How to commit daylight robbery at a book sale
If memory serves me right, it was Jerry Pinto who once said he never bought a book that he hadn’t previously read. Ordinarily that principle makes a lot of sense and I, for one, might have adopted it as a way to keep my hubristic hoarding-and-showcasing habits in check, except I’ve never stumbled upon a second-hand sale I didn’t want to pillage. I don’t always finish reading the books I buy, but the smell trapped between pages is overpoweringly intoxicating; I become The Empress, the prize-winning pig from the Wodehouse novels, set loose on a plate of potatoes.
Used-book sales, in America at least, are turning into environmentally friendly carnivals commemorating the now-antiquated cult practice of reading. As attention spans dip dramatically, barely anyone seems to have the patience for anything longer than an essay posted on Facebook — if they get through that at all before hitting ‘like’ suspiciously quickly. Data-driven non-fiction is supposedly in fashion but admit it: the arbitrary statistics you spout at parties were culled from a review. If you go so far as claiming to love voluminous 18th century tomes, I will outright accuse you of lying — or having a librarian fetish.
Yet, as the reading population dwindles, it has grown disproportionately and patronizingly vocal about the primacy of the written word over visual media narratives. To have read Gone Girl before it was filmed becomes a point of bragging, although just as often the average snob snorts, “It’s mainly tacky, action-driven books that are converted into blockbusters. You can’t capture the interior condition of a complicated protagonist in a movie.” There are book lovers and there are book lovers.
The book fair subculture across the world remains, for now, united in its intensity, its spirit best described as half-evangelical, half-extreme couponing. Quality television programming, though, is slowly sapping the morale of bookworms. Is this going to be an uphill battle? Will bibliophiles be reduced to an endangered species?
***
I recently spent an entire three-day weekend surfing Princeton Public Library’s wares at their annual sale. Friday and Saturday, I battled Attention Deficit Disorder while scouring through rows of haphazardly arranged titles mostly priced between $1 and $3, all pressed together like gold biscuits in a bundle. As customers made their purchases, one by one the books disappeared, causing the rest to gradually fall in a state of disarray. I continued cherry-picking my favorites and placing them in discreet corners, within the reach of only the longest-limbed ape-men (a species I am proud to claim as my own). The plan was to retrieve those books later after prices had been slashed to a minimum. I prayed especially that the fatigued eyes of other bargain hunters wouldn’t in the meantime spot Henning Mankell’s The Dogs of Riga in paperback, J. Maarten Troost’s The Sex Lives of Cannibals, or the James Hynes hardbound I had slipped in between decoy romance novels.
Sales and deals are what I like best about American-style capitalism. Drive thirty miles and you will find something classy in the clearance section, enabling you to complete your shopping for the year at outlet stores. Most of your acquaintances wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, and you’d have the last laugh over middle class simpletons who aspire to shop at Saks Fifth Avenue. These parallel set-ups make goods cheaper across different strata. They indulge an impoverished graduate student’s notion of purchasing power.
His arms were thick as tree trunks. I hoped they hurt, and took satisfaction in registering from a quick glance that he’d wasted space picking works like Angela’s Ashes.
It’s the same with book fairs. You might not get exactly what you were looking for but there are enough goodies to distract you. Personally speaking, the obscene full-price of the latest bestsellers inhibits me from browsing at bookstores. I don’t demand the kind of instant gratification that only Kindle can satisfy, either. On the other hand, I’ve absorbed more random ideas than I can remember in second-hand aisles while balancing seven books in the crook of my arm. Amazon cuts great deals on used copies, but outdoor tent sales offer so many more complex pleasures than the mere thought of owning an early J.M. Coetzee for 10 cents plus shipping charges.
Here, treading in second-hand heaven, I can stave off real life for a bit. I am happiest when surrounded by taciturn grumps who think like me, value the same things, and every now and then wish to partake of a solid, competitive free-for-all. The secret to book sales is knowing they are by design borderline anarchic. Books are arranged by genre but never alphabetized, and it’s virtually impossible to process the glut of information. We can but gleefully grab what we find, making snap judgments about quality along the way. Factor in the chance that the person to your left just picked up an Ismail Kadare novel you’ve long kept an eye out for, and it’s a miracle such events don’t end in affable brawls. It’s such an adrenaline rush: you feel alive.
Not that everything is perfect, of course. For sure, the donations arrangement as it stands is far from ideal; it is even impractical. I overheard one sale coordinator suggesting to a potential buyer that a first-edition signed copy which was going for $80 could be resold on e-Bay for $400. Why didn’t the organizers do that themselves, and use the proceeds to help the library more effectively? Radical improvements must be made to ensure everyone profits and comes away happy. Are organizers trying to give you a shot at finding something you might love or are they indiscriminately offloading junk by the kilo and relying wholly on appealing to your inner squirrel?
***
It takes a seriously motivated hoarder to introduce an element of fascist order in the system. On Sunday — the final day of the fair — while waiting for the five-dollar bag sale to begin, I ceded my place at the head of the disappointingly short line to two giddy teenage girls reasoning that they were most likely there for the Young Adult pickings and had no inappropriate interest in The Alcoholic, Jonathan Ames’s comic book memoir (sketched by Dean Haspiel). A library volunteer opened the stanchion. I moved in, sleek as a shark, and plucked forty books in five minutes. My only real competition, I noted, was a bearded, heavyset, Hagrid-lookalike who’d packed his loot as efficiently as I had, in two bags. His arms were thick as tree trunks. I hoped they hurt, and took satisfaction in registering from a quick glance that he’d wasted space picking works like Angela’s Ashes. His stuff was shit, while my shit was stuff, to quote Carlin. What was this — 1997?
Wandering around the rooms one last time I paused at the CDs and DVDs section, struck by the thought that technological innovation in itself supplies no guarantees of permanence. In Double Fold — a book that I picked up at last year’s sale incidentally — Nicholson Baker documents how libraries in America and Europe are destroying thousands of books after recording them on microfilm. If that isn’t a bugle call pushing us to defend our way of life, I don’t know what is.
Perhaps it’s inevitable that in the service of progress, books should migrate to another medium. Nonetheless, if future generations are destined to experience book sales as an auction-oriented online bazaar, it isn’t prejudiced to say they would be missing something special.
Five favorite picks from sales
Daily Life in Ancient Rome — Jerome Carcopino
The Way We Talk Now — Geoffrey Nunberg
Bruno, Chief of Police — Martin Walker
Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever — Walter Kirn
Straight Man — Richard Russo