Life With a Star

One of the many innovations that Ottakar's introduced was an intranet discussion board in which booksellers from Truro to Oban could exchange news and views. Sometimes it was a little disappointing - the notorious 'What's your favourite crisp flavour?' represented the board's nadir. However MD James Heneage was determined that the intranet should be 'anarchic' so that amongst the interminable threads about graphic novels there would also be an opportunity for innovation and intelligent discussion. One of the most heartening examples of this was a thread I initiated called 'Forgotten masterpieces.'

The thread asked booksellers to recommend titles that they felt were unjustly neglected and the response was amazing. So amazing, in fact, that Ottakar's decided to take the best suggestions and include them in a national campaign. Recommended titles included David Malouf's An Imaginary Life, Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road, Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight, Jose Saramago's Blindness and Barbara Pym's Quartet in Autumn. I recommended the wonderful Journey by Moonlight and another book which, although it is published by Penguin, seems to elicit blank looks from most people: Jiri Weil's Life With a Star.

How can I describe this book if you don't know it? Imagine L'etranger written by a Czech Jew during the Second World War. Weil and Camus are very different writers, but these two novels have one thing in common: the narrator is passive and naive to the point of being one of Dostoyevsky's 'Holy fools'. In Life With a Star the main character, a bank clerk called Roubicek, relates how his rights are gradually being eroded by the occupying Nazis:

'From now on you mustn't appear outdoors without a star, I hope I don't have to tell you what would happen to you.' 'You have to stitch down the corners of the star and wear it on the left side, directly over your heart, not any higher or lower. There are very strict regulations about this.'

He handed me a piece of rayon material. 'You mustn't get it dirty.'

I went home and stitched the tips of the star with a needle and thread. There were six tips and a word on the star, all contorted and twisted, in a foreign language that seemed to make a face at me.

I went out the next day. After all, I had to go shopping. I saw people looking at me. At first it seemed as though my shoelaces were untied or that there was something wrong with my clothes. In some way I had upset the everyday, accepted order of things. And I was alone among other people, completely alone, because people would make way for me. I was no longer one of them.

'Hello Sheriff!' a boy called to me. And everyone laughed, but I knew that they weren't laughing at me. I laughed too.'

Thanks to Ottakar's, I was able to introduce this book to hundreds of new readers, but I think that this novel deserves thousands.

Apocalypse Now

I have just finished Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' and thought it was brilliant, but I would have probably still enjoyed it even if it was rubbish as I have a slight obsession with any fiction or drama that has a post-apocalyptic setting. I've no idea why. My wife thinks that I should talk to my GP about it.

For those of you who are also interested in writing which explores the human condition reduced to its barest essentials, here is a list of my top ten post-apocalyptic novels (in no particular order):

1. Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake
2. Bernard Malamud - God's Grace
3. John Wyndham - The Chrysalids
4. Cormac McCarthy - The Road
5. Paul Auster - In the Country of Last Things
6. Kurt Vonnegut - Galapagos
7. Jose Saramago - Blindness
8. Philip K Dick - Dr Bloodmoney
9. David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
10. Russell Hoban - Ridley Walker

I realise that not every novel on the list is strictly post-apocalyptic, but they all deal with the theme of social collapse and its aftermath - something that is preoccupying a growing number of writers at the moment including Jim Crace (or should that be Crachay?), whose next novel 'The Pesthouse' is published in March.

With global warming, diminishing oil reseves and the threat of terrorism looming on the horizon, it is no surprise that there are so many speculative fiction titles being published. What is most alarming is the growing belief that we are living in the 'end times'. My second son is one-year-old today and I do not want him growing up in a world being torn apart by religious mania and corporate greed.

But before I succumb to a mood of pessimism, I must remember this (rough) quote from the controversial BBC film 'The War Game' - 'It is extremely likely that a nuclear war will have taken place by 1980'. It didn't happen. In the end common sense prevailed and we did the right thing.

Any recommendations for further reading would be very welcome.

One of my favourite anecdotes...

Author Jim Crace popped into a bookshop in London to see if they stocked any of his books. He went up to the desk and asked a woman where they kept their Jim Crace. She guided him to the fiction section and said in a hushed voice 'Oh and by the way, it's pronounced Jim Cra-chay.'

He didn't have the heart to say anything.

Bookshop Memories

George Orwell wrote this essay about bookselling 70 years ago, but it could have been written yesterday. Here are a couple of extracts...

When I worked in a bookshop - so easily pictured, if you don't work in one, as a kind of paradise in which charming old gentlemen browse eternally among folios - the thing that struck me was the rarity of really bookish people. Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one.

Many of the people who came to visit us were of a kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the dear old lady who doesn't remember the book's name or what it was about, but does remember that it has a red cover.

Orwell's wise words provide a sort of fraternal solace, but it is also quite depressing to realise that this has always been the case and probably always will be.

When I started in bookselling I imagined that I would be meeting lots of people like myself who were interested in the arts and literature. My day would be filled with discussions with customers about the merits of particular authors and perhaps we would recommend titles to each other. Sadly, I can probably count the number of truly interesting conversations I've had with customers on one hand.

I've often thought about why this should be the case and I can only conclude that the sort of people whom I'd like to talk to, i.e intelliegent, thoughtful, empathic individuals, aren't in the habit of going up to complete strangers and starting a conversation.

When I ran an independent bookshop I had a dozen or so regular customers who would come in and talk to me. At first I liked the idea of getting to know my regulars and passing the time of day with them, but after a while I found that my heart sank the moment they walked in the door. I began to feel angry with them and couldn't wait for them to go. Why, I asked myself, was I being so hostile to people who were being friendly to me?

I realised the reason why: my regular customers weren't having a conversation with me, they were talking at me. I knew where they lived, what they read, how many children they didn't have and all of the minutiae of their lives. I had listened to all of their thoughts and smiled benignly, appearing interested in what they said. What did they know about me? When had anyone asked me about myself? None of my customers would have been able to relate a single fact about my life.

Looking back, many of these people lived alone and I may have been the only person they spoke to that day. I should feel compassion for people whose social skills weren't as developed as they should have been, but I only remember how hard it was to be a sounding board day after day.

Today things are much better. The intelligent, thoughtful, empathic people that I yearned to meet still rarely appear in my shop as customers but they make up the majority of my staff, who are a pleasure to work with. Thanks to my colleagues, I never wake up in the morning dreading the thought of going to work and ultimately, I feel very lucky to have ended up in bookselling.