GREY MATTER BOOKS

Bob Willig passed away in his sleep last Wednesday, the 6th of February, in Santa Rosa, CA. I am told he was in his 69th year. It is a testament to his constitution that he held out that long. Prior to penury, few men have indulged the appetitive soul with more abandon.  At restaurants, one often wondered where the other four people were for whom Bob seemed to be ordering. The kilos of cocaine he had personally consumed was a point of pride.
Like the man, the bookstore he created in an old gas station in Hatfield was of a kind we will not see again. Fifty books about Ezra Pound; another seventy-five on Milton. Even the homeliest bookclub edition was entitled to a Mylar jacket, and if no one wanted it, he brought it over to storage and kept it forever. No one who liked books and had visited the shop ever forgot it, or the bearded disciple of Rabelais who gave them a discount for no reason and then offered them a shot of whiskey.
In the last decade, his vision went kaput and his spirits went with it.  As a sworn lifelong enemy of exercise and vegetables, he did nothing to stave off the Grim Reaper. The fate that Bob met in Santa Rosa had been pursued as assiduously as if it were a bucket of barbecue from a Mississippi juke joint.
But even so.

Welcome to the Grey Matter Books, Hadley's #1 hard-to-find source for hard-to-find books and records. We are located just off the bike path at East St. and non-motorists get a 10% discount year-round. We have a large, constantly churned selection of scholarly, scientific and general stock, nearly all priced below their internet brethren. House-calls made for quality collections in Amherst, Northampton, Springfield, and thoughout Connecticut and the New York metropoliitan area.

 It's official! Grey Matter South to open in New Haven the last day of February!

Hours: MON-FRI 10-6; SAT 11-6; SUN 12-5