When you live in France, you learn to live with the Past. By the Past I mean not only the grand buildings and monuments, the art, and the long and complicated History, but something in a more intimate scale and space where one comes in contact with everyday things such as furniture, cooking utensils, clothes, and other personal belongings.
In France, many things, from houses to silverware, are inherited; but also many things are recycled through antique shops, the wonderful flea markets, and through shops called "brocantes", where used things are bought and sold, and even through the Red Cross shops where one donates and buys used clothing and items.
In the Americas, where economies live or die by what happens in the consumer market, we are encouraged to throw things away. The "new and better" consumerism philosophy deems a thing as "useless," even while it is still in working order, simply because it is old (and in today's terms, "old" means as little as a few months or a couple of years).
In France, not only do antique shops, flea markets, and "brocantes" thrive on the sale of used goods but also organizations, such as the aforementioned Red Cross and charities such as Emmaüs, founded by the Capuchin friar Abbé Pierre, which resells all sorts of articles that people donate to it. I was very pleasantly surprised the first time I went to the Emmaüs subsidiary in Tarnos, a community a few kilometers from Biarritz. The warehouse-like building was filled with shoppers that, judging from the type of cars parked outside, came from every economic level, as it were.
It is also common for people to place unwanted but still usable items on the sidewalk in front of their homes. These quickly find new owners as people here have no prejudices about taking an old, used item home.
But if one were to judge by sheer numbers, I would say that no other used item is dearer to the French, than the used books. The French are serious readers. I mean they really read. Rare is the French house that does not have bookshelves in every spare nook and cranny. As for shops, the "Maison de la presse," the ubiquitous newspaper, magazine, and book shop that not even the smallest towns can do without, does lively business, no matter where it is situated, not only in newspapers and magazines but in books. Regular bookstores are everywhere, and during Christmas they are as busy as any electronic gadget store. Municipal libraries are always full of people browsing and borrowing books and magazines. And many of them have a used book bin where one can leave books for others to take home to read.
So, a society with such a huge appetite for reading material is bound to create a huge second-hand market—and it has.
Paris is a paradise for the used-book lover. One can browse the stalls of the "bouquinistes" that line the sidewalks by the Seine or find rare and valuable editions in the smart shops of the rare book dealers of the 7th Arrondissement. But nothing compares to the streets and avenues of the Latin Quarter in the 5th Arrondissement, the so-called Latin Quarter, where used book stores abound. I love these because they are the most specialized and eccentric.The Fifth Arrondissement is where a lot of schools are located hence where the book trade has a huge, readymade market.
On a certain occasion, I stayed in an apartment on the Rue l'Arbalète, near the famous Rue Mouffetard. I went walking around, getting to know the neighborhood, when a few steps from Rue Gay Lussac, I saw a man piling up books on two rickety tables outside a shop. A sign, obviously hand-painted, was propped up against one of the tables. It announced that the books were sold by the kilo. Amused by the odd sales pitch, I followed the man when he went into the shop.
Inside the place was the expected chaos for this kind of shop, with books piled on tables and on the floor, and a gallery of bookshelves bent under the weight of their loads.
Behind a large desk, on which books were also piled, sat the man. A bemused smile peeked from under his bushy, white mustache and beard. Midst the piles of books on his desk sat an old balance. The man, arms crossed, eyes twinkling as if he were Anubis waiting to weigh the souls of the books that were to be sold, looked at me but said nothing. I imagined he was waiting for me to greet him, as is customary when one arrives in a shop or in someone's house in France.
So I said the customary “Bonjour”, and I asked in my very basic French if he had any dictionaries.
“Est-ce que vous est Anglais?” he asked thinking I might be English.
“No, je suis Mexicain,” I said uttering my standard answer.
“Ah,” he exclaimed as if I had just said I was a long lost relative, “vous parlez espagnol, alors.” He got up and motioned to me to follow him.
He led me through a maze of bookshelves and sundry piles of objects, among which, and I dared not ask why, he had amassed a dozen old, broken down children's bicycles and tricycles.
“Voila!” he said triumphantly while waving his hand toward bookshelf in a dark corner. In the dim light I noticed that these bookshelves were marked: “Espagnol – Español”, “Anglais – English”, “Italien – Italiano”, “Allemand – Deustch”.
