number that night, and now, out of the blue, she decided to call him up. He invited her over to talk about books, and soon, it became a regular thing. “He started calling me his personal assistant, even though I wasn’t doing anything,” Blat laughed. “I was just hanging out.”

From Seidenberg, she learned the ins and outs of the rare book trade: spotting first editions, understanding which books were likely to appreciate in value. “I didn’t necessarily care about that stuff before. I just loved to read. I grew up really poor and my mom just took me to the library.”

However, working for Seidenberg could be difficult. “He was a man of the ‘60s,” Blat says, “and was very much like, ‘I do things my way.’” He was “spiritually, an amazing mentor,” she continues, but “he wasn’t a business-savvy guy.” Never wanting someone to go home empty-handed, Seidenberg had the habit of giving books away or selling things far cheaper than he should have. “He just wanted people to have what they wanted.”

In 2019, Seidenberg passed away suddenly. It was a huge loss for Blat. For years, the two of them had contemplated opening a bookstore together in Brooklyn and had visited spaces several times. They would start to inquire about leases and get their paperwork in order, but then Seidenberg would lose interest. “It was always a pipe dream,” Blat says.

Blat was left to handle his affairs after his death and started cleaning out his apartment. She didn’t like the idea of keeping thousands of his books in storage. Friends suggested she sell them online but the idea of a digital shop felt so impersonal, and she didn’t really want to get rid of them. "I’m a hoarder, essentially,” she said. When she found this space, “I was like, ‘Fuck it. I’ll just put all my books that are in storage here and open up a bookshop.’” Thus Black Spring Books was born.

While physical media is beautiful, Blat admits there are also some downsides to loving books. They’re heavy and fragile; Blat recently had a flood and lost a bunch of inventory. Moving wet cardboard boxes of books is no fun. But for her, the romance of it all makes the reality manageable. For one, Blat think they smell amazing. The air in her shop perfumed with the papery smell of deep thoughts. More importantly, books make her feel safe. “When I’m in a room without them, the room feels empty,” she said.

On a trip to Paris, she admits to having brought two whole suitcases full of books. And then, overwhelmed with the bounty of books Paris offers, she left with four more stuffed to the brim.

“I felt like it was like bringing clothes; I felt naked without them. And then I amassed more and I left with six suitcases of books.”

Over the years, Blat has developed a knack for finding the right book for each customer, a bit like how a good tailor can size up a client. It’s a task she takes very seriously and finds a bit stressful.

“It’s a really big deal to give someone a book,” Blat says. She recounted the story of a man who had come into her shop two years earlier. “He was so on edge,” she recalled, and he spent a lot of time looking around by himself, running his anxious fingers over the spines. Eventually he came up to the register for some advice.

”Can you recommend any books about love?” the man asked.

“Yeah,” Blat replied, “but what kind of love? There’s a whole gamut; what are we looking for?” Some people might want to read about how to get over a breakup. Others are looking to wallow. What was this man in need of?

“I’m going through a heartbreak,” the man said, and began to weep, right there in the shop. She made sure he left with something to ease the pain.

Community was the impetus for opening the shop. The business has to break even, but she thinks of herself more as a host than an entrepreneur. In the same spirit of those speakeasy salons at Brazenhead, her parties and readings have become legendary, a trip back in time to some version of New York when writers stayed up all night arguing in smoke-filled rooms instead of on Substack. It’s Blat’s belief that a proper literary party needs the right mix of good vibes and contrarians, “where you feel like you can meet like-minded individuals, but also meet people that you disagree with, where you can have a dialogue.” Imagine Norman Mailer and Susan Sontag mildly agreeing with each other’s virtuous opinions all night. Boring.

Blat is an accomplished writer herself—mostly fiction and poetry—but she’s shy about sharing her work. As a writer trying to eke out her own pages, what was it like to be surrounded by books all day?

On a bad day, keeping up her own practice can feel pointless or oppressive, Blat says. So many writers before her have put their thoughts to paper in so many different ways, what was there left for her to add? Why even try? But on a good day, which is most days, she describes the feeling as one of abundance and possibility. And it helps that she carries so many books by friends and acquaintances, who often choose Black Spring to celebrate their own book launches. “If this person can publish this,” she thinks, “then I can do it, too.”

Blat hopes her customers will catch that same feeling whenever they visit her shop on Driggs Avenue. Come with a sense of adventure and leave with a beautiful bit of serendipity.