Pomona 1973- Standing: Hap Tivey, James Turrell, Gus Blaisdell, Lewis Baltz
Sitting – Maury Baden, Guy Williams
Gus and Stanley Cavell Gus and Evan ConnellGus and Clark CoolidgeGus and Joe BaconGus and Allan Graham Gus by Joel Peter WitkinGus and Robert Creeley by Bernard PlossuGus and Matisse by Nicole Blaisdell IveyGus Blaisdell and Ira Jaffe 1985Gus Blaisdell and Poet Geoffrey Young Portrait by William Stafford 1971
Gus Blaisdell and Ray Waddington 1976
Gus Blaisdell Portrait by Max KozloffGus Blaisdell and Poet Robert Creeley 2000 Portrait by Nicole Blaisdell IveyGus Blaisdell and writer Evan S. Connell at Trinity Site-Video Still from His Heaviness by Nicole Blaisdell Ivey
Gus Blaisdell at Living Batch Bookstore 1999 Video Still from His Heaviness by Nicole Blaisdell Ivey
Gus Blaisdell and Nicholas Brownrigg photos by Nicole Blaisdell Ivey
Stanford Friends meet again.40 years later
Gus Blaisdell by Matt CohenGus Blaisdell by Douglas Kent Hall ALBUQUERQUE 2000
Gus Blaisdell and painter Guy Williams 1972
Gus Blaisdell visiting Jack Stauffacher’s Greenwood Press San Francisco
Stanley Cavell and Gus Blaisdell Harvard 1970’s
Gus and Cat Aspen Portrait by Arnold Gassan
Gus Blaisdell Polaroid portrait by Johnathan WilliamsGus Blaisdell and Marc Maron Living Batch Bookstore ABQ, NM 1990’s
Gus Blaisdell Portrait by Adrian Salinger
His Heaviness screening at The Outpost 2005 Photo by Gloria Graham Allan Graham, Moon 2, 1986
HE WAS A DEEP CAT September 21, 1935 - September 17th 2003
The Living Batch, one of the oldest bookstores in New Mexico, is closing next month, after being in business on the same block for 27 years.
On Dec. 24 it will shut its doors at 106 Cornell SE, which is next door to the Frontier restaurant.
“The main reason we’re closing is that I don’t want to do it any more,” said owner Gus Blaisdell, a parttime film instructor at the University of New Mexico.
But that decision is influenced by several factors.
One is the arrival of the mega-bookstores in the Northeast Heights.
Their immediate effect is that a variety of customers no longer shop at the Living Batch.
“Before the superstores, we discovered that the most interesting sale days in our store were weekends. People drove from all over the city to come and shop,” Blaisdell said.
Another factor is his disenchantment with mainstream publishing.
“The price of books is excluding young readers,” he said, noting that three hardback books can retail for as much as $100.
Blaisdell said he’s considered, and rejected, the notion of reducing the store’s space and narrowing the subjects to what the Living Batch specializes in — alternative fiction, poetry, politics, art and architecture, psychoanalysis and works from small presses.
If the store changed its direction and size, Blaisdell said, there probably wouldn’t be sufficient readers to buy books “in these prices, in these times in Albuquerque.”
In addition, he said, none of his children nor present or former employees expressed interest in maintaining the bookstore.
“A literary period of mass readership for the small bookstore is passing out of democratic politics,” Blaisdell said. “I think inexpensive books should be available to a large number of people, if they want to read.
“So, through various circumstances, we have become extinct.”
Gus, thank you for your generous contribution to the Rio Grande High School Writing Class! Rudy J Miera
blaisdell Ivey collected 