Ask a Book Store Employee: Mast Books' Robbie McDonald

Among the bodegas and tiny pipe shops on the border between Alphabet City and the East Village stands the brand new, utterly hip Mast Books. Since opening two months ago, Mast—which sells used books on literature and art—has attracted a steady stream of New Yorkers looking to buy and sell anything from vintage magazines to tattered copies of Naked Lunch. A constant fixture at the counter is Robbie McDonald, who uses his discerning eye to decide which books the store will purchase. Though Mast is relatively small, the shelves are crammed and unmarked, making Robbie any visitor’s go-to man.—Valeriya Safronova

Mast Books
66 Ave A
New York, NY 10009
646-370-1114

Tell me about the store. There are book people, writers, and East Village hermits who come in every day, and they buy something a few times a week. Of course, there are always weird characters that come in to sell books. They have mostly run-of-the-mill bad fiction, but they’re just out of their heads.

What do you like to read? I read mostly philosophy. I just read Witold Gombrowicz’s Pornografia and it made me laugh because it’s really absurd. It’s about two older men obsessed with creating a trsyt between two teens in the midst of the German occupation of Poland.

Do you have a favorite philosophy book? It changes from week to week—after all, there are a lot of books to read. I think more people should read Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille. Benjamin’s a precursor to the whole idea of post-modern thought. And everybody knows Bataille’s literature, but he was also a Nietzsche philosopher and a surrealist.