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| photo by Dmitry Gimon |
When I came to Ottawa last winter for a couple
meetings with booksellers, Winterlude- the annual ice-skating party and
festival- was a sad bust. It normally unfolds on a resolutely frozen Rideau
Canal, but had to be cancelled because absurdly balmy temperatures made the ice
a sea of slush. Food and arts stands
that had been set up days before sank slowly at odd angles into the frigid
muck. It looked like something out of a
Guy Maddin film.
But unusual heat was not a problem when I landed in Ottawa on
Monday night. The air was kinetic, and
so cold it almost hurt to breathe. Plows
had sculpted the snow into towering caverns along the roadways, creating a kind
of claustrophobia that put me in mind of Iowa back-roads in August when
the corn is six feet high. I grabbed a
cab to the dreary but sufficient “Business Inn” off Elgin, watched a bit of
coverage of the Obama Inauguration on television, and headed over to Sir John A across the street for a burger and a Keith’s.
Tuesday morning was colder still, if that were
possible. I left one bag at the hotel,
packed another on my back, and hiked up to my first appointment, at the
National Gallery Bookshop. I got there
early enough to fortify myself with coffee and brioche at Le Moulin de Provence
in the Byward Market. Barack Obama stopped
here several years ago, and the place is still a shrine to him. I passed on the Obama cookies but everything
else was delicious.
On the way to the Museum I passed the US Embassy, and was feeling
uncharacteristically patriotic after seeing parts of the President’s touching inaugural
speech. Unlike the charming embassies
and ambassadorial residences in Sandy Hill and Lower Town, this is a
fortress. The wife of the US Ambassador
to Canada is a former bookseller at a store I know well in suburban Chicago,
and I’ve been tempted to stop by to say hello.
But somehow the welcome mat just doesn’t seem out.
My meeting at the Museum went well, the buyer there being
one of the sharpest tacks in art book-selling.
It's a wonderful store and somehow she seems to know every book in it.
I’m not a fan of taxis but given the weather I indulged in one to my
next appointment, at Octopus Books in the very winning Glebe neighborhood. Lisa, the owner, is my favorite kind of
appointment: passionate and personal, with lots of interesting tangents mixed
with savvy street-level book retail intelligence. I always leave feeling like we could have
gone on longer. And had I stayed in town
I would have been able to hear Robert Fisk, whom they were hosting that evening.
Back to the hotel to pick up my stuff and cab (again) to the
Via Rail station, which seems in the middle of nowhere. As in many Canadian cities, the gorgeous old
train station downtown has been preserved, but as a convention center or
shopping mall. The VIA passenger rail
stations are farther out. But it was a
swift and lovely ride and I was in Montreal by 6:00pm. Despite the arctic weather, which had deteriorated further,
I walked about a mile to the hotel rather than face rush-hour Métro crowds,
weighed down by books and bags and catalogs.
Arriving at the Chateau Versailles always puts a smile on my
face. Warm and cozy, pleasantly creaky,
a bit of faded glory (whereas the Business Inn was mainly fade and no glory),
the welcome is always friendly and I’m never made to feel bad for always taking
the smallest, cheapest room in the place.
Exhausted, hungry, and with the wind howling outside, I
opted for the very fancy RIDI bar/ristorante across Sherbrooke from the hotel. I normally travel cheap. My meal expenses are overloaded with Subway
lunches and take-away dinners. But given
the circumstances I decided to splurge and enjoy my soup, salad, pasta, glass
of wine and amuse bouche. I returned to the room and wrote up my notes
from the day while watching the Simpsons in French, read for awhile (The Complete Saki, I’m trying for a “one
book per trip” plan this season), and enjoyed the soundest sleep in weeks.
I’m not a breakfast person but the Chateau puts on a
fantastic spread- fresh breads and pastries, hard-boiled eggs, ham, turkey,
several types of cheese, jams, yogurt, stewed prunes, fruit, a couple types of
cereal, granola, fresh juices and the best strong coffee I’ve ever had in a hotel. Loaded up on all this I can face the day and
skip lunch.
First stop: McGill University Bookstore. The once great store- still adequate but in a
downward inventory spiral- is being picked apart by bean-counters who don’t seem
to appreciate what a quality bookstore means for a university. I hope they realize what talent they have in
the two buyers I see, who are incredibly smart, detailed, and committed to the
books. Kim recalled that last time we
met our conversation veered on to childhood candy obsessions, and she presented
me with a pack of Thrills gum she’d managed to procure somewhere. Though no longer made in Canada, it pushed
all her nostalgia buttons, especially with the puzzling and fantastic slogan on
the package: “It still tastes like soap!”
A product that sees that as a selling point, truly amazing. If someone can sell gum on tasting like soap,
how can a world class university not manage to find a way to sell books? Though I guess the point is that it didn’t
survive, and is now beloved only by connoisseurs of antique artifacts, a fate that may await books.
On to Paragraphe across the street, the wonderful general
trade store where I purchased my first book in Montreal in the eighties. The buyer is super-organized, has the tidiest
desk I’ve ever seen in a bookstore, and had spent hours of her own time reading
every word of my catalogs in advance.
Many buyers do this, as did I when I was one, but it still makes me a
bit weepy with gratitude.
Dinner time. And no,
I haven’t invited any of these great booksellers to join me. Though I often have working lunches with
booksellers, by the end of the day I cherish my private time with a meal and a
book or newspaper. Pizza at Angela on
Maisonneuve. Not great, but not
bad, and mercifully close to the hotel. Back to the room to write up notes,
answer email, and listen to the wind howl.
Breakfast again, yum.
