Gordon C. Cairnie, the 78-yea-old owner of The Grollier Book Shop, is ready to sell Harvard Square's only "literary cafe."

"I am old, and I can't keep it open much longer," Cairnie said yesterday. "I am trying to sell it, but no one will give me more than $1000."

Cairnie has asked members of The Harvard Advocate to buy the shop. He said he is looking for someone "who can keep up the tradition."

Since Grollier opened at 6 Plympton St. in 1927, it has served not only as a bookstore but also as a gathering place for Cambridge literati.

Cairnie has covered the walls of his small shop with photographs of some of his more celebrated patrons--Robert E. Bly '50, Allen Ginsberg, James Tate and Robert T.S. Lowell '39.

The store first became a center of literary activity in 1929, when Conrad P. Aiken '11 and his friends started to frequent it.

Ginsberg once spent an almost unbroken month in Grollier's, reading through its selection of modern poetry and holding readings for its patrons and curious passers-by.

Cairnie yesterday recalled the visits by Robert Graves, who came to Harvard last year. "I remember once," Cairnie said, "we discovered we were born in the same year--and we talked about what a good year that was."

When Cairnie turned 75 three years ago, 36 poets dedicated selections of their work to him in an issue of the Antioch Review, and The Harvard Advocate featured him in its Spring issue.

Cairnie said he would like to retire and return to Canada, his birthplace, if only he could sell the shop.

"To close Grollier's," commented one patron yesterday, "would be worse than closing University Hall--only it's more human in here."