AMERICA’S BOOKS HOPS AND BOOK-BUYERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 683, 7 June 1929, Page 14

AMERICA’S BOOKS HOPS AND BOOK-BUYERS

ST. JOHN IRVINE’S REVIEW Mr St. John Ervine contributes to the Sunday “Observerfrom Sew York, the article from which the following amusing sentent es on the bookbuyer, the bookseller, and books, American and Englisfare taken. I HAD not been Jn New York for very long before I realised that it contained an exl.iraordinarily large number of bookshops, and by bookshops I do not mean, those mortuaries in which old and broken books are sold, but shops in v?hich the new book and the well-appointed volume are for sale. ... I ve just taken the trouble to count tjie number of them listed in the New York telephone directory: it exceeds 400 .... In Madison Avenue there must be as many bookshops there are in London. ... I have seen shops at home which were called bookshops but ought to havij been called stationery stores. One could more easily obtain and envelopes and lead pencilm and gum in them than books. . . . When I inquired of my publish*;r-friend whether the bookshops in If.le w York returned a profit to their* / owners, he replied,

“Well, our test is: Do the owners of them pay their bills promptly? The great majority of them do.” A glance into the ' windows of these shops shows that the "books which are sold in them are not stenographer's rubbish, but hooks lit quality. The inquisitive investigajtor is more likely to see Mr Lytton. Strachey’s “Elizabeth and Essex” in the window of the smallest booksjuop in New York than he is to see “Why Girls Go Wrong!” by Vertigina. Vixena, the celebrated specialist in sen-lore. That immortal work will also, no doubt, be seen, but it will not be lying in the heap of detective tales, murft for elderly maidens, and volumes of cnoss-word puzzles which one expects, to see in Kensington. The fine booles will be more prominently displayed than the twaddling ones. . . . While buying some books at Christmas in a small bookshop in Madison Awenue, I asked for a volume of poems by Mr Edwin Arlington Robinson, a distinguished American poet. It was not in stock, and I believed the clerk, ■as shop assistants here are called, when she said that she had sold her last copy on the previous day. (I should not have believed the statement if it had been made to me by a shop assistant in a London bookshop.) But, she said, if I would leave my name and address she would see that a copy of the book was delivered to me early in the afternoon. And it was! . . .

How many times, when ordering a book, which, of course, was not in stock in a West End bookshop, have I been asked if I would like to have it sent to me? Not once in 50 visits. How often, when I have suggested to the assistant that he should rouse himself from slumber and obtain the book for me, have I been told that it could not be delivered to me in less than three days? I tried to buy a book in a West End shop one afternoon for a friend who was leaving London in a day or two. It was not in stock. That fact did not surprise me, for I rarely find that any book is in stock in some shops. I begged the assistant to awake from dreams of thee and obtain a copy for me. He had the impudence ;il me that it was out of print, ew that he was lying, for I was author of the book, and no book ‘ * line has ever been sufficiently lar to go out of print. When, • • much coaxing. I induced him to ve that there was such a book ished at all. he told me that he i not promise to deliver it to the who lived close at hand, in less three days. I hissed in his ear, a't you want to sell books?” and uloned him forever. The girl cs in bookshops here are so much a intelligent and knowledgeable :t books than the male clerks that . a is no comparison to be made be•n them. . . . The London bock- ■ u > assistant usually knows a little it the books he sells, even if he ■ ery reluctant to impart his knowe. . . . The English provincial :shop-assistant is not bulky with

ns, but the assistants in Edin burgh and Glasgow known their jobs.

The American people are a book-buying people: the British people are a book-borrowing people. There are lending libraries here, but they do not amount to much. . . . Nothing would astonish me more than to enter a house or an apartment inhabited by an educated American and find few books in it. How much actual reading is done T cannot, of course, say, nor can I tell to what extent the reading stuff is assimilated. But at least the books are there, and I fancy that some of them are read. Not many English authors would make much of a livelihood out of their work if it were not for the book-buying habits of the Americans. An Englishman who thinks nothing of spending 30 shillings on a dinner for a friend and himself wilt grumble for a fortnight at spending seven shillings and sixpence on a book. When ?n Irishman buys a book, the newspapers bring out special editions