The review is by Dwight Garner — note: "garner" is fine as a name! — and the reason Kociejowski would like you to leave — if you walk into his store and say "I love the smell of old books" — is that a thousand people have walked into the store and said the same damned thing.
The Robert Louis Stevenson essays Patti Smith might have bought is "An Apology for Idlers," which I've blogged about many times, including:
1. "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy" (2012) — the post title is a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson.
2. "Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality..." (2012). Again, an RLS quote forms the post title. More of the quote: "There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation."
3. "Shhhh!" (2016)— quoting Stevenson: "Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself."
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17 comments:
Patti Smith, who was famous for having hairy armpits
Sounds like a good book. My greatest regret about leaving NYC--aside from giving up a rent-stabilized Manhattan apartment--is that I will no longer be able to jaunt at whim down to The Strand Bookstore, a 95-year multi-floor "dirty mess" of a bookstore, (though they have made efforts to clean it up in recent years). Sadly, most of the other classic bookstores that were once plentiful in NYC have disappeared over the years. The city still has a number of good to excellent bookstores, more so than most cities, but the absence of the many more great bookstores that have perished over time remains a terrible loss.
I used to love Avol's in Madison, not so much the other one, what was it, "Paul's"? Before the former moved to where it is now it was also in a very small space, crammed with books, I think I like their more open space now. I used to go in looking for archaeology books, rarely found any good ones, but I suppose that was what made finding one pretty special. By "good ones" I mean like Rouse's Prehistory in Haiti. One of the last times I was at Avol's (probably 20 years ago) I managed to find a hardcover copy of a UW (Washington) archaeology prof's books, Systematics in Prehistory (Robert C. Dunnell) who was kind of the Professor Kingsfield of the archaeology program when I was going through (late 1980s). It was reprinted later in paperback form, but I wanted the original hardcover. I sent it to Dunnell (he'd retired by then) and he graciously signed it for me.
I go to Avol's when I'm in Madison, but don't peruse used bookstores very much anymore, I can get nearly anything online for next to nothing or nothing.
Not long ago I would have rolled my eyes a bit at the somewhat preening nature of book lovers.
Not anymore, when old books are being removed from library shelves and replaced with lesser tomes in the name of racial reckoning.
…and the reason Kociejowski would like you to leave — if you walk into his store and say "I love the smell of old books" — is that a thousand people have walked into the store and said the same damned thing.
Ha! I think it would be a great joke if bookstore owners would order up some (empty) spray cans with labels stating “Smell of Old Books Freshener” (and at some outrageous price), and point them out to customers when they inevitably come in and make that comment.
I wonder if RLS took his idler from Dr. Johnson's Idler essays. Dr. J also published The Rambler.
As one who loves old books and bookstores (including the smell), I have a low tolerance for proprietors who hate their customers.
In the same breath they will bitch about existing customers and former customers who've gone to Amazon. And then wail about the decline of independent bookstores.
I am going to have to read more Stevenson. He may replace Emerson in the pantheon of Slacker Sainthood.
“ I wonder if RLS took his idler from Dr. Johnson's Idler essays. Dr. J also published The Rambler.”
Yes, explicitly.
As I wrote in my 2017 post about it:
… "An Apology for Idlers" by Robert Louis Stevenson, it begins:
BOSWELL: We grow weary when idle.
JOHNSON: That is, sir, because others being busy, we want company; but if we were idle, there would be no growing weary; we should all entertain one another. Just now, when everyone is bound, under pain of a decree in absence convicting them of lèse-respectability, to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party who are content when they have enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile, savours a little of bravado and gasconade. And yet this should not be. Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself....
To this day I still think most people in this world have better things to do than to read Finnegan's Wake. That Johnny Depp was not numbered among us in this regard is rather comical.
And one of those better things would be putting in an appearance at Steve O'Donnell's Wake.
Agree with Lord Somber. Quit yer bitchin about your customers expressing the love of your store, including the smell. That’s part of the fun of a used bookstore! You immediately feel you are in a good place with good books. What’s wrong with expressing that?
Any fans of Bookman's Corner on Clark St. in Chicago? Once you get beyond the fact it's a fire trap, it's a wonderful store:
http://fourteeneastmag.com/index.php/2016/12/23/1557/
My favorite was the old, venerable and knowledgeable Abraham Lincoln Book Store on Westish Chicago Ave in Chicago. It has now moved, probably due to crime. This was a store where you could ask for a copy of Haskell's Gettysburg, and have four editions handed to you. A store with Lee's Lieutenants thru Grant and Sherman autobiography. You could go into the humidified room and see the real books, and later buy a recent imprint that you could afford.
Shelby Foote was a bit of an anathema due to his repetition of slurs against Father Abraham. But, when I go to a book store, like the endless one called Bookmans's Alley in Evanston, at Northwestern ( my lovely spouses Alma Mater), or the many stores at the University of Chicago, or to Open Books on Lake St. in the Loop, I have always been happy to be there, engendered to climbing little ladders. If I vocalize the sensing of your booksmell? Condemn me as you will.
I am a part of your gross.
On the contrary, Lord Somber and Sydney, in my book I go out of the way to say that the one element I miss most in bookselling is, and had always been, the customer. Customers are what make the trade worthwhile. Many of them became good friends of mine. The quoted passages were tongue-in-cheek and taken somewhat out of context.
With kind regards,
Marius Kociejowski
It's a glory of our civilization that there are enough serious readers to keep stores of old books in business. A glory that's fading fast I fear. Another glory is refined or creative loafing such as RLS's miniature battles.
I'm trying to remember Footean slurs against Lincoln. He did quip or quote that unlike Davis, Lincoln was not handicapped by a need to pretend to be a gentleman; OTOH IIRC Foote did say that the two authentic geniuses of the ACWABAWS were NB Forrest and Lincoln.
I heard Foote read his account of the Lincoln assassination and aftermath one afternoon in the '80s, and you could have heard a pin drop--and some snuffling--in that large auditorium in the Southland.
Charlotte had a wonderful old used book store called Dilworth Books owned by an unreconstructed Confederate named Haze Honeycutt. His collection of Civil War books and memorabilia was worth a visit to the store all by itself, and he had a first edition of Little Black Sambo in pride of place in the glass display case where the cash register sat. Haze told me that comedian Whoopi Goldberg once visited the shop and they had a civilized discussion about the book, which she actually considered purchasing.
Collectibles are an interesting study. One of my grad school profs is a notable B/black historian, whose more-than-hobby is collecting racist knick-knacks--Aunty and Uncle salt and pepper shakers and the like.
I know some people around here who don't like to be called Neo-Confederates. They want to know what the Neo is supposed to mean. Bless their hearts.
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