The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (top non fiction books of all time txt) đ
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MIFFLINâAs far as I have been able to observe, making money is the easiest thing in the world. All you have to do is to turn out an honest product, something that the public needs. Then you have to let them know that you have it, and teach them that they need it. They will batter down your front door in their eagerness to get it. But if you begin to hand them gold bricks, if you begin to sell them books built like an apartment house, all marble front and all brick behind, youâre cutting your own throat, or rather cutting your own pocket, which is the same thing.
MEREDITHâI think Mifflinâs right. You know the kind of place our shop is: a regular Fifth Avenue store, all plate glass front and marble columns glowing in the indirect lighting like a birchwood at full moon. We sell hundreds of dollarsâ worth of bunkum every day because people ask for it; but I tell you we do it with reluctance. Itâs rather the custom in our shop to scoff at the book-buying public and call them boobs, but they really want good booksâ the poor souls donât know how to get them. Still, Jerry has a certain grain of truth to his credit. I get ten times more satisfaction in selling a copy of Newtonâs The Amenities of Book-Collecting than I do in selling a copy ofâwell, Tarzan; but itâs poor business to impose your own private tastes on your customers. All you can do is to hint them along tactfully, when you get a chance, toward the stuff that counts.
QUINCYâYou remind me of something that happened in our book department the other day. A flapper came in and said she had forgotten the name of the book she wanted, but it was something about a young man who had been brought up by the monks. I was stumped. I tried her with The Cloister and the Hearth and Monastery Bells and Legends of the Monastic Orders and so on, but her face was blank. Then one of the salesgirls overheard us talking, and she guessed it right off the bat. Of course it was Tarzan.
MIFFLINâYou poor simp, there was your chance to introduce her to Mowgli and the bandar-log.
QUINCYâTrueâI didnât think of it.
MIFFLINâIâd like to get you fellowsâ ideas about advertising. There was a young chap in here the other day from an advertising agency, trying to get me to put some copy in the papers. Have you found that it pays?
FRUEHLINGâIt always paysâsomebody. The only question is, does it pay the man who pays for the ad?
MEREDITHâWhat do you mean?
FRUEHLINGâDid you ever consider the problem of what I call tangential advertising? By that I mean advertising that benefits your rival rather than yourself? Take an example. On Sixth Avenue there is a lovely delicatessen shop, but rather expensive. Every conceivable kind of sweetmeat and relish is displayed in the brightly lit window. When you look at that window it simply makes your mouth water. You decide to have something to eat. But do you get it there? Not much! You go a little farther down the street and get it at the Automat or the Crystal Lunch. The delicatessen fellow pays the overhead expense of that beautiful food exhibit, and the other man gets the benefit of it. Itâs the same way in my business. Iâm in a factory district, where people canât afford to have any but the best books. (Meredith will bear me out in saying that only the wealthy can afford the poor ones.) They read the book ads in the papers and magazines, the ads of Meredithâs shop and others, and then they come to me to buy them. I believe in advertising, but I believe in letting someone else pay for it.
MIFFLINâI guess perhaps I can afford to go on riding on Meredithâs ads. I hadnât thought of that. But I think I shall put a little notice in one of the papers some day, just a little card saying
PARNASSUS AT HOME GOOD BOOKS BOUGHT AND SOLD THIS SHOP IS HAUNTED
It will be fun to see what come-back I get.
QUINCYâThe book section of a department store doesnât get much chance to enjoy that tangential advertising, as Fruehling calls it. Why, when our interior decorating shark puts a few volumes of a pirated Kipling bound in crushed oilcloth or a copy of âKnock-kneed Stories,â into the window to show off a Louis XVIII boudoir suite, display space is charged up against my department! Last summer he asked me for âsomething by that Ring fellow, I forget the name,â to put a punchy finish on a layout of porch furniture. I thought perhaps he meant Wagnerâs Nibelungen operas, and began to dig them out. Then I found he meant Ring Lardner.
GLADFISTâThere you are. I keep telling you bookselling is an impossible job for a man who loves literature. When did a bookseller ever make any real contribution to the worldâs happiness?
MIFFLINâDr. Johnsonâs father was a bookseller.
GLADFISTâYes, and couldnât afford to pay for Samâs education.
FRUEHLINGâThereâs another kind of tangential advertising that interests me. Take, for instance, a Coles Phillips painting for some brand of silk stockings. Of course the high lights of the picture are cunningly focussed on the stockings of the eminently beautiful lady; but there is always something else in the pictureâan automobile or a country house or a Morris chair or a parasolâwhich makes it just as effective an ad for those goods as it is for the stockings. Every now and then Phillips sticks a book into his paintings, and I expect the Fifth Avenue book trade benefits by it. A book that fits the mind as well as a silk stocking does the ankle will be sure to sell.
