I’ve seen too many legendary bookstores die in my lifetime. Had to shutter one myself, Book World on Chapel St. in New Haven. So the news that St. Marks Books’ days are, uh, marked fills us with inkstained remorse.

There was a time when St. Mark’s Place Books had things you simply couldn’t find elsewhere. All the hip young novelists of the ‘80s were well represented on its shelves. If it was Man Booker Prize season in England (as it is now—the prize was just awarded on Tuesday to Julian Barnes), you’d be able to browse not just the winning novel but every one on the short list.

But marveling at a well-stocked bookstore is of course a thing of the past. Expecting such a place to survive and not succumb to the online piranhas and sink into the Amazon is futile. The Village community is going about this rescue attempt in exactly the right way: Show that the love is there through petitions and demonstrations. Argue for the store as a valued cultural landmark and aesthetic delight. Try to negotiate a more manageable rent. (The store has apparently been paying $20,000 a month to the Cooper Union school, which may be the going rate, but is three or four or ten times what failing bookstores I know about in New Haven were paying.) At the same time, St. Marks wouldn’t be much of a landmark if it didn’t actually sell books. So the owner’s appeal, in the Associated Press coverage, to all the demonstrators and supporters to simply “buy a book or magazine” should be heeded. Then readed.