"Is that because the job breeds a certain cynicism into you, or is it that morose, unsociable, shabby people are drawn to the trade?"
Dennis Duncan, author of “Index, A History of the,” asks Shaun Bythell, in "What’s it like to own a bookstore in our digitized age? Shaun Bythell, owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland, discusses his new book, 'Remainders of the Day,' and the highs and lows of his job" (WaPo).
Bythell says the job breeds it into you — "It does wear you down."
You'd think that a person attracted to a life among the books would feel joy from this environment. We're told Bythell studied law but decided he didn't want "a conventional life." After a series of "really crummy jobs," he stumbled into buy some guy's bookshop.
This is Bythell's 3rd book. You can buy all 3 — "Remainders Of The Day," "Seven Kinds Of People You Find In Bookshops," "The Diary Of A Bookseller" — packaged together, here.
Here's the morose, shabby Bythell presenting his book:
Posts
29 comments:
The sort of person best suited to running a bookstore isn't one attracted to a life among the books-- it's one attracted to a life running a small business.
In NYC there are (were?) lots of people who peddle books from sidewalk tables. Amazon (Netflix?) has a documentary on them. Interesting business, interesting people.
There is also a doco on the rare book business that's pretty good.
Sorry, forget the names of both. Maybe someone knows?
John Henry
George Orwell wrote a pretty good novel about an English bookshop in the 30s.
Keep the aspidistra flying.
Worth reading as is orwell entire, voluminous, body of work
John Henry
What a great book title lmao.
Says it all, really.
That description fits every used-book store owner I've ever known.
The article should have been published in the New Yorker so that we could get illustrations of morose, unsociable, shabby booksellers by Ed Koren or Roz Chast.
Looking back, at least the Maytag repairman spared us the $70 three book trilogy.
I love books, but I would never buy a book shop or sell books even online. Why? Because its not about selling good books, books you like, its about selling books to Stupid Sally Q. Public.
Right now, the big craze seems to be "Young adult" books. Why people are buying these, instead of just giving their teen/kids adult books is beyond me. That's what we did. You're much better off just filling that gap between reading children's books and reading adult books with nothing. Let 'em go out and get some fresh air.
There's the rare books dealers and the used bookstore dealers, some crossover between the two, but (I think) very different occupations. There's a decent doc on TV somewhere, although the name escapes me at the moment. I think perhaps they have something in common with typewriter folks.
Booksellers used to be cheerfully shabby, hanging out with others who read books, too. Now conversations about "books" by which people seem to mean adult fiction, Harlequin romance and ghost-written biographies, turn my thoughts to such poems as Mac Flecknoe. I suppose booksellers plunge into the morass every day and that's why they are morose. They can hardly suggest that their customers learn what literature is and come back when they know.
"All human things are subject to decay,
And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long:
In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute
Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute.
This aged prince now flourishing in peace,
And blest with issue of a large increase,
Worn out with business, did at length debate
To settle the succession of the State:
And pond'ring which of all his sons was fit
To reign, and wage immortal war with wit;
Cry'd, 'tis resolv'd; for nature pleads that he
Should only rule, who most resembles me:
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dullness from his tender years.
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he
Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray,
His rising fogs prevail upon the day:"
Sounds a bit like those Orwell called the "Shabby Genteel" in 'Road to Wigan Pier', those trying to present a middle class lifestyle on a working class salary. They are forever short as they try to live above their income so as to not appear a part of their working class neighbors.
Get a haircut. You look silly.
But maybe it's a wig. That would make sense.
morose, unsociable shabbiness is a pretty good description of a the Scottish National character.
"But maybe it's a wig...."
He's in Wigtown, which we are told is Scotland’s official “Booktown.”
My working assumption (which of course should be everyone's) is that the percentage of morosity among booksellers is in the same range as the morosity of lawyers, ministers, bloggers, and tree surgeons.
I know two people who cheerfully purchased failing independent book stores out of a sense of cultural responsibility. Both had enough money to stand the relatively small annual losses. Another old acquaintance , an energetic, creative sort, opened an independent book store in upstate NY and has turned it into a reasonable livelihood via marketing flair, building strong customer relationships, being active in the community, and bringing people in with well promoted events. She also had the good sense to marry a successful man, which was helpful during economic downturns. After doing it for three decades, her challenge is finding the right successor. Had there been no Amazon, of course, she would be quite wealthy. Oh well, no need to get all morose about it.
A friend of mine used to own a bookstore right next to the Farmer's Market on Capitol Hill in DC. He was cheerfully shabby and much beloved. He suddenly and shockingly died of a heart attack. At least 400 people attended his funeral, including many customers. He decided to open a bookstore because he owned so many books, there was barely room to turn around in his apartment. But he had to keep his 9-5 job to make a living. He hired friends who were between jobs to cover for him when he wasn't able to be there - he always seemed to find people.
