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| Photos of vintage Christmas Post Cards by Suzanne Currie |
HOW AND WHY DOES A FELLOW LIKE ME GET A GIG AS A SECOND HAND BOOK SELLER - AND FULFILLED ALL THAT NEEDED TO BE FULFILLED TO COMPLETE THE LIFE MISSION
A PREAMBLE TO TOAY’S POST
BY TED CURRIE
Think about how interesting it would have been, while tending a small, no frills bookshop, to have had the pleasure of greeting authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemmingway, or James Jouycs. Amongst so many other poets and writers of plays and, of course, non-fiction, and have had the rare opportunity of talking with them for awhile, trying to fully appreciate your audience and what it would mean on the grand scale; but then, it would not have been grander than this scenario. I have spent years and years reading and pondering what this type of meeting would mean to a still starving and dreaming writer like me. I have looked at these possibilities, of meeting today’s contemporary authors, knowing that I would, in the main book room of our Gravenhurst antique shop, feel the comfort of so much literature around me, but most definitely feel inadequate when thinking about their individual milestones and publishing credits. That mixture of jealousy and regret, that I never amounted to the successes of each, even though I have lived the writer’s life since the late 1970’s. I’ve been an admirer of good books and fine authors for just about as long, and while both ambitions have kept me gainfully employed for all rhea rims, I would undoubtedly be tongue-tied if an established national or international author stopped by the shop for a little look-about. I suppose it’s the reason I have become so imbedded in old and used books, and the book industry generally, seeing as it allows me access to this inner circle of authors, even as I dwell on the outside edge of the same circle trying to make the final years of writing more fruitful than the first forty years as a journeyman writer. It’s not that I mind this, because it gets the job done, and I’ve enjoyed lots of front page bylines over the years in the newspaper profession, but there is always something irritating, to have written twelve “War and Peace” length feature and news material, that has all been published in one forum or another, yet never once having a book publisher approach me waving a contact in my very surprised face. I don’t feel sorry for myself necessarily, but it does help a great deal, to at least me involved in the book selling business, despite the dim hope that I would one day like to be the author of, well, a best seller would be nice. I have published books but on my own dime, and I still have a few thousand left over should there ever be a great new demand for my work. Being involved in the promotion of the work of other writers is still amazingly satisfying, and my mentor in print, beyond Canadian book seller, Dora Hood, is the revered bookshop proprietor, Adrienne Monnnier, whose biography I have quoted in the next three posts about the joy and triumphs of this dutiful and inspiring book dealer, writers, and friend of the artists of France and beyond from the period before the First World War to the Second; defying the very great odds of success as a book vendor, and the difficulty at times, of her friendships with poets and novelists, who very much needed her free-flowing encouragement and promotion, to pad their own successes.
At this time of the year, I am most likely to seek out my beat-up old copy of her biography, because it validates what we do as book sellers; and the fringe benefits we get daily inn a book shop, representing their best efforts at literature. It is a wonderful feeling to be surrounded by the work of so many talented authors, in so many fields of literature, fiction, non-fictions, and poetry, and I suppose it has been pondered now and again, that if one dwells long enough in such a cultural environs, it surely, one day, would rub-off on the attendee. In some ways, I know it has, but it takes a revisit to Monnier’s Paris book shop, from long ago, to once again drink in that most nurturing atmosphere of literary accomplishment, art and all the companion patina of cultural richness; especially appealing to a fellow like me, who would so greatly benefit from meeting even a few of the authors I have come to represent in our own small book shop, attached to a longstanding antique business. I do like both sides of the business, but I must admit, that in my senior years as a retailer, I much prefer buying and selling old books, and representing, to the best of my ability, all the great authors of antiquity, and equally, the hugely talented authors of contemporary times, who are still turning out best selling titles. Sure, like the ones I would like to author, one day, before I’m pushing up daisies.
