Basbanes, Nicholas A. Patience & Fortitude: Wherein a Colorful Cast of Determined Book Collectors, Dealers, and Librarians Go About the Quixotic Task of Preserving a Legacy. 2001. Perennial. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.
A long time ago - ten years back, in fact - I wrote a blogpost on The Imaginary Museum about my self-imposed task of compiling an online catalogue of my book collection.
I've tried to keep that catalogue continuously updated ever since (a somewhat Sisyphean labour, but one which does have the advantage of keeping me off the streets). Lately I've discovered the merits of mylar as a protective covering for dust-jackets, so I've had to spend a lot of time over the past few months going systematically from shelf to shelf, mylar-ing everything that looks like it needs it.
It's rather a relief to be on holiday from that job, in fact - my ration is now ten books a day, ever since I managed to put my back out during a mammoth stint of covering the collected works of J. R. R. Tolkien!
We've been staying with Bronwyn's sister and her partner in lovely Pukerua Bay, just north of Wellington, where my parents often used to take us as children. It is, of course, also the home of that paragon of second-hand bookshops, Archway Books:
It seems only appropriate that one of the books I found there was the above tome by that sturdy old rhapsodist of the booktrade, Nicholas A. Basbanes, author of A Gentle Madness (1995), which inspired the title of this very blog.
He has, it would appear, now written eight further books along more or less the same lines, only the first three of which I own:
- Basbanes, Nicholas A. A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books. 1995. With a New Preface. An Owl Book. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1999.
- Basbanes, Nicholas A. Among the Gently Mad: Strategies and Perspectives for the Book Hunter in the Twenty-First Century. 2002. A John MacRae / Owl Book. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003.
'Patience' and 'Fortitude' are, it would appear, the names of the two majestic stone lions outside the New York Public Library:
My main association with these lions is, I must admit, the opening shots of the movie Ghostbusters (1984), which may have had the effect of frightening many viewers off public libraries in general, I fear.
I'm glad to hear that Basbanes is of the opinion that these are the qualities most in evidence among the 'gently mad' - the many, many bibliophiles of his acquaintance. At least one of them, Rolland Comstock, does not agree:
Collecting is very definitely a madness, but there is nothing gentle about it at all. This is hand-to-hand combat. [170]Certainly there's a somewhat feral element to Comstock's way of conducting business. He stalks the authors he's interested in with boxes full of their books, which he then tries to pressure them into signing - generally successfully, it would appear.
I guess it's that element of competition which puts me off large-scale booksales, where hands can reach out in front of your nose to whisk away the book you've been eyeing unless you are somehow able to impose yourself physically between them and it. Once, rather traumatically (though, in retrospect, rather appropriately), this happened to me with a splendid copy of Daniel Defoe's General History of the Pyrates, and I've never quite got over it.
It's for that reason that I prefer the quiet, meditative atmosphere of the classic second-hand or antiquarian bookshop, where the essential job of hunting and collecting has already been done by the proprietor. I don't particularly like to have to fight my way past pseudo-bookloving coffee drinkers, either. 'Always buys lots' was the proud inscription beside my name in the files of a local second-hand bookshop, so I feel that I'm the kind of customer who should be encouraged by canny booksellers. If they fail to do so adequately, that's their loss.
Bronwyn Lloyd: Jack & his loot (Pukerua Bay, 14-1-20)
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- category - Language, Literature & Philosophy: Literature & Philosophy
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