Here is the first in a series of posts/essays by prominent writers and book lovers about their favourite used bookstores:
Visiting the Karaghiozis Emporium
David Solway
I don’t make a habit of visiting used or rare bookshops, not being a collector and content to rely on Amazon for my reading needs—banausic as this may sound. I’m far more interested in content than in the cultural patina of the bibelot. And then I must admit to a callow streak of impatience in my nature. Browsing stacks and shelves of books has approximately the same effect on me as visiting a museum: exhaustion, and a profound yearning to go somewhere for coffee.
Notwithstanding, I have enjoyed the occasional experience—rarer than the books I might be examining—of patronizing an out-of-the-way bibliotheca from time to time, the most memorable of which occurred a few years back when I wandered in, quite by chance, to the Karaghiozis Emporium in the warrens of the Plaka in Athens. This was a decrepit little hovel named after the celebrated puppet-theater character—uneducated, unemployed, given to risqué jokes and sharp social satire—who has delighted Greek audiences for generations. The place struck me as a kind of bookend to the Karaghiozis Museum in the posh Athenian suburb of Maroussi (of Henry Miller fame), thus bracketing the vast social disparities in Greek society while at the same time accentuating its cultural and historical unity.
The Karaghiozis Emporium, despite its exalted name, was nothing more than a hole in the wall, a gap in a stone façade fringed by a pelmet of aluminum shutters. It was not so much a used bookstore or a rare bookstore as a rarely used bookstore. The only occupant when I entered the premises was the affentiko (proprietor), a grizzled dwarf who seemed a dead ringer for the rogue puppet himself. He was seated on a rather high tripod, sipping a turkiko (Greek coffee) which he poured from a battered briki and scanning a much crumpled newspaper, which turned out to be the popular leftwing rag Eleftherotypia, favoured by trade unionists, diehard communists and prospective terrorists. He scarcely troubled to notice me as I cast a skeptical eye over the mouldering copies of socialist tracts, translations of various French anarchists, a prominently displayed Franz Fanon and, of course, the obligatory pile of Communist Manifestos and Das Kapitals, all looking distinctly worse for the machinations of that ruthless free market enterprise, Time. There was also a saucer of milk and the scattered heads of maridhes (smelt) on the dirt floor laid out for the feral cats that would slink in for a brief repast—an oddity I appreciated. The affentiko obviously had a soft spot for the proletarians among the scavenging classes.
As he had not bothered to acknowledge me and as I could see nothing of interest among his wares, I was about to leave when I noticed, at the top of a corded bundle by the cave-like entrance, a cat-eared copy of Yannis Ritsos’ Epitaphios, the poet’s 1936 threnody for a worker assassinated during the Salonika general strike. This was indeed a rare find. Receiving permission to untie the parcel—permission consisted of an abrupt lowering of the head, the Greek gesture for assent—I discovered the 1967 edition of Dinos Christianopoulos’ Poiimata (Poems) and a loose-sheet copy, collected between cardboard panels, of Eleni Vasileiou’s Appolonia, which I’d vaguely heard of but had never come across.
I couldn’t believe my luck and immediately began the process of negotiation. For unlike bookseller and author David Mason’s Rules 9 and in his charming pamphlet The Protocols of Used Bookstores—“Do not ask for a discount” and “It is not nice to lecture the proprietor on how and why you know that the price of his book is ludicrous”—bargaining is expected and pro forma in a traditional Levantine or Greek marketplace, which the Karaghiozis Emporium manifestly was. Now the affentiko deigned to address me and pointed to a tiny stool at the edge of the cluttered table where I could make myself uncomfortable. And so the haggling began, amid the howls of cats, the incessant hammering from the adjacent metal shop and the whorls of black smoke wafting in from the passing trikiklos (3-wheeled motorized carts).
My interlocutor’s socialist sympathies were no impediment to his shrewd and sinuous bargaining methods, claiming the rarity of the books—“they are like triremes that fly over the trees at sunset,” he said, quoting one of Ritsos’ better lines from “The Dead House,” which impressed me greatly. (Another used bookseller I had dealt with in Montreal quoted only prices.) He mentioned the strenuous and costly hunt to locate these coveted tomes in the scriptorium of a monastery on Mount Athos—a most unlikely repository for a cache of leftist volumes—and his unwillingness to part with them except to someone he judged worthy of so precious and exquisite an intellectual treasure. Feeling that he was attempting to compensate for his short stature by a tall price, I feigned a certain weary indifference, assuring him I was mainly interested in the books as a sentimental token of my visit to the Plaka.
Moreover, I affected to have little leisure, letting it be known that I intended to stop by the shoe shop across the alleyway for a pair of sandals before rushing to Pireaus to catch the ship back to the island where I was spending the summer. This was, I soon realized, too clumsy and transparent a ploy to be effective but I partially recovered lost ground by matching his Ritsos quote with one from Seferis’ signature poem, “In the Manner of G.S.”: “Ships whistle now as night falls on Pireaus,” which earned me an involuntary grunt of approval and perhaps a more acceptable price. Meanwhile, I glanced frequently and conspicuously at my watch. He sipped his turkiko and grumbled beneath his breath, peering closely at the books as if he were about to cut diamonds. It didn’t look like we were making much progress. Then came his crowning maneuver. He slipped from his perch behind the table and made as if to replace the books in the corner where I had found them. My face fell, rather too visibly, I’m afraid. That was his cue.
Suddenly appearing to change his mind, he smiled benignly, as if taking pity on the poor foreigner who had belatedly understood the spiritual value of the antiquarian gift he was about to forfeit, and stated his final price, the best he could do considering his daily expenses, the stray cats he had to feed, the exorbitant rent for this spilaion (cave), and the three daughters he had to build prika (dowry) houses for. My daughters, he said, quoting Ritsos again, are “at the windows, hidden behind their dreams.” Despite the poetry and my growing respect for the man, which tended to make me an easy mark, the tab still seemed a trifle steep. But it was also a question of the bookseller’s dignity, not only of my pocketbook, and so we arrived at a satisfactory price, a little higher than I’d budgeted for, a little lower than he’d initially demanded. Karaghiozis scored his triumph and everyone was happy. The bookseller got his adjusted price, I luxuriated in my trove, the cats had their maridhes and the daughters, no doubt, could look forward to their prika.
But, of course, since the shoe shop was in full view directly across the way and I couldn’t honourably renege on my weak transactional strategy, it also cost me a pair of sandals.
David Solway is a distinguished Canadian poet, essayist and literary critic. His book of poetry Reaching for Clear, won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry awarded by the Quebec Writers’ Federation. An earlier volume, Franklin’s Passage was awarded Le Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. He has published several books on education theory and literary criticism with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and McGill-Queen’s University Press. His latest volume of literary criticism is Director’s Cut. A political study, The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity, was a Canadian bestseller. From 2001 to 2008, he served as Associate Editor with Books in Canada and is currently a contributing editor with Arts & Opinion and The Métropolitain.