The temperature outside has plunged to some nether land where Centigrade
and Fahrenheit come together, something I never realized happened. I have never felt colder, even with layers of
clothes. I’m fine walking around outside,
in fact the air is peculiarly sweet and light, as if it contains some
other gas than oxygen. The problem is
that when I come inside to a well-heated office, I’m absurdly over-dressed. No easy way to surreptitiously slide out of
long underwear. And I feel like an
eight-year-old again, keeping track of two pairs of gloves, two scarves, two
hats, sweaters and an extra shirt. But
missing any of these items would be deadly, as the clever Quebec wind seeks out
the slightest square inch of exposed skin.
The Canadian Centre for Architecture is a spectacular
institution and to have an excuse to go there regularly is a great job
perk. The bookshop is a design
achievement (not a surprise) and the inventory is first rate (alas, something
of a surprise these days since many museum bookshops are transforming
themselves into toy and jewelry boutiques.)
The buyer is a treat to work with, and I always walk out of there with a
feeling of being appreciated- both for our books, which Sarah loves, and
personally. (Perhaps it’s our shared
obsession with oddball Soviet iconography and books about bears.)
I have a little time to kill, so I unwisely decide to hike
all the way down Ste-Catherine to Librairie Formats, the contemporary art
theory and criticism shop, and arrive feeling like a frozen vegetable. Another very interesting book operation,
located on the third floor of a complicated-sounding arts complex called RCAAQ,
which is all about supporting home-grown Quebec artists by selling and
promoting their books. Jean, Patrick and
Vincent are exceedingly nice people, and I feel more like a guest in someone’s
well-chosen library when I visit than a salesman peddling wares.
Exhausted again after a long day, I treat myself to a
delicious dinner at my favorite Indian restaurant, L’Etoile des Indes. This is a sentimental gesture, as my partner Randy
and I first ate there on a visit in the mid-eighties when Indian restaurants
seemed rare and exotic. Even though they
are now ubiquitous, L’Etoile is completely satisfying. They really get the naan right- my mouth is
watering just thinking of it.
The other thing they get right, and seems a secret to
business success with bookstore applications, is that the owner/manager is very
hands on. Nothing in the restaurant
escapes his eye. (Well, except that
lady’s purse which went missing the last time I was there, but that could
happen anywhere.) So much has changed
around Concordia and the intersection of Ste-Catherine and Guy (oh how I miss
Faubourg!) and yet, somehow, L’Etoile has stayed exactly the same.
Back to the room for more reports, notes, scanning foolish
facebook posts, email, and French television.
Friday morning I call on the Musée des beaux-arts bookshop. As in most big museums these
days, one passes through checkpoints and signs in and wears a badge. The meeting takes place back in the bowels
of the building. But my buyer is
completely charming, orders lots of books, has interesting things to say about
them, reacts to the beautiful digital page-spreads on my Ipad, and indulges my
absurd attempts to speak French with him.
At one point when the word “seek” turned up in a subtitle, he asked what
it meant. “Chercher!” I replied, with a
feeling of language mastery I definitely don’t deserve.
Last but not least, Argo.
Sigh. I love this little
store. It’s an iconic old literary shop
that had fallen on hard times and was rescued by a collective of dedicated,
book-loving twenty-somethings who are determined to make it live. They remind me of Roberto Bolano’s poetry mad
“visceral realists” in Savage Detectives,
though they will hopefully not come to the same end. By necessity and mission, they are quite
selective, and the store hasn’t room for one tenth of the books they’d like to
bring in. But each page of the catalog
gets respectful consideration and I get intelligent questions.
We emerge a couple hours later, they with a few enthusiasms
from our new lists, and me with a stack of books they recommended: The Crime on Cote des Neiges, Murder Over Dorval and the Body on Mount Royal,
three fifties pulp fiction reprints by Montreal writer David Montrose, newly
released in imaginative formats by the always interesting Vehicule Press. And Alejandro Zambra’s Bonsai is a book that the whole store is a little obsessed with,
and, not surprisingly, recalls Bolano.
Finally, the Man Booker nominees were announced that
morning, and among them was a Montreal writer I hadn’t heard of before- Josip
Novakovich. I asked whether they had the
nominated book. They did. But they recommended that if I’ve never read
him, I start with another of his books, Three Deaths, and explained why. I bought
it. This is exactly the kind of
expertise and informed opinion for which you go to a bookstore, and I would
have had it at most of the stores I saw this week.
As I left on Saturday the existential cold began to show a
few signs of thaw. The idea of Montreal
in winter is intriguing to lovers of the city.
My friend Matt in Iowa wants to know how Montrealais get up and down
their trademark twisty staircases in the snow.
(Tell him “hold on tight,” recommended Kim at McGill.)
I’m sure it’s only a little private myth I’ve invented for
myself, but it seems to me that everyone in Montreal listens a little more
carefully and tries a little harder at civility than residents of unilingual
cities. Because everyone here is a
minority in some sense, and because the language divide is so real, people try
a little harder to make ordinary civic life function. There’s a kind of shared working out of
problems in public spaces. True,
Montreal traffic is the rudest in Canada.
But the car horn is a blunt instrument when it comes to communication.
If I’d stayed another day I could have attended the “human
book” event at Atwater Library, wherein thirteen Montreal residents have
volunteered to be “books” that people can “check out” and interrogate. (The Montreal Gazette described them as
including “a gay rabbi, a dwarf, a member of the Roma community, a former
bully, a trans advocate, and a vegan ex-Canadiens player.")
A hard week, a good week.
Too busy and too solidly scheduled to over-think the big issues like future
of the book and how to get people to look up from their screens. A week of head down, get it done
concentration, one day at a time. Kind of like a
booksellers week.
