This past week we participated in a bookseller’s panel with the University of Guelph. The topic was “How to Start a Book Collection”. Four other dealers were there, including the ever bright Rebecca Romney of Type Punch Matrix. Our task was to boil down the sometimes intimidating world of Rare Book Collecting into an approachable and exciting list of steps for the students.
As booksellers, we did our best. Ordered lists of steps isn’t necessarily our thing. Mainly we told personal stories of the trade and shared anecdotal information. What kind of folks shop at our store? What sort of things do they collect? How did they start out in the business? How did WE start out in the business? Jason resisted telling his own origin-myth involving a bookshop opened by a friend’s Dad on Clarence Street in 199(9?) with race track winnings, the back room where he wrote his first chapbook, and the irritating stairs you had to climb to get to the shop. (It was on the second floor above Berkana Salon). Mostly, we shared stories of our and our customers’ uncontainable enthusiasm over the weird treasures we find.
That was the thesis of the panel for sure, ENTHUSIASM IN BOOK COLLECTING.
We shared stories of shopping at Sam the Record Man in downtown London, and how the community of vinyl collectors turned us on to amazing music we could not find otherwise in 90’s London. We talked about the obsessions of our best customers, people whose collections are organized around themes like “sleep”, “bizarre unforgotten movies” or, one of our favourites, “stories retold by secondary characters.” We mentioned the sensitive attention paid to the works of Edward Gorey by one customer, or the soulmate-like compassion another has for misunderstood monsters.
Rebecca distinguished collectors from readers by stating that if someone works towards the larger, collective imagination by preserving these artifacts, by saving them from obscurity or destruction, then they participate in a great tradition of weirdos (our word) collecting the coolest things (again, our word) for themselves and the future.That’s some good panel content.
The whole talk left us invigorated. To have a discussion grounded in and focused on the — at times — lonely pursuit of enthusiastic book collecting renewed our excitement about what we do. We thought of some of the great collections in our own city, of the archives, museums and libraries we sell books to. We though of artifacts held in our local and national museums, which were often begun by uncontrollable amateurs who were JUST INTO stuff like rocks. They were REALLY INTO rocks. Western University Library’s own collection was begun by a donation from successful private collector, John Davis Barnett.
The collective memory of art, and, in our opinion, the collective memory of ordinary life, strange passions, untold stories, and beauty itself, is left to vanish if SOMEONE doesn’t say, you know, these old b-movie starts are dying. Maybe we should interview them? Maybe we should collect their stories, histories, props, manuscripts, ephemera, and somehow get a sense of the Spirit of the Thing.
So to those who burst through our door proclaiming, “I need a copy of Watership Down, the one with the compass on it!” or “Vonnegut please, HARDCOVER ONLY!” we salute you. Books are not manuscripts. They are books, a beautiful object seeded by manuscripts. If no one cares for them, they’re gone to grass.
All the best,
Jason and Vanessa
