The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (top non fiction books of all time txt) đ
- Author: Christopher Morley
- Performer: -
Book online «The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (top non fiction books of all time txt) đ». Author Christopher Morley
Cordially yours, GEORGE CHAPMAN.
âWell?â said Roger, as Mrs. Mifflin made no comment. âDonât you think it will be rather interesting to get a naive young girlâs reactions toward the problems of our tranquil existence?â
âRoger, you blessed innocent!â cried his wife. âLife will no longer be tranquil with a girl of nineteen round the place. You may fool yourself, but you canât fool me. A girl of nineteen doesnât REACT toward things. She explodes. Things donât âreactâ anywhere but in Boston and in chemical laboratories. I suppose you know youâre taking a human bombshell into the arsenal?â
Roger looked dubious. âI remember something in Weir of Hermiston about a girl being âan explosive engine,ââ he said. âBut I donât see that she can do any very great harm round here. Weâre both pretty well proof against shell shock. The worst that could happen would be if she got hold of my private copy of Fireside Conversation in the Age of Queen Elizabeth. Remind me to lock it up somewhere, will you?â
This secret masterpiece by Mark Twain was one of the booksellerâs treasures. Not even Helen had ever been permitted to read it; and she had shrewdly judged that it was not in her line, for though she knew perfectly well where he kept it (together with his life insurance policy, some Liberty Bonds, an autograph letter from Charles Spencer Chaplin, and a snapshot of herself taken on their honeymoon) she had never made any attempt to examine it.
âWell,â said Helen; âTitania or no Titania, if the Corn Cobs want their chocolate cake to-night, I must get busy. Take my suitcase upstairs like a good fellow.â
A gathering of booksellers is a pleasant sanhedrim to attend. The members of this ancient craft bear mannerisms and earmarks just as definitely recognizable as those of the cloak and suit business or any other trade. They are likely to be a littleâ shall we sayâworn at the bindings, as becomes men who have forsaken worldly profit to pursue a noble calling ill rewarded in cash. They are possibly a trifle embittered, which is an excellent demeanour for mankind in the face of inscrutable heaven. Long experience with publishersâ salesmen makes them suspicious of books praised between the courses of a heavy meal.
When a publisherâs salesman takes you out to dinner, it is not surprising if the conversation turns toward literature about the time the last of the peas are being harried about the plate. But, as Jerry Gladfist says (he runs a shop up on Thirty-Eighth Street) the publishersâ salesmen supply a long-felt want, for they do now and then buy one a dinner the like of which no bookseller would otherwise be likely to commit.
âWell, gentlemen,â said Roger as his guests assembled in his little cabinet, âitâs a cold evening. Pull up toward the fire. Make free with the cider. The cakeâs on the table. My wife came back from Boston specially to make it.â
âHereâs Mrs. Mifflinâs health!â said Mr. Chapman, a quiet little man who had a habit of listening to what he heard. âI hope she doesnât mind keeping the shop while we celebrate?â
âNot a bit,â said Roger. âShe enjoys it.â
âI see Tarzan of the Apes is running at the Gissing Street movie palace,â said Gladfist. âGreat stuff. Have you seen it?â
âNot while I can still read The Jungle Book,â said Roger.
âYou make me tired with that talk about literature,â cried Jerry. âA bookâs a book, even if Harold Bell Wright wrote it.â
âA bookâs a book if you enjoy reading it,â amended Meredith, from a big Fifth Avenue bookstore. âLots of people enjoy Harold Bell Wright just as lots of people enjoy tripe. Either of them would kill me. But letâs be tolerant.â
âYour argument is a whole succession of non sequiturs,â said Jerry, stimulated by the cider to unusual brilliance.
âThatâs a long putt,â chuckled Benson, the dealer in rare books and first editions.
âWhat I mean is this,â said Jerry. âWe arenât literary critics. Itâs none of our business to say whatâs good and what isnât. Our job is simply to supply the public with the books it wants when it wants them. How it comes to want the books it does is no concern of ours.â
âYouâre the guy that calls bookselling the worst business in the world,â said Roger warmly, âand youâre the kind of guy that makes it so. I suppose you would say that it is no concern of the bookseller to try to increase the public appetite for books?â
âAppetite is too strong a word,â said Jerry. âAs far as books are concerned the public is barely able to sit up and take a little liquid nourishment. Solid foods donât interest it. If you try to cram roast beef down the gullet of an invalid youâll kill him. Let the public alone, and thank God when it comes round to amputate any of its hard-earned cash.â
âWell, take it on the lowest basis,â said Roger. âI havenât any facts to go uponâ-â
âYou never have,â interjected Jerry.
âBut Iâd like to bet that the Trade has made more money out of Bryceâs American Commonwealth than it ever did out of all Parson Wrightâs books put together.â
âWhat of it? Why shouldnât they make both?â
This preliminary tilt was interrupted by the arrival of two more visitors, and Roger handed round mugs of cider, pointed to the cake and the basket of pretzels, and lit his corncob pipe. The new arrivals were Quincy and Fruehling; the former a clerk in the book department of a vast drygoods store, the latter the owner of a bookshop in the Hebrew quarter of Grand Streetâ one of the best-stocked shops in the city, though little known to uptown booklovers.