MIFFLINâYou are all crass materialists. I tell you, books are the depositories of the human spirit, which is the only thing in this world that endures. What was it Shakespeare saidâ
Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhymeâ
By the bones of the Hohenzollerns, he was right! And wait a minute! Thereâs something in Carlyleâs Cromwell that comes back to me.
He ran excitedly out of the room, and the members of the Corn Cob fraternity grinned at each other. Gladfist cleaned his pipe and poured out some more cider. âHeâs off on his hobby,â he chuckled. âI love baiting him.â
âSpeaking of Carlyleâs Cromwell,â said Fruehling, âthatâs a book I donât often hear asked for. But a fellow came in the other day hunting for a copy, and to my chagrin I didnât have one. I rather pride myself on keeping that sort of thing in stock. So I called up Brentanoâs to see if I could pick one up, and they told me they had just sold the only copy they had. Somebody must have been boosting Thomas! Maybe heâs quoted in Tarzan, or somebody has bought up the film rights.â
Mifflin came in, looking rather annoyed.
âHereâs an odd thing,â he said. âI know damn well that copy of Cromwell was on the shelf because I saw it there last night. Itâs not there now.â
âThatâs nothing,â said Quincy. âYou know how people come into a second-hand store, see a book they take a fancy to but donât feel like buying just then, and tuck it away out of sight or on some other shelf where they think no one else will spot it, but theyâll be able to find it when they can afford it. Probably someoneâs done that with your Cromwell.â
âMaybe, but I doubt it,â said Mifflin. âMrs. Mifflin says she didnât sell it this evening. I woke her up to ask her. She was dozing over her knitting at the desk. I guess sheâs tired after her trip.â
âIâm sorry to miss the Carlyle quotation,â said Benson. âWhat was the gist?â
âI think Iâve got it jotted down in a notebook,â said Roger, hunting along a shelf. âYes, here it is.â He read aloud:
âThe works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of Heroism, what of Eternal Light was in a Man and his Life, is with very great exactness added to the Eternities, remains forever a new divine portion of the Sum of Things.
âNow, my friends, the bookseller is one of the keys in that universal adding machine, because he aids in the cross-fertilization of men and books. His delight in his calling doesnât need to be stimulated even by the bright shanks of a Coles Phillips picture.
âRoger, my boy,â said Gladfist, âyour innocent enthusiasm makes me think of Tom Dalyâs favourite story about the Irish priest who was rebuking his flock for their love of whisky. âWhisky,â he said, âis the bane of this congregation. Whisky, that steals away a manâs brains. Whisky, that makes you shoot at landlordsâand not hit them!â Even so, my dear Roger, your enthusiasm makes you shoot at truth and never come anywhere near it.â
âJerry,â said Roger, âyou are a upas tree. Your shadow is poisonous!â
âWell, gentlemen,â said Mr. Chapman, âI know Mrs. Mifflin wants to be relieved of her post. I vote we adjourn early. Your conversation is always delightful, though I am sometimes a bit uncertain as to the conclusions. My daughter is going to be a bookseller, and I shall look forward to hearing her views on the business.â
As the guests made their way out through the shop, Mr. Chapman drew Roger aside. âItâs perfectly all right about sending Titania?â he asked.
âAbsolutely,â said Roger. âWhen does she want to come?â
âIs to-morrow too soon?â
âThe sooner the better. Weâve got a little spare room upstairs that she can have. Iâve got some ideas of my own about furnishing it for her. Send her round to-morrow afternoon.â
The first pipe after breakfast is a rite of some importance to seasoned smokers, and Roger applied the flame to the bowl as he stood at the bottom of the stairs. He blew a great gush of strong blue reek that eddied behind him as he ran up the flight, his mind eagerly meditating the congenial task of arranging the little spare room for the coming employee. Then, at the top of the steps, he found that his pipe had already gone out. âWhat with filling my pipe and emptying it, lighting it and relighting it,â he thought, âI donât seem to get much time for the serious concerns of life. Come to think of it, smoking, soiling dishes and washing them, talking and listening to other people talk, take up most of life anyway.â
This theory rather pleased him, so he ran downstairs again to tell it to Mrs. Mifflin.
âGo along and get that room fixed up,â she said, âand donât try to palm off any bogus doctrines on me so early in the morning. Housewives have no time for philosophy after breakfast.â
Roger thoroughly enjoyed himself in the task of preparing the guest-room for the new assistant. It was a small chamber at the back of the second storey, opening on to a narrow passage that connected through a door with the gallery of the bookshop. Two small windows commanded a view of the modest roofs of that quarter of Brooklyn, roofs that conceal so many brave hearts, so many baby carriages, so many cups of bad coffee, and so many cartons of the Chapman prunes.
âBy the way,â he
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