In July 2021 we drew attention to Nicholas Royle’s book-collecting memoir White Spines, which chronicles the author’s quest for Picador paperbacks, offering on the way many diverting reflections on second-hand bookshops and their owners, on wandering in back-streets in search of them, on the habits of book-collectors, and on many other matters of interest. Salt have now published Shadow Lines, Searching for the Book Beyond the Shelf, a sort of sequel, in which Nicholas Royle writes in a highly enjoyable way about further aspects of his book-collecting.
Keen book-collectors know that the printed text of a book is not its only attraction: the covers themselves, worn and stained, may have the lure of a work of abstract art; ownership inscriptions may forge a link for us over the years with a former reader; booksellers’ labels may preserve the memory of a long-lost bookshop; marginalia may enhance our appreciation of the text, or simply puzzle us. Sometimes on endpapers there are scribbled figures or characters that look like an elaborate code. Gift inscriptions make us wonder about the giver and the receiver, and what became of them.
In White Spines, Nicholas Royle drew attention to another source of extra bookish pleasure. He suggested the term “inclusions” for any items found by chance inside books: letters, postcards, tickets, receipts, business cards, advertising ephemera and so on. Such pieces of paper flotsam often have a curious interest, revealing a fleeting moment in a previous reader’s existence, or suggesting a tantalising segment of biography.
The title of Shadow Lines refers to a top tip from the author for collectors of inclusions: look at the top edges of the pages in a closed book: things tucked inside will show as a fine black fissure. Open the book and see what you find. But he carries his fascination several steps further than most idly interested browsers. For example, he buys books he already has because he wants the inclusion: most collectors will understand that. But he also buys books that are of no particular interest to him, including technical works, for the sake of the inclusion. And he follows up the clues offered on these stray scraps, texting, telephoning or messaging numbers he has found, often with surprising results.
Other sorts of encounters happen because he reads while he
walks, an occupation, he explains patiently, that may be done perfectly safely
and considerately. He finds this leads to conversations with strangers, mostly
women, who ask him what he is reading and why. Sometimes it is just a few words
of shared interest, but occasionally a wider conversation follows. The sight of
a book seems to stimulate curiosity and shared enthusiasms. From the brief,
chance contacts formed from following up inclusions or from his ambulatory
reading, we are treated to a series of fascinating micro-histories, glimpses of
lives, each one of which, like most lives, has implications of
enigmatic possibilities.This is a book about books and bookshops that will bring joy to every reader and collector, but it is also about the strangeness and sublimity of individuals, and our tender contacts with each other.
Mr Royle also has the habit of picking up pieces of paper he finds on his walks, typically shopping lists and fragments of flyers, but often of somewhat cryptic text. This led one literary colleague of his to propose that supporters of his work should creep out each morning to scatter mysterious messages along his way, and thus keep him fortified in his quest. It was said in jest, but I now begin to wonder whether some great bibliographical genius may not be sending out agents ahead of him to plant inclusions in the bookshops he visits, and to station well-trained actors on his routes to waylay him with bookish conversation. He thinks this all happens by chance, and celebrates serendipity and the lure of the inconsequential, but really an inscrutable mastermind is choreographing every move, in a work of high art-magic.
Someone—or something— is writing a novel called Nicholas Royle.
(Mark Valentine)
The best inclusion I found was a ziplock baggy of a certain white powder that made my gums go numb. The bookplate in the novel by T.E.D. Klein was that of Felix Dennis, one of the Oz trial defendants.
ReplyDeleteI saw a copy of your 'Aleister Crowley Scrapbook' today, Sandy, in Spooks in Haworth, one of the oldest esoteric shops in the North. The doorway was guarded by three beldames fiercely knitting., like Fates.
DeleteMy juvenilia turns up everywhere!
DeleteI sometimes leave my business card between the pages of used books in my favorite used bookstore. Maybe I should ask the owner if he minds. He kind of knows me. I once left a business card in the sleeve in the back of a library book where no one will probably look. But one day, in 50 year, what if someone finds it by the most off-hand curiosity and becomes a historian of my work.
ReplyDeleteMy best experience along these lines was my purchase of W. E. D. Allen's 1932 "A History of the Georgian People." It contained a few iconographic plates, notes on an archeological dig in North Ossetia, a letter addressing the "Social Structure of Albania," a grainy snapshot of some children on a cart, probably in the Caucasus, an artistic, minimalist sketch of a woman's face, and a December 12, 1937 frontpage of the English language "Moscow Daily News," which, among other things, promoted the coming commercial dirigible flights between Moscow and Sverdlosk. I call it my "Treasure Book." I bought it out of New Zealand by way of Adelaide, Australia, so it has traveled a bit, and now rests on a bookshelf in sleepy small town East Texas, awaiting future adventures. I wrote about it back in 2012, found here: https://terrycowan.substack.com/p/the-treasure-book.
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time I happened on several old (1920sish, I think, but I was a broke college student and couldn't afford them) volumes of Balzac with flowers pressed between the pages.
ReplyDeleteThe late and much missed Ron Weighell wrote a great story, 'Drebbel, Zander and Zervan', about finding an ancient flyer advertising a book inside an old volume and what results when an attempt at purchasing it by post is made using defunct stamps and currency.
ReplyDeleteIt's a great story, and it is included in 'Spirits of the Dead', the new RW collection from Sarob.
DeleteI once found 2 photographs of my parents in a book in a second-hand shop; then I realised that I had previously owned the book, sold it to the shop, forgot that I ever owned it and picked it up again. I suppose it proves that my tastes are consistent, if not my memory.
ReplyDeleteThat must have seemed quite uncanny at first, until you realised. I also pick up books I like the look of in charity shops, only to recall I donated them.
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