by Jürgen Wegener – Biblionews 409 (March 2021)
Joan Lawrence, in the December 2020 issue of Biblionews, gives us some of her extensive reminiscences of Sydney’s bookshops, past and present. Perhaps a bit light on the radical Left – Third World (far more interesting) gets the briefest of mentions subsumed under Gould’s, as do Jura and New Era, but what of the remarkable East Wind or Black Rose (anarchist) and a host of other socialist bookshops? However, her coverage of Sydney’s bookshops is, after all, the CBD (but with mentions of others).
The whole of the Sydney metropolitan area would be a brief too far. Too great a task as the number of bookshops would be formidable. And why isn’t there a directory such as this available somewhere? Online. Perhaps on the website of the BCSA? Not just in the sense of what bookshops there were and their details but a place where people could leave their personal memories. A people’s history.
Antiquarian and secondhand bookshops come and go. They always have. But they seem to have mostly been on the way out in recent times. Many that survive are used only as a kind of advertising shopfront for their online business. The bookshop as book wallpaper for their stock in store hardly ever seems to change over the years. Antiquarian and secondhand bookshops are in decline despite there being more books produced today than ever before.
The interesting phenomenon associated with this is the rise of the charity book fairs which have been around for as long as I can remember. They seem to be an especially Sydney phenomenon, though they happen all across Australia. Probably the best in recent years has been the Canberra Lifeline Book Fair. The best in Sydney – the University of New South Wales Book Fair – was thoughtlessly killed off by that university. A book in tribute of this book fair was even published. There is still the University of Sydney Book Fair as well as the countless Lifeline book fairs and those of similar charities. Book fairs should be included in any list or directory as they serve essentially the same function as bookshops. It is where we also went for our books. Many even had rare books sections.
Lawrence makes the point that ‘there is nothing like the physical book, their history . . . provenance . . . and the feel of a book in the hand’. It is, of course, all about the real books. The physical book. Why do people talk about books when they refer to reading via Kindle and iPad? These are not books. They are texts or e-texts. And books – real books or printed books (why is it now necessary to mention printed?) – are also part of this ‘mass extinction event’. It is not just about the ‘I love to hold a physical book when reading’, something which is often used to trivialize printed books – as well as those that value them. There are many positive arguments for books being in physical form. But my point would be that books are just so much more than the words on the page – their texts. It is also about their contexts. And their physicality. Something which hasn’t really caught on yet. But this will be a big part of the future of books.
Books are not koalas. Books need humans to survive. Without humans there are no books. And this is the real challenge. Especially in the Covid-19 era where there are no book fairs. Where have all the books gone in the past year which people wanted to get rid of but could no longer send to Lifeline and others, especially when booksellers no longer want books? Where do books go to survive? On the one hand, the greatest library of books on the planet is in that of the combined collections of us all – humans. That shelf of favourite books in the lounge. Or, for the more obsessive, a whole wall or even a room full of books. This is where books survive. But it is also an integral part of the ruthless process of attrition.
We may think that it was in libraries that books found their permanent homes but has this really ever been the case? Any cursory look at the history of books and libraries is about destruction. Libraries, it seems, are as fragile as are books. Because, again, they too cannot survive without the human. Without an active engagement by so-called book lovers, books are toast. Perhaps even literally so. In any case, libraries are still mostly about ‘reading books’.
I was thinking of buying a copy of a new book out by Richard Ovenden titled Burning the Books: a History of Knowledge under Attack (2020). But I already have so many books on the subject of the destruction of books and libraries. Is it worth getting or is it just one more compilation of what’s happened to books in the past? Colin Steele’s long review of this work in the December issue of Biblionews mentions the usual catalogue of examples of book destruction. This is also the impression I gained reading the review in The Guardian. Ovenden is the Bodley Librarian at Oxford University and so, who better placed to know ‘where the bodies are buried’. So, something fresh, more up to date? A call to arms, perhaps? A plan?
Steele mentions Ovenden’s comments on what has been happening as a result of the UK’s Conservative Government over the past decade – or does he? I’m not so sure of where Ovenden finishes and Steele starts. But the rot goes back much further, doesn’t it? At least to Thatcherism. Steele also mentions the National Library of New Zealand’s attempt to get rid of 625,000 foreign books from its collection – surely not from this book? I did get to see a copy of the book which does mention the NLNZ but in the context of a programme to archive Facebook sites of New Zealanders. No doubt of greater interest than all those foreign books.
Lack of funding which it is probably more accurate to see as a reflection of the general lack of public interest in books and libraries. (Note that I write books and libraries, not reading and libraries.) I looked at the site of the Book Guardians Aotearoa petition to ‘save the National Library’ and found that just 1322 people had expressed concern. Did they leave a couple of zeros off the end? At that rate, the next news from New Zealand I expect to see will be: National Library closes!
Why is it that people who are always talking about their love of books do so little by way of action? Is it that books are the intellectual’s equivalent of consumer culture? I remember reading about someone who progressively tore out the pages of the book he was reading to lighten his load whilst travelling. Or that book collector from long, long ago who only collected title pages. Needless to say, many of these latter books are only known today because of these saved title pages.
We need to remember that this is an ongoing and relentless process. And one which isn’t fuelled by booksellers who only see dollar value or by librarians who hate books. It is part of an ongoing social, cultural and especially economic and political process. Reflected in the idea of the steady state library, also known as one book in, one book out. Whereas we live in a world where there are printed books as never before. As well as the digital stuff. All of which means the need for greatly increased resources.
Where will our books – and our libraries – be in 50 years’ time? Steele writes that ‘we all need to be constantly aware’ but is this anything but inadequate? We all need to be constantly active if we want to see books survive. Now, tomorrow, in 50 years’ time. Given that the present system continues and people accept that books are just something transient – like us – and only valued for the immediate impulse they provide, not much is going to change.
