A Bouquiniste Dilemma: To Sell or Not to Sell

If I had only one afternoon in Paris, I’d spend it all with the bouquinistes on the banks of the Seine. After one afternoon with them, I’d sell my soul to the devil, jump ship, and hitch my wagon to their star. Pick your metaphor. I don’t care about buying books anymore. I want to sell them.

If you grew up in Dayton, Ohio in the 1960s, you may remember a guy named Harry who sold carpet at an eponymous outlet called Harry’s Carpet Corner. He made his own cheesy TV ads. “I don’t care about making money,” he’d say unctuously. “I just LOVE to sell carpet.”

That’s me. Just trade carpet for books.

The problem is, fewer and fewer bouquinistes sell old books these days. Instead, they peddle not-so-cheap souvenirs made in China. Eifel Tower key chains and Mona Lisa place mats, stuff like that. Gone are your great grandpa’s naughty postcards of fleshy fin de siècle “actresses”. Replacing them are glossy movie star prints from Sunset Boulevard. If you want to smuggle forbidden books through customs, brown-wrapper classics like Tropic of Cancer, you’re out of date.

One afternoon I walked by a bouquiniste near the corner of Boule’ Mich. He sat in a plastic lawn chair, spoke loudly on a cell phone, and dragged languidly on a cigarette. He looked like James Dean or the Marlboro Man. I knew from the accent that he was an American.

That’s me, I thought, living the dream. He wasn’t trying to sell anything to anyone. I wanted to ask him how it worked. Did he make a living? Was he happy? He looked bored. The last thing he wanted to do was talk with another American.

I need to be realistic here. If I packed my library into a shipping container and sent it up the Seine on a barge, I’d probably go broke. Who buys old books anymore, even in Paris?

There might be another way to do this. I could be a bouquiniste on the banks of Dayton Street. Imagine a green metal bookcase with folding shelves. It’s mounted on wheels so it rolls out to the sidewalk. I sit there in my own plastic lawn chair and wait. And wait.

I have the location, but it could be a tough market for book-sellers. Five thousand cars a day zoom down the street. On a good day, maybe five pedestrians go by. Most of them are walking dogs that pee on my trees. The motorcyclists who blast Z Z Top from their motorcycle sound systems don’t seem like bookish types.

While I wait, I give myself a pep talk. Where is your entrepreneurial passion, Mark? What did Willy Loman say? “You’ve gotta dream, boy. It goes with the territory.” P. T. Barnum and Steve Jobs never quit. Harry didn’t build Harry’s Carpet Corner in a day.

That’s me, the All-American business failure. I don’t want to sell anything to anyone, not even my soul.

Something crucial is missing from this scene. It’s the terroir, the pretty girls and the stone parapets and the bronze bells of Notre dame chiming across the river. Even if I could dig up Dayton Street and turn it into a canal with gondolas, it wouldn’t be the same.

So I fold up the bouquiniste box and walk down to Current Cuisine for a crusty baguette. I tuck it under my arm insouciantly, with purpose. Maybe I tear off a chunk to chew on the walk home. It’s enough. It’s as close as I’ll get today to a stroll along the Seine.

About the Image: Elliott Erwitt of Magnum Photos took this iconic image of a baguette and its boy in 1955. [Cropped image via C’est La Vie Sarasota 2016]