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complete for BookWars is reprinted here.
BOOKWARS (NR)
by MaryAnne Johanson
Sidewalk book vendors are a familiar sight to anyone who
has walked the streets of Manhattan below 14th Street, and
yet they have an air of mystery about them. Sure, I've been
lured by the siren call of cheap books -- most New Yorkers
are -- but I'd always been a bit suspicious of the
booksellers. Were they homeless guys scraping by selling
stolen books? What was their story? Jason Rosette sold
books for three years to pay his way through school, and he
offers an insider's look at this world in BOOKWARS.
Shot on various video and small film formats, this slice of
NYC street life has the kind of gritty intimacy only
possible when tiny, unobtrusive cameras catch ordinary
people with their guard down. Rosette's husky voiceover
lends a sneakily funny neo-noir attitude to the outlaw
mentality of the oddball characters manning the
just-this-side-of-legal book tables: Vendors range from
former homeless to former stockbroker, immigrants from
everywhere from Russia to New Jersey; one won't sell to
customers he doesn't like, another wears shorts and sandals
in all weather.
All are "book maniacs" who don't want to live inside the
workaday system. And Rosette captures perfectly the love
affair bibliophiles on both sides of the table carry on
with their books, romancing the souls of used tomes, with
their battered, careworn pages. And in a reader's city like
New York, even the cops who have to enforce mayor Rudy
Guiliani's crackdown on the vendors can't help but browse
the books while the sellers fold shop under their watchful
eyes. This is a passionate, affectionate paean to free
speech, free commerce, and the glory of cheap books.
Not rated.