Honest Joe

Drumming up Business

By Joe McCann

Who in their right mind is planning to open a bookshop anymore?

Having been continually and comprehensively out-thesaurused by my colleague of the Quill and master of the monosyllable, Ed Maggs, I am not even going to begin to take up the cudgels. I may have nicked the alliteration leg, but there is really no need to maintain a stack of reference books within easy reach when perusing my own drivelling discourse. Still, don’t you just hate those ‘just back from a dinner with Elton John at Gordon Ramsay’ columns that simply consist of a namedropping inventory of social events attended by the scribe? No? Okay, here we go then. I am just back from the Bath Book Fair which was – for the most part – bereft of customers, but made all the more tolerable by a couple of post-match hasty halves with fellow exhibitors Steve Liddle and Graham York, who both just happen to be mighty titans of the toms (ie drummers). We exchanged diverse stories of how we all emerged in the book trade when we really should be engaged in relentless world tours and telling our assistants that we are not available when Elton keeps phoning. The highlight of the fair was the snaffling of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nilein its scarce dustjacket; the book had changed hands before it had even been placed upon the unfolded shelves of the vendor. After a Rooneyesque* celebratory run of the perimeter of the Bath Assembly Rooms, David Miles of The Canterbury Bookshop kindly offered me a tantalising glimpse and it was a charming copy indeed, with its only blemish – if one were to be disagreeably pedantic – being a small piece missing on the upper wrapper. Much discussion then ensued on whether restoration should be attempted, but we both felt that such peripheral damage might actually add to the allure of the book, giving it a veneer of authenticity in the face of a worrying onslaught of facsimile dustwrappers. Indeed, in its recent April bulletin, the ABA

announced that its members ‘… must mark all facsimile dustwrappers indelibly and that marking must be clearly visible in normal light’ and that ‘facsimile dust wrappers may not be exhibited at ABA book fairs’. (See ‘Letter from America’, page 32.) For a whole two days before the Bath fair, I stoically sat in the old Tithe Barn at Southam in Gloucestershire for the sale of the stock of Alan & Joan Tucker’s bookshop in Stroud. Many decent titles were scattered enticingly among job lots, with one bidder exclaiming that they were extraordinary value for anyone planning to open a bookshop. But who in their right mind is planning to open a bookshop anymore? Tucked into a literary periodical at the sale was a flyer from 1960 for one such bookshop in Oxford. Robert Maxwell & Co modestly offer ‘The world’s most significant new books supplied from stock’, ‘Top-quality stationery’ and ‘excellent coffee and refreshments’. The infamous Maxwell went on to build an international media and publishing empire and then mysteriously drowned off the Canary Islands in 1991 before it was made public that he had been pilfering staff pension funds to finance further acquisitions, as well as indulging in other mammoth misdemeanours. Not the least of these was heralding the eventual collapse of Oxford United Football Club, where on Saturday I was present to witness their demotion from the Football League. Elton John plays the stadium in July. Meanwhile, I’m off to strain the spuds. *Wayne Rooney: Soccer player for Manchester United and the England national team. Recently suffered a broken metatarsal (one of five long bones of the foot), thereby (very probably) consigning England’s chances of winning the World Cup to the bin. In common with James Joyce, he was educated by The Christian Brothers.

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