NEWBURYPORT — As he transitions to a new role at the popular Jabberwocky Bookstore, Paul Abruzzi recalled one of his fondest memories from his 33 years as its manager: bringing his infant son to work.
He would stand at the Tannery’s parking lot door with Nathan’s car seat on the desk beside him. If a reader needed help finding a book in the store’s many rows, Paul would either run quickly himself or take his son along with him.
Nathan is now 32 and posed recently with his dad at that same desk as his father steps down as store manager. At the end of Yankee Homecoming this year — a busy time for the store — Paul began his new role, part-time.
He will no longer be the everyday fixture he’s been for so many book lovers through the years. But no fear: he’ll still work three of the store’s busiest days each week.
Even then, as Kurt Mullen, an avid reader, Jabberwocky customer and longtime friend of Paul, said, “He will be missed.”
The store itself is going through its own transition. Sue Little, who opened the store in downtown Newburyport 54 years ago and was the first retail store at the Tannery, is stepping into the role of owner emeritus, which allows her to come in when she wants and be “irresponsible.” Her son Erik’s wife, Julia Hoel, is stepping into her shoes as owner and buyer, carrying forward a long and happy tradition for customers who enjoy “the art of browsing” at Jabberwocky. And behind the desk in Paul’s old spot is his protégé, Harrison Acuna-Stevenson, Jabberwocky’s new manager.
Andre Dubus III, probably the store’s most celebrated regular, wrote of Paul: “For over 30 years, Paul Abruzzi has been cheerfully and efficiently doing far more than helping to sell books at our beloved Jabberwocky Bookshop. He’s been helping thousands of his fellow human beings enlarge their minds and their hearts, which has helped to make us all more informed and compassionate people, which has helped to make this community and beyond more caring, more humane, and more loving.”
Dubus — the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller House of Sand and Fog, an Oprah’s Book Club pick and National Book Award finalist — added: “Leo Tolstoy reminds us that art is ‘transferring feeling from one heart to another.’ In this time of such division, of so many shortened attention spans and even shorter tempers, the work my dear friend, Paul Abruzzi, has been doing so warmly and so well for so long has been nothing short of revolutionary.”
Dubus agreed Paul “will be sorely missed” — a sentiment shared by so many of the store’s other longtime customers.
In her 82 years of living and shopping in Newburyport, Mary Bragg said, “We all know what a gem Jabberwocky Bookstore has been in Newburyport for many years. It is there that I have had the pleasure of getting to know Paul Abruzzi, a pillar of the establishment.
“I think of the hundreds, thousands of encounters Paul has had with one-time visitors to the store, and the luckier local residents often returning to make a purchase of a much-valued book or another item for sale, and after much thought, realize what an impression Paul had made on others in our community and beyond.”
Bragg compared Abruzzi to Theo in the beloved novel Theo of Golden. “Paul is the epitome of what it means to be a gentleman … smart, humble, accomplished and kind. In my numerous trips through the years to Jabberwocky, every time I encountered Paul standing behind the counter, he has been ready to serve, assist, recommend and chat before I headed back home with a new book.”
She said she knows Paul only through these “pleasant” encounters, which others might consider unimportant in life — “but to me they were rays of golden sunshine pointing out the goodness in my community and beyond, brightening up my days. I envy those who know and hang out with Paul after store hours. Such a gentleman in our midst!”
Kurt Mullen praised Abruzzi for seeming to know what book a customer had come for without being told. “Paul seemed to know what my tastes were.”
Born in Italy and raised in an orphanage before being adopted as a toddler and relocated to the United States, Abruzzi was not naturally ebullient, Mullen said. “But he was always warm.”
Mullen also enjoyed watching Paul interact at the store with his bonus daughter, Nell — whom he’s raised alongside her mother, his significant other, Liz Desmaris. “They were close. Seeing them together put a smile on my face,” Mullen said.
Abruzzi is already a grandfather to Nell’s daughter, Maudslay, who visits him often at Jabberwocky, and is about to become one again with Nathan’s first child. The job change gives him more time to be a grandfather and finally dive into writing books of his own, instead of just selling them — along with keeping up his other extracurricular passions: skiing, hiking, golfing, and the occasional trivia night.
He also plans to continue another one of his favorite extracurriculars: serving as a judge for the Actors Studio’s Full Moon Story Slams, where audience members tell the crowd a story from their own life. Kurt said Paul once confessed to him that he enjoyed being the judge but could never stand in front of a crowd and tell a story of his own.
“I don’t want the attention,” Mullen quoted him as saying.
Writer’s Note: Too late, Paul. Too many people, including this writer, love you. ♦
