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| The auction as seen from my seat. |
Saturday started with a potato, egg and bean burrito
breakfast and a frantic drive into Archer
City, slightly faster
than the law allowed. Cathy was riding shotgun with me this time, to help keep
me in check, and also to look over out a few shelves that we both agreed would
be great to have...if the price was right.
Which, it turned out, it most definitely wasn’t. All that
was left of the Booked Up stock was art and history, fiction and poetry, and
some misc. collecting books, and four crummy shelves of science fiction, and
the like. We had a cuckoo idea that the big, oversized art books would just go
zipping out the door for the minimum cost. Heh. Yeah. That didn’t happen.
As soon as the bidding opened up, the numbers were popping.
The auctioneer was surprised when the shelves started selling for between $300
and $500 a lot. Well out of our price range, no matter how good the value was.
And it was a steal. But I had a strategy up my sleeve.
I paid attention to the lots that I wanted, and I wrote down
the titles of the books on those shelves that interested me. Then, when the
shelves sold, I pulled the buyer aside and asked, “Are you a dealer?” The
answer was always “yes.” I then told them all what I wanted was a few books off
of X shelf, and would they be interested in selling them to me? The answer was
always “hell yes.” So I wrote down the lot number, the book title, and even the
price I’d pay for the books, with instructions to contact me after the auction.
It was genius. And it worked like a charm.
I passed out six or eight of my business cards, and passed
notes back and forth like a naughty fourth grader, all throughout Friday and
Saturday. If they all bear fruit, I’ll probably end up spending at least a
couple hundred bucks on single tomes in the next four to six weeks. This was
useful not only for me but for Cathy as well. She hates to lose out on auction
bids, and this was a nice consolation prize for her.
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| Larry, talking about The Last Picture Show. |
Throughout all of the goings on, both during the preview
week and the auction itself, there was a constant refrain of “Where’s Larry?”
usually uttered in a sibilant half-whisper. I’d seen him several times, usually
in passing, and always looking a little freaked out by the enormity of what
he’d set in motion. On Friday and Saturday, he was positively beset on all
sides by a clutch of reporters, hovering around him like horseflies. You could
just look at his face and see that it made him uncomfortable, so he did as any
right-thinking Texan would do when confounded by flies; he stayed in motion.
Larry flitted, in and out, back and forth, for two days
straight, never staying long, and only occasionally sitting down. I think it
was equal parts survival and curiosity, but I have to tell you, he looked
tired. He had a heart attack in January of this year, and that will take its
toll on you. But I could see it on him, this kind of weariness. It made me
wonder if there was another reason for The Last Book Sale. Suddenly, the title
took on a morbid connotation. Was this Larry’s way of handing us twenty dollars
as we were on our way to Mexico?
Had he finally become Sam the Lion?
No. Throughout the weekend, everyone was assured that the
main store, Booked Up #1, would remain open, its stock on hand for perusal for
anyone curious or with a taste for the good stuff. Larry himself spent a lot of
time in Booked Up #1, when he wasn’t being hounded by reporters or folks
wanting an interview, or a photograph, or—of all things—a signature.
More than one person, perhaps sensing my Inner Texan, or
maybe hearing me speak with familiarity about the town and the operation, asked
me where Larry was. They always explained that they just wanted to ask him
about X or Y, or they needed a photograph, or wanted blah blah blah. I was
cautious in pointing him out to these people. The majority of them weren’t
bidding on the auction. As such, I felt they had little claim to his time.
Listen to me, like I’m his press secretary or something. I sent only one guy
over to Larry, a professional photographer who assured me he would be
unobtrusive.
I did this partially to ease the pressure on the man, but
also because in my tenure as a Booked Up customer, I learned early on that when
Larry was in the house, he was not “the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show.” He was Larry the bookman. Different guy
altogether. If you had a question about stock, or what he just bought, or how
often he comes across Dell map backs, or the value of Frank J. Dobie books, or
anything else along those lines, you could have a great and interesting
conversation with the man. But come at him, head bowed, tattered copy of Lonesome Dove in hand, murmuring,
“Mister McMurtry, your book meant so much to me...” and he had no time nor use
for you. I know, for I saw it first hand one day during an early visit.
Looking around at the inadvertent circus he’d created, I
know he was cringing inside at what he had wrought. So I endeavored, in my own
tiny way, to take some of the pressure off of him, as much as I could. Just my
little way of saying “Thank You” to the guy who wrote Cadillac Jack. As it turned out, Larry was on his best behavior
that weekend. He was tired, of course, but he was very gracious about
interviews, photos, and even a few autographs.
I noticed that most people who needed any of the above were quick to get
in and get out, in deference to his health and his legendary temperament.
