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Date: 11/27/2023
SOUTH HADLEY — For 60 years now Odyssey Bookshop has maintained their space in the community as an indie bookseller and now its decades of existence serves as an example of their importance in the community.
Odyssey Owner Joan Grenier gave many thanks to the community for its support through the ups and downs over the years and was proud to celebrate the milestone. Grenier’s father Romeo, a French-Canadian immigrant, officially founded the bookshop in 1963, so she started working in the shop when she was a teen.
Romeo Grenier was a pharmacist and owned Glesmann’s Pharmacy across the street from Mount Holyoke College. The pharmacy soon became a popular literary gathering place and many among the community would find space inside to read and have spirited discussions on different books and current events. Soon, Romeo created space within the shop to serve as a “book department.”
“It started taking over the drug store,” Joan Grenier said with a laugh. “Things were going along pretty well.”
After a handful of years, Mount Holyoke College asked Romeo to open a full-fledged bookshop due to the activity within his store, so he did, making the rest history.
During the next two decades, the Odyssey became known throughout the state as a unique place to look for books, but in the 1980s the store suffered two major fires. With assistance from Mount Holyoke College, many generous members of the community and a dedicated staff, the Greniers were able to rebuild and survive through the challenges.
“We would have never of done it without the help of our community. People supported us, and have been very generous over the years,” Grenier said.
In 1991, Joan took over much of the business from her father and oversaw the store’s relocation. At that point she remembers her father suggesting he wasn’t giving her “anything more than headaches at this point” with keeping and trying to reopen the store. Still, Grenier persisted and the Odyssey became the anchor store of the Village Commons.
“At that point I said, well I’ll do it for a little to help get it back up, so we did that, and he and I ran it together for a number of years in the 90s,” Grenier said. Romeo passed from Parkinson’s disease in 1997, which gave Grenier a moment to reflect on his accomplishment of the bookstore and realize its importance in the community as an indie bookseller.
“We had tremendous support of our staff and our community and our customers. There was a real rallying around us,” Grenier said of support over the years. “People wanted an independent bookstore in South Hadley.”
In celebrating 60 years, Odyssey Bookshop hosted a celebration event and were visited by ultimate publishing insiders: W. Drake McFeely, former chair and president of the W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., the nation’s largest and oldest independent, employee-owned book publishing firm, and Julia Reidhead, the company’s current chair and president. Norton is also celebrating its 100th anniversary and the combination between them and the Odyssey have six decades worth of positive results together.
“My love affair with the Odyssey began in 1985 when I visited South Hadley as a young Norton college traveling sales rep. For 60 years, the Odyssey has been one of our country’s flagship independent bookstores, a place of discovery and delight for readers,” said Reidhead, who also currently serves as chair of the Association of American Publishers. “Indie booksellers are critical to their communities and to community-building because of the relationships they cultivate with readers and the way they can place important books, full of ideas and experiences, directly into the hands of readers.”
Reidhead called Norton and the Odyssey “kindred spirits,” both focused on two sides of the same coin of expanding and providing books and readers.
“One on the book publishing side, the other on the bookselling side, both sitting at the crossroads between the academy and the public square, both focused on students, teachers, professors and general readers, and both working to cultivate communities and conversations around good books,” Reidhead added.
Grenier said W. W. Norton has been a great partner over the years and their 100-year anniversary is a different example of long tenured success such as the Odyssey, just in the publishing world. The Odyssey continues to play a vital role in the Mount Holyoke College community as in 2001, the Odyssey won a contract from the college to provide the books for all courses and in 2003 started carrying art supplies required for the college’s art studio courses. In addition, many of the Odyssey’s events are planned in conjunction with college faculty, student organizations and departments.
The Odyssey also focuses on bringing readers and writers together, with a literary event schedule including more than 125 events a year for adults and children and attended by thousands of people annually. For more information on the shop and its history, visit https://odysseybks.com.
Reflecting on the 60-year milestone, Grenier said to reach this point is amazing and something that makes her happy to think about when seeing the store’s value and place in the community.
“I think its amazing that we’ve survived two fires, two floods, a plague [the coronavirus pandemic] as everyone else has,” Grenier said with a laugh. “A large number of independent bookstores have closed over the years and we’re having people starting to open them again, but our demise was prophesied at that point and some stores didn’t make it. There was a lot of retail activity in bookselling. Some of those organizations have deep pockets, so I think we’ve had to reinvent ourselves often. We’re very flexible and that has made it a little easier to survive.”