PLAGUES APLENTY
Published in Amphora, Number 186.The coronavirus plague we continue to deal with has changed all of our lives. It has now become clear that many of these changes are going to be permanent. Many of us have found that current events bring into focus what is most important in our lives, sometimes surprising us. All my older friends name the same thing when asked what they most miss: siting in cafés and restaurants with old friends, eating and drinking and talking. I myself hadn't realised how central this normal activity was to my emotional and intellectual life until I lost it.
Due to a dangerous lung condition, I am completely locked down, paying the price for my youthful sins (none of which I regret, no mater how dumb some of them might have been), so I try to maintain contact, mostly chatting over the phone, but it's not nearly the same.
Of course, for book people—which at my age means almost all my friends—there is another central activity we sorely miss: going to book shops and spending hours surrounded by those objects so central to our entire lives—books. Browsing books, new and ancient, chatting with the booksellers and other browsers, overhearing interesting conversations about any subject under the sun, seeing and buying books we needed badly but weren't aware existed—all the serendipitous things that every book lover has experienced since they learned to read at five or six years of age and have taken for granted ever since. Now, with the loss of bookshops and access to libraries, we realise just how great is our loss and what it is costing us in terms both tangible and intangible (except for those of us who have always bought far too many books and still have large reserves of unread ones).
Of course, we booksellers had known for quite a while about the death of so many bookshops due to the cyber-plague and the disappearance of the cheap slums in the centres of the world's cities where used bookshops traditionally were located, and which preceded this real plague. We have witnessed closer than most the disappearance of bookstores—new and used—in most cities of the world. Only France, that I know of, has made some provision to protect bookshops, the French being aware of their importance. Toronto's Queen Street, which once housed between 20 and 30 bookshops on its length, now has one or two. Myself, I am now in a basement office nearby, against all economic common sense, only because I refuse to concede. But even that will be over soon, for without negotiation our lease has not been extended past the current term, and in another year or so we're done here.
So, while booksellers had long been given advance economic notice of what's in store for us, now it's become starkly obvious what we're all losing.
But more importantly, what earlier seemed significant to booksellers alone, now has become a sign of changes to book collecting as an important civilised activity, which affects not just all the book arts but our whole book culture.
Those of us involved in every aspect of the book arts emerged from the same source, and we share one central passion—the book as an object. We necessarily began as readers but many of us at some point evolved from a simple passion for reading to an interest in the means of conveyance. From interest only in the message—that shock with which the printed word conveys so much to the human mind—many of us became fascinated with the object which conveys such a wonderous gift.
As a young man I lived in Morocco for a while, and one of that society's most exciting events was when the storyteller came to town. Large crowds appeared immediately, sitting in rapt circles while the storyteller enthralled everyone, from children to the elderly, everyone captured by the magic of storytelling. Thus, I experienced the true beginnings, for it all started from the story. Books, theatre, television, and movies are all only the means to pass on the story. And now, no matter our sophistication, it is still the same. The illustrator, the designer, the bookbinder, the publisher, all are really trying to do the same thing: enhance the means of telling the story, inflame our minds and pass on the fruits of our amazing human imagination, and engage us in the myths which brought us here and which invite us onward.
If it starts from that same source, then, anything which threatens any part of the sequence also threatens the substance.
I now clearly see the imminent danger to one of the necessary components in the whole sequence—the used bookshop. The used and rare bookshop is different from the new bookstore, but I shall concentrate here on the used and rare. The problems now for new bookstores are equally severe, just different, but I am most concerned here with the used bookshop's closer attachment to all the book arts. I've been studying it now for years, ever since the Internet appeared, promising so much, but, like the insidious curse of alcohol and drugs, in the end threatening to steal everything. Like the famous robber who went to the banks because that's where the money was, so do all the book arts converge in the bookshop. The designer, the illustrator, the writer, and the editor, the fine printer, and the binder—and most importantly to my mind, the book collector—all at some point graduate from the library and need to seek out the bookshops. That is where they will learn. Book people, I believe, are born as such, but as in all aesthetic pursuits they must be educated, and I believe we mostly have to educate ourselves. There are some schools and some apprenticeships, but mostly sophistication must be self-acquired. And most of it, I have come to believe, must be obtained in used bookshops.
I spent my childhood in libraries, then discovered bookshops, but it wasn't until I started an apprenticeship in a bookshop, and then went on to own one myself, that I was introduced to the subtleties and intricacies of the art of the book. The most important discovery I made was what book collecting is, and its true importance, and what it confers on a society.
I spent my first 30 years as a bookseller with my nose to the grindstone, trying to pay the rent. While it was great fun, and “a wonderful way to make not much of a living,” as my old boss and mentor Jerry Sherlock (Joseph Patrick) used to say, it was a constant struggle. Now, I've spent the last 20 years looking back at just how exciting it all was, and more so, just how important it was even though I had barely noticed while I was experiencing it.
My errors, the worst ones being sins of omission, were in not recognising possibilities and misunderstanding the importance of what can only be understood with much experience. The serious errors were caused by not recognising how short a time we have, and consequently failing to explore whole areas of the book world until I was too old to have time to properly learn from those explorations. Whole areas, like illustration, fine printing and several other subjects I am now passionate about I neglected, and now I lack the time to gain the great pleasures which true sophistication convey. Now, I preach to my younger colleagues and clients the lessons of my neglect, so that they might profit—if they are smart enough to pay attention—so that their collecting future might unfold more easily.
After all, that's why we read books and why we write them: to pass on our experience, so those who come after can profit from our errors and avoid our stupidities. And hopefully take us deeper, more quickly, into the wonders of the truth and beauty which books provide.
-David Mason