Stuart Brent, one of Chicago's great booksellers, died at age 98 this week. His first shop opened in 1946 and was a frequent hangout for the then up and coming Nelson Algren, who had just finished a collection of short stories known as The Neon Wilderness. Algren's biographer Bettina Drew describes Brent's Seven Stairs at that time as "a tiny literary bookstore on the Near North Side with a woodstove, a barrel of apples, a hanging salami and a knowledgeable owner...."
Brent soon became an Algren fan and hosted "Neon Wilderness parties" when the book was finally published. Beyond his relationship with Nelson, Brent was friends with many other Chicago writers and even the proud recipient of an oak desk given to him by The Front Page author Ben Hecht. An item in Chicago Breaking News also notes how Brent would sometimes "rise from behind a pile of invoices on the table to offer browsers a bit of advice -- or criticism. Sometimes he'd take a book from a customer's hands, quickly substituting one he thought better."
He closed things down because the world of book sales and publication had changed and Michigan Avenue turned too sleek and upscale. He lamented that the Garrett Popcorn shop had outlived his small book oasis, but that kernel-popping place has seen the closing of many other stores, and in its own way Garrett is one of the few Mag Mile locales that attracts all kinds of people who share a democratic love of their rich gooey caramel or super-cheesy mix.
Brent's 1962 autobiography was titled Seven Stairs: An Adventure of the Heart and details how his shop and career came more from a love of reading and writers than any desire to make money. Brent noted that "I have never had what the public wanted to read, and I lost out because of it," but without doubt Brent's loss was Chicago's literary gain.
