WHILE I CAME TO BOOKSELLING encumbered by some 15 years of failure in almost everything I'd tried, I have since uncovered clues which I now see as clear signs I was headed for my vocation of bookselling for most of my life.

Seeking and finding lost golf balls on the Rosedale Golf Club's course at seven years old was my first introduction to scouting, the pure essence and basis of antiquarian bookselling. Learning poker in the caddy shack at the golf course where I began caddying at eight or nine years old introduced me to gambling, but more importantly, the only form of gambling where applied experience and intelligence are key, and just as in my later book scouting, where the scout's weapons are knowledge, experience, and most important – guts. Later still, an introduction to fishing, another classic parallel to book scouting, again emphasised these same traits so necessary to book hunting. So, I was being prepared for my vocation long before I knew I was born to be a bookseller. Although my greatest youthful passion was the clearest clue to my destiny, for the excitement and passion I received from my constant reading was the bedrock on which everything that came later was constructed. And one of my favourite boasts, that my first actual introduction to bookselling occurred on a boat, the Ward's Island ferry, while true, ignores an earlier attempt, which I'd never thought of as a precursor until recently.

One year, having hitchhiked across America, stopping for a while in San Francisco, then north to Vancouver, I spent many months unable to find any work. It was a period of acute recession and even casual labour was only available for strong experienced men. Every day my pal Don Tough and I went to the employment office, and every day there were huge lineups and we failed to get any work. It was extremely depressing and much more so since our unemployment insurance of $17 a week was insufficient for rent and food. We suffered real poverty and hunger, a good lesson to have very young, but quite painful.

Still, it was a useful introduction to real poverty and hunger, which would prove to be very helpful for the next few years I would spend living in and bumming around Europe. We were so desperate for work we would have taken the lowest form of work, dishwashing, but we couldn't even get that. Any restaurant owner seeing us would know that hiring us would mean we'd leave as soon as we got $20 in our pockets. At least drinkers came every day; they needed that $10 to keep drinking. We lived on peanut butter and Cheez Whiz sandwiches, our sanity sustained by library cards and Stanley Park.

One day coming out of the employment office, rejected again, a man approached us. In spite of everything, we were both always dressed in suits, for the truth was, we didn't have any casual clothes. We had hitchhiked across America in suits and topcoats and later we hitchhiked back across Canada in January dressed the same, an exercise in stupidity probably unequalled in a long life of compounded idiocies. The man wondered if we would like to join his "team.” He was a coordinator for the Encyclopedia Americana which was then peddled door to door. In fact, what he was really doing was scouting the employment office for potential salesmen the way pimps scout the bus terminals of big cities for young runaway girls. Don and I were skeptical about our ability to knock on doors and sell something, but desperation pushed us into accepting. He took our names and directed us to the Americana offices.

The next day we had a two-hour course and were sent out into the streets with our supervisor for practical experience. It is only recently that I realised that this was, in effect, my first job in bookselling. Just as scouting golf balls as a seven-year-old was my real introduction to the ancient art of scouting, so was this my first actual attempt at bookselling. I was a complete failure, lasting only one day. If my father, the banker, was alive to read this he would, of course, state, "Of course you were, you fool. If you'd have listened to me and stayed in insurance, you'd be comfortable now, instead of being surrounded with all that dirty junk you'll never sell."

Our teacher was a pretty good salesman. By the second or third house he talked us inside, where he gently explained to the housewife that he, personally, was in a position to ensure that her children would need not be condemned to a life of ignorant drudgery. He was able to guarantee their success in life by reason of this marvellous treasure, containing the accumulated knowledge of the whole of recorded history, compiled and written by the greatest scholars and professors of the 20 th century. They would be able, for a mere few dollars a month, to save their children from a life of penury. Even then the Americana was, as I remember, around $1,600 to $2,000 complete, but that was never mentioned, only monthly "pennies" were discussed. With subtlety and a slick spiel he led them along as though it was already settled: her children would be rich and famous-all due to her foresight and the great good luck of our stunning offer today.

With the hook in, the focus would then be changed subtly and any innocent protestation about cost, especially final cost, would be treated with barely veiled contempt. "Of course it will cost some money eventually, but if you care more about a few dollars a week than you do about your children's future, if you don't want to spend a few bucks to prepare them for university, to give them this magnificent tool to ensure that they will eventually leave your friends' children far behind as they gain wealth and success, well ... that's your decision. If a few bucks are that important to you, you should forget it – they'll probably do fine as ditch-diggers, or waitresses. They don't really need the greatest accumulation of knowledge, compiled by some of the world's leading scholars. Look at all those credentials after their names." All the literature contained glowing endorsements from professors with multiple initials after their names, everything proving how brilliant they were and how foolish we were to question them.

His spiel, the first time I heard it, was so impressive that I wanted to buy the encyclopedia myself. If I could have, I would have signed the contract. But by the second time you heard his spiel, it didn't appear so attractive, and by the third or fourth repetition, the emotional blackmail, now obvious, was becoming distasteful. We quickly became disillusioned and then sickened at the blatant appeal to snobbery and to our latent sense of inferiority. Soon my pal and I couldn't look our guide in the eye, and he being a super salesman, recognised that easily. By the afternoon it was obvious ...

"I don't think I'll be seeing you fellows tomorrow, will I?" he asked. We nodded sadly, ashamed to be letting him down, ashamed that we were unsuited to be sleazy con men. By the end of the day my career as a door-to-door salesman was finished, my first attempt to be a bookseller a complete failure. I can hear my father saying, "I told you so."

But I did gain permanent gifts from that distasteful experience. The first was not to feel shame about our best instincts. But most importantly, I've never looked at any advertisement again without examining it carefully for the hook: and the hook is almost always there.

And today, you can't even give those magnificent encyclopedias away. They have been rendered worthless by the Internet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-David Mason