It's not necessarily the interesting books we buy. Not to say anything against the used books we do, but most of them you might find on the shelf right next to the new copy, just alike in all but price. That's the ideal, anyway. The point is to buy what will sell, and when it does, buy another just like it and sell that. That's not all we do at the used books buying desk, but doing just that, consistently, at a fair bid and a good price, is what helps to keep the lights on. It's not all bestsellers -- in fact, after roosting for weeks or months on the lists, there's nothing so likely to suddenly drop down dead in their hundreds and rot where they fall -- but for the most part what's wanted used is what's still selling new; what's popular, useful, standard, well reviewed; producing authors with loyal followings, addictive genre-corn, commercial fiction, fashionable opinion, recyclable history, practical advise, and yes, the Classics. Please note the upper there, as it is the lower-case classic; the minor works of the major authors, the major titles of lesser talents, that are often the most interesting old books I see.
A "rare modern first" or a "fine" binding are used in the business as terms of art, though the language is nothing if not commercial, and so subjective and haphazardly applied by most sellers, in and out of the trade, as to be largely meaningless. A proper antiquarian bookseller, after much study and careful consultation of the arcana, the Internet and the credulity of his customer, may advertise, at some risk, admittedly, any damned thing he or she might own as being somewise special. (A note to the amateur collector: the more sesquipedalian the dealer or description of the book, the likelier you, my honest friend, will pay too much.) Any true bibliophile might like a nice leather binding and a bit of tasteful gilding, a lovely old book, stoutly stitched, the pages still uncut and unread. For the devoted collector, no price may be too high for that missing work or never before seen variant edition. I understand something of the fascination. I have myself succumbed often enough to a pretty book. But an interesting book, in the sense I mean it here, needn't be pretty, or fine, or rare, needn't be anything much, come to that, but good, most often old and out-of-print and yet, new to me.
And what would tell me this old book, as opposed to that one, might be good, might be better worth reading, say, than anything out of the box after box after bin of newer titles that come every day across the buying desk?
Might be so simple a thing as an almost recognizable name; some title or author met elsewhere, though who remembers where? Some reference made, in an old review, or the vague recollection that this one knew that one and that one I've always liked. It might be quote that's not quite right, but familiar, or it might be heard everywhere, but from someone other, after all, than Churchill or Wilde or Twain. "So, that's who said that!" The Internet is a seemingly boundless source of quotation, I've discovered, and not all of it wrong. The problem there is that while there must be hundreds of places online to find who said what, there's almost nothing to say where or when or why. Even more frustrating, going just by what a simple search will suggest, it seems the same ten or twelve men said exactly the same five or six things, and always on just theses topics, no matter where you find them. Turns out, that's not true. The textbook anthologies must answer for this as well, as always the same short poem, the same truncated prose is reprinted and reprinted, however much the author might have done, whatever else he or she wrote, until at last the poet is but those same five lines, the novelist that one short story, the critic one review, the philosopher one thought -- though that a complex one to be fair -- and the wit but the one bitter remark. Interesting old books are interesting then because they promise something familiar, but more.
Open a book by a once celebrated poet now never read or, if at all, then only in some ponderously comprehensive history of literature. Run your thumb down the list of first lines and see if somewhere in that slim volume of poems there isn't some half-remembered song from childhood, the title of a mystery novel or two, some phrase just used ironically on the radio that day. See? Take up some charming old history and see if just the summaries of each chapter, without reading so much as a sentence beside, do not tell a better story than half the stack of histories on the display table of new nonfiction. Try the titles in an old book of English or American personal essays, and tell me you shouldn't care to know something more about the origins of roast pig, or what an essay "On Nothing" might be.
The traditionally capitalized Classics can usually see to themselves, at least in good company. If you didn't read them in school, or even if you did, but haven't taken them up again -- to read them properly -- with adult eyes, knowing you'll not be tested, with no one to impress now but yourself, your dog, say, or your spouse, then, sadly, I must tell you plainly, you never will. Doesn't make you a bad person. Doesn't necessarily even make you a foolish one, though you'll be and sound no wiser to admit such a thing. Perhaps, as you say, you've always meant to, but... you're very busy. If I might in this rude way shame you into reading something great, then by all means, prove me wrong. Start at the top of the pile. The interesting books I mean to suggest are not then meant for you, and there's no shame in that. Busy people really wouldn't have time for the kind of books I mean, however slight the books might be, not when there's Vanity Fair yet to be got to, and David Copperfield, and Emma yet to meet. Go on then, with my blessing -- though why you should need such an impertinence from me to set you going, I can't think.
But anyone with a taste for less traveled roads, or looking to find some pleasant stopping-off-place for an hour or an afternoon, I propose to put you in the way of a few unsuspected attractions, neglected views, places, as the guide might say, "of interest."
My problem with interesting old books is that they are not so easy to recommend without showing them, and I'm afraid I make it a policy not to loan my books. (It's all well and good to loan some paperback novel 'round your book club, so long as you're content to get it back in a state bearing little resemblance to the book you bought. I'm sorry, but I'd rather you borrowed my car or my cat before I'd let you borrow my books. ((My car by the way is filthy, and I do not keep a cat, as it happens.))) The bookstore where I work, a mix of old and new, has provided me with the solution.
Nearly any interesting old book, long enough out-of-print, we may now print again. I propose to do just that with at least the few old books I should specially like to see find the few, select readers I think they deserve. To each of these, my idea is to attach this essay, by way of general introduction to the scheme, and then add an even briefer note, unique to each, explaining my selection of the title. Perhaps a reading or an anniversary, a birthday or some new publication or renewed interest in the subject might justify reprinting a particular title or author. Some eccentricity of my own may be all the excuse I need. We shall see.
To each reprinted book, with the help of my more sophisticated coworkers, I hope to attach a new and attractive cover -- I to contribute some pencil-sketch, presumably of the author, my friends to make something presentable from that. As to any additional matter to be added, before or aft to the text, I make no claim of anything I might write, this ramble included, to literature. My role is simply that of the bookseller. I mean not to press some obscure little book into unsuspecting or unwilling hands, but rather just to add a little novelty to the copies we lay out as "new". I expect no one to buy a book because I've inserted myself between the reader and the work. The interest in these books, I am sure, will never be me, even if the first interest in them for what might be many years was, so far as I know, mine.
As with any such Quixotic undertaking of mine, I do not foresee much success for this bookshelf I hope to build. As you can see, unlike the writers I would celebrate and the works I would promote, there's little craft and less art than might be needed to guarantee the stability of this little enterprise of mine even so long as it may take to prop one title with the next. But what is there to lose in trying?
An interesting book, however unadorned or even ugly, however old or obscure, must, I firmly believe, find it's inevitable reader, just as these books found me. All I can do is put them out again where readers might see them. So...
This might be a book you may not know and one I think you will find interesting. I did.
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