Inspiring Older Readers
Trafficking in Old Books by Anthony Marshall
To be honest, unless you’re like me and find the whole notion of books, second hand bookshops and second hand book sellers a source of endless fascination, you might think that the world has probably had enough memoirs from that particular section of the community. I think part of the problem with book-seller-memoir overkill is that they all tend to conform to a specific formula and the persona demanded of the bookseller also follows an over-familiar stereotype.
Let me summarize the likely format: slightly damaged, cynically world-weary bookseller looks back on how he (and its always he) stumbled almost by accident into the business. If only he know then what he knows now, he’d never have entered such a business and if you, gentle reader have any sense, you’d keep away from it all no matter how romantic the notion of owning a bookshop seems. Endlessly and knowingly self-deprecating, the author finds as many ways as possible of telling you just how much more they know about books (and the world in general) than you do. There’s a ritual slagging off of the customer and other booksellers or book scouts – all of them existing, it would seem, simply to annoy the gallant bookman.
In my experience of these memoirs, the one thing that is nearly always absent is any sense of a love for or appreciation of the books they deal in.
OK. That might be a bit harsh but it’s always puzzled me why it is that so many book dealers seem to dislike, or at the very least, have no sense of feeling for or understanding of the contents of the very things they make a living out of selling. So many of them don’t actually seem to read themselves. Weird, if you ask me. And why set yourself up as a merchant who lives to buy and sell when you dislike all your customers? Again, weird.
I’ve come to the conclusion that actually it’s all a façade and that most of this diluted bile is constructed to fit a specific public image. I think there’s a good chance that many of them actually love their profession but want to make sure lots of other people don’t get the idea it’s such a good number in case they get crowded out of the market.
Anthony Marshall’s memoir of bookshop life, Trafficking in Old Books, was published in 1998 and has quite a lot of the above characteristics but must be one of the longer and more thorough ones. Marshall, born British, started his life as a bookman in the UK but got the chance to try his hand at it in Australia; specifically, Melbourne. Shortly before the book was published, Marshall became an Australian citizen.
This book is a collation of his monthly contribution to a periodical called Australian Book Collector and pretty exhaustively covers just about every conceivable aspect of working in the book trade – except one. This is an almost encyclopaedic catalogue of a retail environment, mostly told in detail and with a tongue firmly tucked into the cheek, but I am completely unable to tell you why he loves books or what books he loves. I know how his shop worked but I’ve no idea what he had in his shop. Which books did he love to handle and why? I have no idea.
I would guess that Mr Marshall would make a good person to sit down and have a cup of tea with. I bet his repertoire is packed with bookish anecdotes but I would be concerned that none of those stories would be about the contents of what he sold or their aesthetic qualities.
Maybe I do him a disservice – perhaps he’s just found himself trapped inside the ‘bookseller memoir’ and he’s not thought to break free of that. His original audience would have been his peers in the business and just maybe that doesn’t always translate to those of us who love the books not as items for sale but as books to read and love.
Terry Potter
April 2020.