All this Christmas season, even amidst the Covid limitations, not to mention the outright fear of the fourth wave of the pandemic, I will enjoy seeing the curious folks coming into the shop (in smaller numbers of course, due to restrictions), and feeling somewhat the same as I do, and the good vibes that good books inevitably provide, if that is, you truly enjoy settling down on a cold winter’s day with an interesting book for company. I threaten often to park myself at my desk, here at Birch Hollow, and commence my first novel; and to stay at task for the necessary time to complete a publishable manuscript, that would put my own book on the shelf of my book shop. And then I forgive myself for being a lifetime journeyman writer, and can actually come to feel rather satisfied with the mountain of work I’ve completed since I went pro, you might say, back in the winter of 1979; my first newspaper gig, and the beginning of a long and reasonably prosperous existence as an “article writer,” and “story teller,” in print, having enjoyed a huge circulation in my own rather hazy heyday in the print media. I shall never feel that I have missed the holy grail, or having been too late to catch the train to writing stardom, I think, rather I know, because of my relationship with books, as a book seller in the tradition of millions of other old and antiquarian book sellers, many who have enjoyed astonishingly successful biographies; their shops having been meeting places of authors and artists, and all others who believe in the greatness of the printed word, on the face and texture of all history, for all time.
I hope you will enjoy this short three part, pre-Christmas visit to one of the most famous book shops in Paris, France, to meet up with these makers of literary history as we know it today.
HE OLD BOOKSHOP AS A MEETING PLACE OF AUTHORS, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIANS, POETS AND PHILOSOPHERS
THE REAL HAUNTED BOOK SHOP, AND PLEASANTLY SO……
MY HARDCOVER COPY OF "THE VERY RICH HOURS OF ADRIENNE MONNIER," THE TRANSLATED ENGLISH COPY (ORIGINAL IN FRENCH) BY RICHARD MCDOUGALL, IS PRETTY BEAT-UP AND THE DUSTJACKET IS TORN TO SHREDS, BUT IT IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT REFERENCE BOOKS I OWN. IT IS THE BOOK, PUBLISHED IN 1976, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK, THAT I ROUTINELY CALL UPON WHEN I START QUESTIONING MY RELATIONSHIP WITH OLD BOOKS AND WELL, THE OLD WAYS OF PACKAGED PRINT. THE BOOK JACKET, SHOWING A CASUAL ADRIENE MONNIER, AT HER DINING TABLE, IS, AS IT CLAIMS, A BIOGRAPHY OFFERING "AN INTIMATE PORTRAIT OF THE LITERARY AND ARTISTIC LIFE IN PARIS BETWEEN THE WARS."
IT IS ANOTHER BIOGRAPHY EVERY BOOKSELLER SHOULD OWN, AND HOLD CLOSE, AS IT OFFERS SO MUCH INSPIRATION, WHETHER YOU ARE A MAJOR SELLER, OR JUST A HOBBYIST WITH A BOOTH IN AN ANTIQUE MALL. IT'S THE PROFESSION THAT IS SO WONDERFULLY ADDRESSED IN THIS BIOGRAPHY. IT'S THE COMPANY THAT MISS MONNIER KEPT, THAT IS WHAT COMPELS ME TO COME BACK TO THE BOOK, TIME AND AGAIN; AND WHAT INSPIRES ME TO NEVER TAKE A DAY FOR GRANTED IN THE ANTIQUE BUSINESS. I LOOK UP EAGERLY, FROM BEHIND OUR SHOP COUNTER, WHENEVER THE DOOR OPENS, AND ANOTHER INTERESTING SOUL WANDERS INTO OUR COLLECTION OF BOOKS, AND EVERYTHING ELSE THAT KEEPS AN ANTIQUE DEALER IN BUSINESS. WHILE I'M A MILLION MILES FROM THE CALIBRE OF THE PARIS BOOKSELLERs, AND MY GUESTS HAVEN'T BEEN INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHORS, OR SO I SUSPECT, I HAVE NONE THE LESS, MET SOME FABULOUSLY INTERESTING FOLKS…..AND THE BOOK BUSINESS IN PARTICULAR, IS FAMOUS FOR THIS. BUT IF I COULD TIME TRAVEL, FOLKS, I'D WANT TO BE IN EITHER OF THESE HISTORIC BOOK SHOPS, WITH MY HAND OUTSTRETCHED, AS A VOLUNTEER GREETER, BECAUSE THEY HAD SUCH A FABULOUS ALLURE EVEN THEN…..FOR SOME OF THE GREATEST WRITERS IN HISTORY. SO LET'S NOT BEAT ABOUT THE BUSH ANY LONGER. WE'LL CATCH A TIME WARP FOR A LITTLE VISIT OF OUR OWN…..TO PARIS, FRANCE AT AROUND 1915.
