Editorial by Jennie
There's a theory going around among secondhand booksellers that people really have stopped reading, so few are coming in off the street to look round the shelves, even here in our celebrated 'City of Literature'.
Browsers are a dying breed, but book thieves are not. So a possible sales drive might be Buy One Shoplift One Free, as long as the one you shoplift is the cheaper of the two. At least the shoplifters are reducing the stock, as one beleaguered bookseller pointed out. Another, irritated by an audacious Buddhist with sticky fingers, has enlisted the help of three local toerags who used to pester him of an afternoon demanding to know if he'd read all these books. One day he confided that he'd only made three pounds and they came onside, suggesting he might do better selling plastic wrist bands. He told them about his shoplifters and said he was thinking of putting up a sign saying 'No more than two adults in the shop at one time'. He offered them casual employment as juvenile bouncers. They were right up for that. Usually they're the ones at the receiving end of such injunctions.
I should say that I work in a paper infested cave at the back of Main Point Books, where my partner Richard Browne gazes yearningly out of the window at a small patch of blue sky and sells the occasional book. This is a very different commodity from an occasional table. Occasional tables are generically nondescript and often come in nests. Occasional books are highly specific items that people are very particular about.
There I go, losing the plot again. Although there is a theory that the only things worth talking about are the tangents. Talking of which, a man came in to the shop wearing a blue bandana. He was wandering around quietly when Rich asked if he was looking for anything in particular. Perhaps an occasional book. He said he was looking for something old, unusual, forgotten, something that no one had ever read. He turned out to be a writer facing a month long residence in Hawthornden House, a writers' retreat in Roslin Glen, funded by the Heinz Foundation, as in beans and John Kerry's wife. And in the event of any shortfall in creative fecundity, he could copy the obscure book and no one would be any the wiser. Sensing a Cutlerish kindred spirit Rich suggested Under the Volcano but had to agree that this might be a bit obvious. On the other hand it was a good read and Rich's speciality is reliable rereads.
At this point I emerged like a hungry spider from the back shop and after some intensive interrogation the author gave me a clue as to his identity. He'd written a book about a man who falls in love with a lemon. Not to be outdone I mentioned one of my own virgin projects, about a man who falls in love with a pigeon. 'Somebody's already done that,' said the stranger. Observing my distress, he kindly claimed amnesia as to further details. 'Anyway,' I said petulantly, 'it was a real person I was going to write about, and I'm not going to tell you who it is'. 'That'll be Tesla then,' was the galling response. At that moment I put the project on the indexed lost opportunities shelf, along with the description of the woman running for the bus and finding her knickers coming out of the bottom of her trousers. I won't go on. I suppose I might use some of them one day.
The mysterious browser turned out to be Larry Krauser. I felt a bit of a lemon for not realising who he was, but asked him for an interview anyway. It might even happen. Today he came back into the shop with a copy of his book, with a personally doodled inscription. Which reminds me to go home and fight with Rich over who reads it first.