âWell,â said Fruehling, his bright dark eyes sparkling above richly tinted cheekbones and bushy beard, âwhatâs the argument?â
âThe usual one,â said Gladfist, grinning, âMifflin confusing merchandise with metaphysics.â
MIFFLINâNot at all. I am simply saying that it is good business to sell only the best.
GLADFISTâWrong again. You must select your stock according to your customers. Ask Quincy here. Would there be any sense in his loading up his shelves with Maeterlinck and Shaw when the department-store trade wants Eleanor Porter and the Tarzan stuff? Does a country grocer carry the same cigars that are listed on the wine card of a Fifth Avenue hotel? Of course not. He gets in the cigars that his trade enjoys and is accustomed to. Bookselling must obey the ordinary rules of commerce.
MIFFLINâA fig for the ordinary rules of commerce! I came over here to Gissing Street to get away from them. My mind would blow out its fuses if I had to abide by the dirty little considerations of supply and demand. As far as I am concerned, supply CREATES demand.
GLADFISTâStill, old chap, you have to abide by the dirty little consideration of earning a living, unless someone has endowed you?
BENSONâOf course my line of business isnât strictly the same as you fellowsâ. But a thought that has often occurred to me in selling rare editions may interest you. The customerâs willingness to part with his money is usually in inverse ratio to the permanent benefit he expects to derive from what he purchases.
MEREDITHâSounds a bit like John Stuart Mill.
BENSONâEven so, it may be true. Folks will pay a darned sight more to be amused than they will to be exalted. Look at the way a man shells out five bones for a couple of theatre seats, or spends a couple of dollars a week on cigars without thinking of it. Yet two dollars or five dollars for a book costs him positive anguish. The mistake you fellows in the retail trade have made is in trying to persuade your customers that books are necessities. Tell them theyâre luxuries. Thatâll get them! People have to work so hard in this life theyâre shy of necessities. A man will go on wearing a suit until itâs threadbare, much sooner than smoke a threadbare cigar.
GLADFISTâNot a bad thought. You know, Mifflin here calls me a material-minded cynic, but by thunder, I think Iâm more idealistic than he is. Iâm no propagandist incessantly trying to cajole poor innocent customers into buying the kind of book I think they ought to buy. When I see the helpless pathos of most of them, who drift into a bookstore without the slightest idea of what they want or what is worth reading, I would disdain to take advantage of their frailty. They are absolutely at the mercy of the salesman. They will buy whatever he tells them to. Now the honourable man, the high-minded man (by which I mean myself) is too proud to ram some shimmering stuff at them just because he thinks they ought to read it. Let the boobs blunder around and grab what they can. Let natural selection operate. I think it is fascinating to watch them, to see their helpless groping, and to study the weird ways in which they make their choice. Usually they will buy a book either because they think the jacket is attractive, or because it costs a dollar and a quarter instead of a dollar and a half, or because they say they saw a review of it. The âreviewâ usually turns out to be an ad. I donât think one book-buyer in a thousand knows the difference.
MIFFLINâYour doctrine is pitiless, base, and false! What would you think of a physician who saw men suffering from a curable disease and did nothing to alleviate their sufferings?
GLADFISTâTheir sufferings (as you call them) are nothing to what mine would be if I stocked up with a lot of books that no one but highbrows would buy. What would you think of a base public that would go past my shop day after day and let the high-minded occupant die of starvation?
MIFFLINâYour ailment, Jerry, is that you conceive yourself as merely a tradesman. What Iâm telling you is that the bookseller is a public servant. He ought to be pensioned by the state. The honour of his profession should compel him to do all he can to spread the distribution of good stuff.
QUINCYâI think you forget how much we who deal chiefly in new books are at the mercy of the publishers. We have to stock the new stuff, a large proportion of which is always punk. Why it is punk, goodness knows, because most of the bum books donât sell.
MIFFLINâAh, that is a mystery indeed! But I can give you a fair reason. First, because there isnât enough good stuff to go round. Second, because of the ignorance of the publishers, many of whom honestly donât know a good book when they see it. It is a matter of sheer heedlessness in the selection of what they intend to publish. A big drug factory or a manufacturer of a well-known jam spends vast sums of money on chemically assaying and analyzing the ingredients that are to go into his medicines or in gathering and selecting the fruit that is to be stewed into jam. And yet they tell me that the most important department of a publishing business, which is the gathering and sampling of manuscripts, is the least considered and the least remunerated. I knew a reader for one publishing house: he was a babe recently out of college who didnât know a book from a frat pin. If a jam factory employs a trained chemist, why isnât it worth a publisherâs while to employ an expert book analyzer? There are some of them. Look at the fellow who runs the Pacific Monthlyâs book business for example! He knows a thing or two.
CHAPMANâI think perhaps
Comments (0)