"ADRIENNE MONNIER WAS THE OWNER OF THE BOOKSHOP, LA MAISON DES AMIS LIVRES, IN PARIS, A CENTER FOR THE BEST CONTEMPORARY FRENCH WRITING AND FOR ITS AUTHORS; ANDREW BRETON, GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE, JULES ROMAINS, ADRE GIDE. THROUGH HER FRIEND SYLVIA BEACH, WHOSE SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY WAS JUST ACROSS THE STREET, SHE BECAME ACQUAINTED WITH HEMINGWAY, FITZGERALD AND OTHER AMERICANS IN PARIS. ABOUT THE WORK AND LIVES OF THE WRITERS OF THE PAST AS WELL, SHE WROTE WITH GRACE AND THE INSIGHT OF ONE WHO WAS PERFECTLY AT HOME IN LITERATURE. THE THEATRE HAD FOR HER AN ALMOST MAGIC CHARM (SHE REMEMBERS MAETERLINCK, DE MAX, AND BERNHARDT), AS DID THE CIRCUS, THE FOLIES-BERGERE, AND ALL THE SPECTACLES OF PARIS. SHE PUBLISHED PAUL VALERY, SPONSORED JAMES JOYCE IN FRANCE, AND PAID T.S. ELIOT A RETURN VISIT TO LONDON, SHE REMAINED VERY MUCH A COUNTRY PERSON, SURE OF HER ROOTS IN SAVOY WHERE EVERY SUMMER WITH SYLVIA BEACH, SHE RETURNED. HER CHRONICLE FAITHFULLY ILLUMINATES AN ERA."
IN THE INTRODUCTION, AS WRITTEN BY RICHARD MCDOUGALL, HE WRITES, "BUT WE ARE CONCERNED WITH A MUCH LATER ERA, ONE THAT BEGAN IN THE SECOND YEAR OF WORLD WAR I, IN NOVEMBER, 1915, WHEN AS A YOUNG WOMAN OF TWENTY-THREE, ADRIENNE MONNIER, THE FOUNDER AND CHRONICLER OF ODEONIA, THE NAME IS HER OWN INVENTION, OPENED HER BOOKSHOP, LATER TO BE CALLED LA MAISON DES AMIS DES LIVRES, AT NUMBER 7 RUE DE L'ODIEN, ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE STREET GOING UP TOWARD THE PLACE DE L'ODEON. 'BUILT IN A TIME OF DESTRUCTION,' AS SHE SAYS IN HER ARTICLE THAT TAKES ITS NAME, THE BOOKSHOP, THROUGH WHAT COULD ONLY HAVE BEEN THE SHEER COURAGE AND INTELLIGENCE OF ITS OWNER, ENDURED THROUGH THE WAR AS ONE OF THE FEW INTELLECTUAL CENTERS OF THE BESIEGED CITY, A PLACE WHERE WRITERS, SOME OF THEM, LIKE ANDRE BRETON AND GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE, IN UNIFORM - COULD GATHER AND, AT MEETINGS, ARRANGED BY ADRIENNE MONNIER, READ FROM THEIR OWN WORKS. AND IT WAS HERE ONE DAY TOWARD THE END OF THE WAR, THAT SHE WAS PROVIDENTIALLY VISITED BY THE AMERICAN, SYLVIA BEACH, WHO WITH MONNIER'S ENCOURAGEMENT FOUNDED HER ENGLISH-LANGUAGE BOOKSHOP, SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY IN 1919 - ANOTHER SIGNIFICANT DATE IN THE HISTORY OF ODEONIA - AT 8 RUE DUPUYTREN, JUST AROUND THE CORNER FROM ADRIENNE MONNIER.
