For nearly 50 years, Daedalus has been charming book lovers. They wander into a building more than 100 years old with narrow corridors and stairways connecting a warren of small rooms that contain more than 100-thousand books.
“I think my oldest memory coming into Daedalus when I was about 13 years old. It was this magical maze, even back then," recalls the store's new owner, Jackson Landers. "The name is appropriate, right? Because Dedalus in Greek mythology was the architect of the labyrinth that the Minotaur was imprisoned in.”
Landers is also a prisoner of sorts – reluctantly taking title to the place from 81-year-old Sandy McAdams. Confined to a wheelchair for 17 years, McAdams had finally decided to retire and begged Landers to buy the place.
“I said, ‘No, thank you. This is not what I want to do with my life, and over the next few weeks people came to me and said, ‘Listen. You can do the carpentry. You know the books. If you don’t take this on, we’re going to lose Daedalus as an institution.”
In the last year, he’s dealt with plumbing and electrical problems, tuckpointing and replacing shelves, turning what one staffer described as barely controlled chaos into what Landers calls alphabetized chaos.
“There was an air conditioner spraying water on books, so the first thing I did was tear out that old bookcase, and behind that bookcase I found a couple hundred paperbacks that had been falling back there since 1974," he recalls. "A lot of them were these 1950’s Sam Spade type detective books with very charming covers.”
He sold some and got rid of others to make room for the books his brainy, eccentric customers prefer.
“I had a lovely old late 1800’s collection of Balzac – just beautiful volumes with gold leaf, and I was thinking, ‘Where am I going to put these?’ I measured them and I think it was like 34 inches, and I went down to the BAL section in hardback fiction, and I had about 34 inches of David Baldacci, so I guess we don’t sell Baldacci anymore, right?”
What’s left is an astonishing variety of volumes with intriguing titles like Trampolining for Women and Men, The Metaphysical Bible Dictionary and Toward a New Philosophy of Biology purchased by people from Durham, Annapolis and the Shenandoah Valley.
“You find genres here that I don’t think you would find at all bookstores. There’s a whole poetry room.”
“So much good stuff -- I feel like I need to check out before I spend too much money.”
“You always find something? Always! Too many things!”
“It’s a very interesting place to come into.”
In keeping with tradition, each purchase is recorded by hand, and employee June Zambrana-Ocasio says some people leave with shopping bags full of books.
“Yesterday, for example, I filled this entire page with one person’s purchases.”
Now one year into its renovation, Daedalus remains a magnet for people that Anthony Restivo lovingly calls freaks or weirdos. He’s worked here one day a week for eleven years.
“For a lot of us, especially as Charlottesville gets less weird and more moneyed, there are fewer places for the weirdos to hang out. You can always tell when people come in, and there’s like this unspoken thing of ‘I’m weird. Are you weird? It seems weird in here. Am I welcome? Yeah, yeah, you’re home buddy!”
Staffer Anissa Aguila says this bookstore is now central to her social life. Today she encounters a customer who shares her belief that every woman should –at some point – get a buzz cut.
“I love your hair by the way. It’s very cute. Oh thank you. + I’m growing out a shaved head. Oh nice! I shaved my head when I first got to college. Everyone’s got to do it!”
In addition to book readings with local authors, Daedalus hosts some offbeat events, like a birthday bash for a renowned romantic poet.
“We had a séance for John Keats on Halloween. We had readings while serving his favorite wine – Claret – and his favorite foods.”
An original death mask of the poet John Keats is now on display at Daedalus in Charlottesville.
The store actually displays a death mask of Keats along with a quirky collection of bookmarks that Landers and staff have discovered. There’s a section of wall filled with old photographs.
“All of us have had a turn thinking, ‘Was that me in high school?’ This guy laying down on the floor with his head behind a toilet.”
And he keeps a stack of fliers on the front desk, promoting other offbeat businesses in Charlottesville.
“A lot of our customers are book tourists. They’re making day trips from Richmond, Tidewater, the D.C. metro area. Hey, can I help you find anything? Oh I’m just browsing. Yeah, alright. You get people who come here primarily for Daedalus, but also we’ve got six independent bookstores on the downtown mall. I don’t think of them as competitors, because we all have our different strengths. Blue Whale has books that are in extremely good condition. They know more about rare books than I will ever know. They know a lot about atlases. They’ve got some wonderful prints there. Second Act Books has a really great children’s section, and a really good mystery section I’m not sure there’s anyplace else on the east coast of the U.S. where you can park once and go to six different bookstores.
Landers isn’t sure how long he’ll stay in the business. He is a published author trying to finish his third book.
“I’m hoping that in the next six months or so we get to a point where I can work 50 hours a week instead of 80, do some more writing again, go fishing again, but for now, it’s playing three dimensional Tetris in a 3-story building with hundreds of boxes of books.”
And, he confesses sheepishly, that he has yet to set foot in the building’s attic.