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| The wall outside of Booked Up #4. |
The oversized art and design books went for way more than we
could spend, so I sent Cathy off to write down the titles of what she really
wanted, the better to make a side deal with the winner. I cooled my heels
listening to the history books sell for cheap, or a lot, depending on what
country was being auctioned off. The Chinese history books, for example, were
out of my price range, so I made a side deal with one of the winners, a woman
I’d been previously chatting with about the sale and my interest in same. She
was amendable to selling me the one book I really wanted, and so I took great
pains to explain to her, via notes, that I was a collector of the author,
Robert Van Gulik, a former ambassador to China, who wrote a series of mystery
novels set in historic China featuring Judge Dee, a clever court official who
throws the cold light of reason upon seemingly supernatural occurrences. She
seemed baffled and a little put out until I told her that the name of the book
was The Sex Life of China, by Robert
Van Gulik. I included the parenthetical note, “Don’t Judge Me!” to let her know
that this wasn’t some weird pick up line, and thankfully, she got the message
loud and clear.
The last big section to sell was the fiction section, and
both me and the auctioneer were stunned when the minimum bids weren’t even enough
to tantalize people into picking up stock. I had one shelf earmarked, full of
Jim Crace books that I didn’t own, which were worth more than fifty dollars all
by themselves. No one else wanted it, so I bid on that lot and picked it up,
happy as a really happy thing that is happy.
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| From fiction, looking into history and beyond. Booked Up #2. |
It was weird. This was fiction. I would have thought that it
would be the section to go for the most. In fact, some shelves did go for a
couple hundred bucks, but it was impossible to know what they were fighting
over. In previous trips, I’ve bought Thorne Smith and Damon Runyan books for
thirty and forty bucks a piece. There’s always a hidden gem here or there in
the fiction shelves, and I never passed them up on any of my trips. Oh well. I
noticed other collectors doing the same thing I had, buying a section or two,
just because, and grinning when they got the books for so cheap.
Some mixed lots and a few reference sections closed out the
auction, and everyone applauded weakly, too drained by the experience to do
anything else. I was in Monty Hall mode, cutting side deals and looking for one
particular bidder (who turned out to be a buyer for Powell’s, I think), who
outbid me on one of the last two lots I wanted. Granted, I only wanted half of
the books on the shelf; science fiction and mystery fiction reference books,
which ran across two shelves. The rest of the two shelves was a set of leather
bound journals. I had a hunch the guy who outbid me was wanting those journals,
and seeking him out, I was right.
I explained to him who I was and what I wanted, and we went
to the two shelves in question and agreed to a swap, right then and there. With
three auction staffers watching, he scooped all of the old leather books off of
my shelf, and replaced them with the reference books I wanted. Simple, really.
Elated by my success, I tried like hell to get some of the
book buyers to come out, have a drink, keep the carnival-like atmosphere
flowing, but suddenly the book nerds reverted to type, averting their eyes,
shuffling nervously, and muttering something about needing food and sleep.
Whatever, losers. The people I’d been talking to all weekend, or had met during
the course of the weekend, were all from different places, and as it turned
out, going back to those places. I really wanted a post mortem on this
experience, if not a dead dog party, and it just wasn’t going to happen.
As I waited in line for my turn to pay out (a lengthy, hour
long process, as you can well imagine), I was engaged in conversation by a guy
who came looking for me. He was one of the bidders vying for the Jazz lots. We
struck up a conversation around that, exchanged business cards, and I told him
about the Jack Teagarden museum and he let me in on his research project. We
agreed to try and help each other.
While talking over the sale, I mentioned my bittersweet
notion that I had helped destroy the thing that I loved. He shook his head and
said, “Naw, man, you gotta think of it like this: Larry’s setting those books
free, man. He’s got good book Karma for the rest of his life, man.”
The simplicity of that notion fairly stunned me. Here Larry
had traveled all over America, and he’d bought up all of these bookstores and
private collections, and gathered together this, this, this solid mass of books, fully forty years of pressure
on top of them, and then in one very big bang of a gesture, he just sent them
back out to the farthest reaches again. It was cosmic. It was beautiful. I
smiled and agreed with my new friend. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“It’s the only way to think of it,” he assured me.
I’m smiling as I write this. Even Monday Morning
Quarterbacking it, his point is valid. Archer
City had served its purpose, allowing
these books to collect, and pile up, and become the legendary Texas version of the Library of Alexandria,
y’all, and it gave Larry a place from which to operate in relative solitude.
But at the end of the journey, the snake eats its tail, the universe resets,
the Alpha becomes the Omega, which becomes the Alpha.
Years from now, someone else will take up the quest that
Larry put down. Whoever it is will gather the books up and build another
repository of information, and it will take decades. It probably won’t be in Texas, but who really
knows? I won’t be around for it, but I hope that when it comes time for them to
retire, they will remember the story of The Last Book Sale and do the right
thing.