My favorite Bill story: A man came into the bookstore looking for Terry Southern books. Bill said he didn't have any and added that he had never been a fan of Southern's work. The man said "I'm Terry Southern."
https://www.capitolhillbooks-dc.com/about.php
he's shabby alright
As a retired antiquarian bookseller, I can say that most shops offered "Rare, Scarce and Used", whatever we could get our hands on.
The internet has killed the market for "bread and butter" books that kept smaller shops going. Now you can find almost anything by going on-line to Abebooks.com or other sites. Brick and mortar shops are a dying breed. Harvard Square used to have a dozen covering all ends of the market. I think only one survives today.
The arrival of on-line book search engines also meant that smaller sellers had to learn how to handle PCs, write detailed descriptions of their offerings, and upload them using specialized software programs. Many couldn't make the transition.
As for rarer stuff, Google and others have been digitizing thousands of titles for the past twenty years, so if content is what you're after---and not a 'Collectible'---you'll likely find it on-line w/o having to incur a huge expense or schlep to a big library.
Being a high-end dealer could also be a high-stress occupation. Read the biography of H.P Krauss, who bought and sold such rarities as Gutenberg bibles, and you'll learn more than you'd have liked about his colitis flare-ups as he negotiated big sales.
(Once, he was in the final stags of selling a million-dollar rarity to a big university, when another dealer put into play a virtually-identical copy. Oy! Where is my Metamucil!!)
Auctions and major book shows were the best part of the business, as you got to meet all sorts of sellers, many attracted to the business by their intellectual curiosity. Sure, there were curmudgeons and cranks (one guy in Portsmouth, NH used to charge $5 to enter his junk-filled shop), but on the whole few were as unsociable, morose and shabby as he.
Many were delightful people.
What's more, book collectors are a fascinating lot, filled with enthusiasm when speaking about their "finds" and disappointments. (Booksellers have their own disappointments: I once missed out spotting a copy of "The Double Helix", signed by author James Watson and Francis Crick, offered at a bookfair for $125!!)
It was fun while it lasted.
That's the private sector counterpart to rare book and archive collections at universities, which certainly attract their share of the shabby and morose on both sides of the service desk.
I wonder what he had to offer the Somme tourists.
Black Books is one of the funniest British comedy series ever made. It's not so much about selling books as refusing to sell them. Can't recommend it highly enough.
Barnes & Noble is now profitable and will open 30 new stores in 23.
Someone is reading books and I'm happy to see it.
Unfortunately for B&N, not me. I continue my 65 year streak of 2 books a week. But on kindle. Paper books are just a monster pain in the ass to discover, buy, have available and read.
Life is too short to screw around with paper books.
Sorry, B&N. You know, I used to love you but it's all over now.
John Henry
Then Althouse invited us to buy his books
On Amazon dot com
Without hesitation
Or signs of remorse
Barnes and Noble is making a comeback, apparently.
I'll also agree with Tina Trent a2 2:52PM, 'Black Books' is a great, quirky, British comedy. Watched it three times, now.
Kevin@432PM--
Just say no.
I used to get dozens of rare and antiquarian dealer catalogs at work--maybe some from effinayright, who knows?--but money was so tight I couldn't waste time looking at most of them.
There were a handful of stores and private dealers here that were worth hearing from occasionally but . . .
I was able to make some nice additions to the collection(s) but never could have assembled the original core of regional materials the way Dewey Pruitt did in the '60s.
Wigtown is the book capital of Scotland, but more important for me is where my maternal forebears, the Mcbride, came from prior to moving to the American colonies in the late 1600s or so. I spent a lot of time there a few months ago in my VR Quest 2 app walking aroumd
Grahamm Linehan is one of the creators of Black Books. I was waiting to see it mentioned here. He also created Father Ted. If you do not know it, you should.
"Booksellers used to be cheerfully shabby, hanging out with others who read books, too. Now conversations about "books" by which people seem to mean adult fiction, Harlequin romance and ghost-written biographies"
Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying suggests that this has been the case since at least the early Twentieth Century.
I am so glad that two commentators have mentioned the great British comedy series Blackbooks (link is to a 4 min YT montage).
Morose, unsociable, shabby is the perfect description of Bernard Black:
Bernard: What do they want from me?
Manny: They want to buy books
Bernard: But why ME? Why do they come to me?
The part where he pays a customer to take the books away rather than selling them - because it's all too painful to sell them and then buy them and have to sort them and put them on the shelves ... so that the whole awful process can begin again.... - is one of the better pithy descriptions of capitalism I've seen.
I bought a couple of books at a local second hand bookstore- leaned over to put the money on the desk, proprietor sitting behind it He is not wearing pants, just a small towel over his lap. A medical situation, I believe, but still…
Another bookshop (in the US) had timber braces on about half the cases, spanning across the aisles. Made browsing a challenge. The weight of the books was bringing them down and he was fighting gravity, valiantly.
Post a Comment