New Orleans bookstore offers a taste of arcadia to tourists, locals and lovers

Sep 28

Ar•ca•di•a (ɑrˈkeɪ di ə) (n.) any real or imaginary place offering peace and simplicity.

NEW ORLEANS— Living in the back room of his shop in the French Quarter, Russell Desmond did not realize that he would eventually live out the bookstore romance that fills the pages of novels and screens of movie theaters — but any book-loving visitor probably could have guessed.

Arcadian Books and Prints has been a staple New Orleans bookstore for 40 years, providing locals and tourists alike with a wide range of novels and prints as well as the ability to wander through a maze of books.

Born in Hammond, La., Russell has long become acquainted with his shop on Orleans Street since moving there in 1986 from the original location on Magazine Street.

What has now become a life of foraging through big boxes of books and speaking to people in French, all started off with young Russell’s fascination for a biography of Bob Dylan, in which the musician had been reading French poetry.

Since then, Russell had been hooked: from reading French, taking French in college to doing an exchange program in the language department of a French university, he had immersed himself in the culture.

“It's funny because…when I was reading French, you know I grew up in Hammond, I never thought I’d speak French or need to, but I end up now speaking it almost every day,” Russell said.

Russell spent about a year studying in the south of France for the exchange program, but despite his love for French culture and language, he felt stuck in the country.

“I had already quit school over there. It was real expensive over there when I was there and I wasn’t able to travel that much. So I was trying to figure out what I was going to do,” he said.

He did not know what else he should do, having already tried out a variety of career paths, from a short stint in law school to an attempt at writing novels.

It was one day at the French university while helping a girl from New Orleans hang a drying line for her clothes outside her dorm window that Russell happened upon the idea for Arcadian.

“We were just kind of talking, thinking out loud and she asked me ‘What are you going to do?’” he remembered.

With about $14,000 left over from the divorce from his first marriage, Russell headed to New Orleans. He finished week-long apprenticeships with both a bookstore and a publisher and then continued on the journey that would be opening a bookshop.

Even though Russell was doing something he enjoyed, he had spent all of his savings opening the shop and buying the books but customers were not spending enough money to pay the bills.

When he had the shop on Magazine Street, he worked nights making drinks at Commander’s Palace as a bartender to scrape together enough cash to keep himself and his business afloat.

“It looked like it was a dying proposition,” he said.

At the first location, Arcadian looked different from its current antique, bursting form that it takes on now. The bookstore was mainly a retail shop, selling fancy art books.

The second room in the store was a whole wall of French books, imported art postcards, classics and newer novels in the market.

It was in the back room of the store that Russell found himself displaying the second-hand books that now fill his current store from floor to ceiling.

“I had to fill a room full with second-hand books, it wasn’t as easy as you might think. But I managed to do it, and I learned some lessons along the way,” he said.

Though it was hard, Russell said that there were a couple of things that helped him with the store.

One of those was the guy running the rare book collection in one of Tulane University’s libraries.

“He used to bring me trunk loads full of books every week or so, and I’d give him a couple hundred dollars or something. Looking back, he brought me some really, really nice stuff,” he said.

Now, Russell and his store have made it into French guidebooks and onto French TV and have many regulars that come to visit.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Russell got a small taste of retirement while being closed for six weeks. While he loved the reprieve of getting to sleep in late, he is not sure retirement is on his radar quite yet.

“It’s like I open my living room to the public and they give me money,” he said. “So why would I want to stop doing this? It’s so easy.”

Even being aware of his own success, Russell cautions people who want to open a bookstore from banking their financial success on such a dream.

“Don’t do it as a career, do it as a sideline. Make sure you have another income, I mean I worked for 12 years at night…But if you’re counting on making money off of it it’s not necessarily an easy thing to do,” he said.

“People that tell me they want to do it for a living I warn them: What do you do when you're sitting here and you’re not selling anything and you still have your bills to pay?” he continued.

But even including the forewarning, Russell has made the life of a bookstore owner quite desirable.

In the late ’80s, Russell met the love of his life in the very store where he was sitting while recalling his memories nearly 40 years later.

Her name was Lynn, and when she walked out of Arcadian the first time she met Russell, the teacher who brought her in said “You should marry that guy.”

Thirteen years later, she would.

Lynn came back into the store after her initial visit and planned her first date with Russell: to a movie theater to see a depressing French movie called Blue.

“We had a nice couple of evenings we spent together and then kind of were apart, but she’d come around every once in a while. She was real eccentric,” he said.

Russell remembered in good humor the story of their time apart: “We went out on a couple of dates and I had to break a date, and she was a real stickler for etiquette so she kind of dismissed me.”

Six years after they first dated, they got back together and there was no looking back. The two lived together for seven years before getting married.

“She took good care of me, and we were very happy together,” he said.

Lynn and Russell were married for eight years before she passed away in 2008.

“My brother told me after she passed, ‘Look at the full half of the glass: most people never get that. They don’t ever have a relationship that lasts that long.’...We had some very happy times together and were very well suited for one another,” Russell said.

Along with meeting his wife at Arcadian, Russell said he has also met some of his best friends through the store.

“It’s been a really, really pleasant life. I’m happy with it. Nothing I can say, no complaints,” Russell chuckled.