"IN THE SUMMER OF 1921, WHEN THE TWO WOMEN WERE ALREADY CLOSE FRIENDS, WHEN SYLVIA BEACH HAD ALREADY UNDERTAKEN THE PUBLISHING OF JAMES JOYCE'S ULYSSES, THE PROUDEST ADVENTURE OF HER CAREER, SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY MOVED TO NUMBER 12 RUE DE L'ODEON, ACROSS THE STREET FROM LA MAISON DES AMIS DES LIVRES. THE MOVE WAS AS SYMBOLIC AS IT WAS PRACTICAL, FOR THE CLOSENESS OF THE TWO SHOPS WAS TO STAND FOR AS WELL, AS TO FURTHER CONTACTS BETWEEN THE FRENCH WRITERS WHO FREQUENTED ADRIENNE MONNIER AND THE ENGLISH SPEAKING PATRONS OF SYLVIA BEACH; IT REPRESENTED AS WELL THE ENDURING FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN THE TWO WOMEN AND CONSOLIDATED THE PHYSICAL REGION OF THAT COUNTRY OF THE SPIRIT."
AN OVERVIEW OF RUE DE L'ODEON THROUGH THE EYES OF JUSTIN O'BRIEN
THE BOOK CONTAINS AN OVERVIEW SECTION, WRITTEN BY JUSTIN O'BRIEN, "THE SCHOLAR AND TRANSLATOR OF FRENCH LITERATURE. ALTHOUGH HE WAS RELATIVELY A LATECOMER TO THE STREET, HIS IMPRESSIONS HOLD TRUE FOR THE ENTIRE PERIOD BETWEEN THE TWO WARS," WRITES RICHARD MCDOUGALL. THE ARTICLE BY O'BRIEN WAS PUBLISHED IN JANUARY 1956, IN THE MERCURE DE FRANCE, AND WAS WRITTEN IN HOMAGE TO ADRIENNE MONIER:
"For the young American in the thirties, the Rue de l'Odeon was the intellectual centre of Paris. On the right side going up the street, he stopped first before the narrow shop window of Shakespeare and Company, which was filled with books in his language, but most often in editions that he had not encountered anywhere else. The volumes by T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf stood near limited Parisian editions and the enormous paperbound 'Ulysses'….Almost opposite Shakespeare and Company, La Maison de Amis des Liveres, perhaps even more attractive for him who had everything to know about the French domain, revealed to him the latest Gide, the latest Valery, the latest Fargue, along with the avant-garde reviews and books thirty, or fifty years old, but for him absolutely new.
"From time to time, entering one or the other of those welcoming houses, he could see up close - what he used to dream about in New York - some of this gods. James Joyce in dark glasses and with a light-colored moustache, Gide arrayed in his flowing cape, Cocteau with his prestidigitator's hands. Even those whom he did not see there were present, thanks to the fascinating pictures hung on the walls."
O'Brien writes, "Le Maison des Amis des Liveres, was well named, for Adrienne Monnier received there with an equal goodwill all those who really loved books. There was only, in the matter of hierarchy, those who knew from farm back, the mistress of that salon covered with books and with who she conversed at length, sitting in front of a big table spread with papers. From the day when she invited the young American to take a place near her, between the table and the stove, her rosy race with its mauve-blue eyes became the symbol of that friendly house. Those conversations by fits and starts, in the course of which Adrienne Monnier informed herself about his readings and suggested others to him with that so communicative enthusiasm, of which she had the secret, were precious initiation for him to all the best that modern literature offers."
In the same issue of the mercer de France, German writer, Siegfried Kracauer, noted of Adrienne Monnier, that " She listened more than she spoke and looked at you often, attentive, before answering or drawing your attention to an idea that had come into her mind while she was listening. Her eyes, were they blue? I know only that her look came from a depth that seemed to me to be not easily accessible. The brightness of her outer aspect, of the room, and even of her voice, was not an ordinary brightness, but the covering of the form of an inner self that was lost in the shadows. Perhaps it was this interference of a foreground and a background, of a luminous exterior and a secret spiritual ground that thus drew me to her.
"I made myself a precise image of her. The character trait to which my veneration and my love went out, it remains forever engraved in my heart - was that mixture of rusticity and aristocracy that Proust never wearied of praising in the old Francoise and the Duchesse de Guermantes. Around these characters there is still the good smell of French soil, and as they personify in their bearing and their language, centuries of ancestral traditions, how would it be possible that they were not of an authentic distinction. It is thus that I see Adrienne Monnier before me."
We will return to Le Maison des Amis des Livres, and both Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier again tomorrow…..two bookshops that extend well beyond the definition of legend. Thanks for joining me today for this little bookshop adventure. Much more to come in future stories.
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