Great Bookmen & Bookstores: Israel (Izzy) G. Young of The Folklore Center
- by Susan Netzorg Halas
Izzy circa 2010 at his Folklore Center in Stockholm, Sweden.
The best times are when the shop is empty and we three sit around with cookies and milk and talk philosophy. Philosophy covers a wide range of topics including but not limited to business, making money, why some people are better than others and women.
The subject of women is the most complicated and one that does not lend itself to summary. Suffice to say there are two categories of women – Modern Women (bad) and Real Women (good).
About once a week Izzy will announce he is in love. Sometimes he will announce it by doing a Morris Dance the length of the shop (“Look how high I can jump!”), or sometimes he will announce it by doing a Horn Dance. Sometimes he will put it in the form of a question: “Am I in Love?” and he will answer it himself: “Yes, I am in love.”
Well you get the drift. It was a unique establishment, filled with the ebb and flow of daily events and plenty of home made drama. Those happy innocent bookish days are long gone. And the rest as they say is history.
Today Dylan is a household word. Jack Ballard (Prelutsky) is a well known writer of poetry for children. Izzy sends word that he is alive and well and living in Stockholm where since the 1980s he’s run the Swedish incarnation of the Folklore Center and he still teaches contra dancing. Earlier this year he was quoted as saying, “Everyone wants to interview me, nobody wants to pay.” Some things never change.
![Sotheby’s: Ernest Hemingway. Three Stories And Ten Poems, [Paris], (1923). First edition of Hemingway’s first published book. $75,000.](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/acf970a0-a15d-4c79-aa24-5e8e414cb465.png "<b>Sotheby’s:</b> Ernest Hemingway. <i>Three Stories And Ten Poems,</i> [Paris], (1923). First edition of Hemingway’s first published book. $75,000.")
