They haunt the place, neither invasive nor elusive, reassuringly consistent, with the modest assurance of those who know that literature is not a business like any other. I say “my” booksellers, but they belong to everyone and no one. They belong in books. They live in them. They are goblins who reach out to us towards the other world, as Fanfreluche once did. They enter books and take us there with them, like browsers.
They don’t hunt by ferret, but by smell, by titles, by publishing houses, by rumors, by catalogs, by the day after prices, by August 12, by famous illustrators, by the fads of the moment. This precious moment that makes us appreciate or not a book. Because there is the book, the reader, the moment and, with a little luck, a good bookseller to guide us. Buying a book means consenting to a universe and looking for an answer there.
Le Fureteur, my neighborhood bookstore, is a place where we encourage you to stroll. I’ve been there every week for ten years, spying on the new releases on the large table at the entrance, noting the booksellers’ choices, chatting with them. They remind me of Anthony Hopkins in the delicious film 84 Charing Cross Roadwho plays a London bookseller specializing in old books and who develops a letter-writing friendship with an American customer.
My booksellers range from their early twenties to their fifties; they study literature, complete a doctorate on manga, have degrees in history, museology, anthropology. These bookworms have become bookstore ferrets, passionate about their profession.
“People who don’t read don’t know the exhilaration you can feel in a bookstore. They have no idea that such calm commerce, where sellers and buyers are each on their own, can be anything other than boring,” writes editor and writer Charles Dantzig in his delightful essay Why read?. He specifies: “Reading is not against life. It is life, a more serious life, less violent, less frivolous, more lasting, more proud. It maintains, in the utilitarianism of the world, detachment in favor of thought. » My booksellers are the dedicated activists.
The bookstore admits literature, because it brings it into commerce
A sport like no other
“I have clients who would like to be retired booksellers,” Valérie Bossé, the owner of Fureteur, an independent bookstore in Saint-Lambert since 1963, which she took over eight years ago, tells me. These literate dreamers have no idea of the weight of the crates to be lifted, the stairs to climb with full arms, aching backs, the long hours on their feet. As with the fantasy of writing a novel, reality exceeds fiction.
With 1,000 new releases per week in peak season (fall is particularly epic) out of 40,000 new books per year, that’s also a lot of titles to memorize. “Being a bookseller means vocabulary, literary knowledge, news and publishing houses; it’s a physical job too. It’s not just about knowing the latest Goncourt,” adds the owner of this business which employs around ten booksellers.
For Patrick Foley, a fan of the show The big bookstorethe book is a gift of self, so much so that he does not subscribe to Netflix or social networks, “too time-consuming”. He devotes an hour in the morning to reading essays, two hours in the evening to novels. And on the top of a bookcase at his home, around twenty books that changed his life are ready to take away “if the fire catches”. There we find in particular The Basement Notebooks by Dostoyevsky translated by André Markowicz (I bought it), poetry by Rimbaud, Blood Ties by Bernard Chapais (Patrick studied anthropology) and Kafka.
“How dare you talk about Kafka in front of me? » says in passing Flore Berthelot, his young French colleague who studied literature at the University of Sherbrooke and who also has a crush on the latest Dominique Fortier, The ocean’s shareor for comics without text An ocean of lovefrom the duo Lupano and Panaccione. “Ingredients: ocean (water, salt, trash), love (rose water, kisses, marriage), sardines, seagulls, pancakes, lobster, bereaved Bigoudènes, sauce (adventure, suspense, second degree, sentimental drama, absurd twists and turns, gags hilarious), Che Guevara (0.5%), artificial flavor of Virgin Mary. » If that doesn’t make you want to read a book without words…
Reading is useless. That’s why it’s a great thing. We read because it’s useless.
Black Friday
Everyone, from Marine with neon pink hair that looks like it came out of a comic book, to Ghada, the manga specialist, to Patrick, who is keen on immigration stories, and Marianne, who is passionate about queer literature, spoke to me about challenge of finding the pearl for the right oyster, either this reader who doesn’t know what he wants, or this gift for the teenager who doesn’t like reading. “It’s huge potential,” Flore points out. “When you get there, it’s tasty,” rejoices Patrick.
Marine Coudurier, a French woman specializing in children’s literature, was ecstatic when she showed me the album The rich hours of Jacominus Gainsboroughby Rébecca Dautremer. A customer approaches, greedy with her eyes: “These are works of art!” » Marine’s philosophy for aiming for the right age? “From such an age…until death.” »
Coming across Marine and letting yourself be guided through the shelves, it’s a Black Friday on credit and eating your stockings the following month. What does it matter, if our soul is content and filled with sweetness. “The beautiful thing about the job,” the bookseller for ages 2 to 99 told me, “is that you force yourself to read everything. » Patrick also orients his readings according to his clientele. “A book has a window of two, three weeks to stand out. It’s painful. »
Thanks to these booksellers, we dare to step out of our comfort zone to undertake an inner adventure. “The great readers are alcoholics having another drink, obese people having more baba, teenage girls putting on a coat of glitter nail polish, decorators multiplying their trinkets…” writes Charles Dantzig.
Or discreet booksellers who are pushers to indulge in “this unpunished vice, reading”*.
* Valery Larbaud, 1941, Gallimard
Bluesky : joblanchette
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