In late-night, dope-fueled
“rap sessions” (yesterday’s defunct clichés come back so easily), we resolved
to open a bookstore. We both had a little money. We even came up with a name
for our dream shop – Omega Books, later abbreviated to O Books! We reviewed our
cash reserves, visited available locations, smoked some more dope and dropped
the idea. Neither of us possessed the least business sense. In fact, the idea
was so ridiculous it arouses no romantic sense of nostalgia. For once, I acted
commonsensically.
I’ve never been a book
collector, merely a reader who likes hunting for books and acquiring the ones
he finds most essential. Over the years I bought a few books strictly as
investments – Thomas Wolfe, William Gaddis, Jack Kerouac – knowing I could sell
them quickly and make a tidy profit or trade them for books I actually wanted.
A collector, in my understanding, buys books as investments or trophies. He may
not even be much of a reader.
Almost half a century
after the fact, the English writer Alexander Larman confirms the wisdom of
dropping our bookstore idea. His assessment is realistically grim. In “The Demise
of the Second-Hand Bookshop” he catalogs the “high rents, a lack of demand and
a sense that, in 2020, the second-hand bookshop is somehow inessential,”
and adds:
“Decades, even centuries,
of history and tradition are disappearing because of market forces, and the
pandemic that we are all suffering through has sped matters up. So, although I
would offer two hearty cheers for the Oxfam bookshops, please try and visit
your local book dealer, if you’re still lucky enough to have one. Otherwise,
this most eccentric and likeable of trades shows every sign of being
annihilated forever, save for the most rarefied of dealers, and this would be a
great pity, especially if it were to take place more or less through
carelessness, rather than design.”
Next, I will call John
Dillman, owner of Kaboom Books here in Houston, and share a rather substantial wish list.
4 comments:
Should you come to southern California, you should visit The Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood. It is a large shop and has existed for many years. I discovered it about 10 or 15 years ago when it got written up in the Los Angeles Times. It's wonderful.
It also has the required bookshop cats - two, in this case.
Also in L.A is The Last Bookstore, absolutely enormous, one of those bookstore where you feel justified in believing that you can find literally anything you're looking for.
Memories and photos of old London shops.
https://spitalfieldslife.com/2020/08/12/the-bookshops-of-old-london/
Excerpt:
Once, I opened a two volume copy of Tristram Shandy and realised it was an eighteenth century edition rebound in nineteenth century bindings, which accounted for the low price of eighteen pounds. Yet even this sum was beyond my means at the time. So I took the pair of volumes and concealed them at the back of the shelf hidden behind the other books and vowed to return.
More than six months later, I earned an advance for a piece of writing and – to my delight when I came back – I discovered the books were still there where I had hidden them. No question about the price was raised at the desk and I have those eighteenth century volumes of Tristram Shandy with me today. Copies of a favourite book, rendered more precious by the way I obtained them and now a souvenir of those dusty old secondhand bookshops that were once my landmarks to navigate around the city.
Phil is still a poet and is also an artist with a home and studio in our small town in Ct. Have met him a few times...great guy!
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