The Spanish language section was a hodgepodge of Spanish and Latin American authors. There was the usual bevy of personal histories of the Spanish Civil War and novels by long-forgotten authors, as well as gems such as Cortazar’s “Rayuela” and an anthology of the works of Jorge Luis Borges. At the very end of the shelf, two thick books caught my eye: it was a two volume edition of the Collins French-Spanish dictionary. I took them from the shelf, as well as the Borges Anthology.
From the English section, I took a worn copy of Graham Green’s essays and a small pocket edition of an English-French dictionary.
The bookseller smiled at me and led me back to his desk. With an elegant gesture, he motioned for me to place my books on his balance. He then carefully moved the counter weight until the balance was perfectly level. He scrutinized it with a frown, noticing it was just under three kilos. Without saying a word, he rummaged around one of the desk's drawers and produced a paperback book which he ceremoniously placed on top of the books I had selected. Now the weight was three kilos even.
“Six euros, s’il vous plait," he said triumphantly.
I laughed and he laughed. I gave him the money and thanked him. He produced a used paper bag from under the desk and put my books in it. We said the customary “au revoir” to each other and I left the store.
When I had walked about half a block, I felt it safe to look at the little book he had used to round out the three kilos. It was a text on French grammar and verb conjugation, the kind of textbook that was probably used in French schools years ago. I smiled and thought, "I bet not much gets by an old dog like him.”
There were many bookstores in the long, and interesting streets of the Fifth Arrondissement, as well as in the avenues where the many schools and university buildings stand out among the old houses and ancient flats, as if they were overgrown boys standing midst a gaggle of old ladies.
In another bookstore, I saw that the owner was busily dusting and replacing books on shelves. I went in and after the customary greetings and explanation of my nationality, he told me, with obvious pride in his voice, that he had recently acquired the store. He nodded to an old man sitting in a very well-worn leather chair, which was lodged between piles of books that "Monsieur eez ze previous owner." The old man was in the process of lighting his pipe and emitting blue clouds of smoke as he grumbled something which I took to be a "bonjour".
"Are you looking for zomezin spezial?" asked the new owner.
"Not really," I replied, "but if you have a full set of Proust's "A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu," the Gallimard edition, I would like to see it."
"No, I am afraid I do not 'ave zat," he said. At that moment, a man came into the store. He was very well dressed, wearing a beige raincoat with a light blue shirt and dark blue tie. He was carrying a blue, glossy shopping bag with the logo of a fancy clothing store printed in gold on the side. He went straight to the man sitting on the leather chair and muttered something. The old man between puffs of smoke muttered something in reply and pointed at the new owner with his pipe.
"Monsieur?" the new owner said to the man. The man came towards the new owner and muttered something in French while leaning forward a bit, as if trying to talk to the new owner in confidence. He then opened the shopping bag to reveal a large book, beautifully bound in red leather.
"Desolé, monsieur," said the new owner while shrugging his shoulders. He then said something in French which I understood to be that he did not buy or sell such fine books. The man nodded curtly, said good-by and walked out of the store.
"Was he trying to sell that book?" I asked.
"Yes, yes, he was," said the new owner with what seemed somewhat of an embarrassment. My curiosity was pricked so I asked him about the mysterious book seller. He sighed and said, "Ah, these are hard times, Monsieur. Some families that in other times were wealthy are not so now and they sell things that have been in their families for many years. It is a sad thing but this is how it is now, n'est-ce pas?"
I agreed and I thanked him and said good-bye; he gave me one of his newly printed business cards.
"When you are in Paris again," he said, "you can call and enquire if we have the Proust, no?"
"Yes, I will," I promised and left the store.
As I walked along the avenue toward the Boulevard Saint-Michel where I wanted to get on the Metro, I stopped now and then to browse through the books displayed on tables outside stores; a cardboard sign, a sheet of paper on a window, or simply a price scribbled on the side of the table advertised that these books were on sale for a euro or two each. Most of the offerings were old best-sellers, police and crime stories, how-to books, or political rants on bygone issues. The "bouquinistes" know their business, so they separate the best stuff to sell at slightly higher prices. For example, in a shop near the Saint-Michel metro entrance, I found a brand new copy of a book on drawings by French artists of the 17th and 18th Centuries—a marvelous find—at just five euros.
I also went into several regular bookstores that afternoon. They all seemed to have at least a few customers browsing books. Some of the larger stores looked like supermarkets on payday. One which specialized in travel books and coffee-table sized books was thronged with tourists. Another, on the Place Sorbonne, which specialized in philosophy books, had electronic sensors to discourage shoplifting. "One could do worse," I thought, "than to live in a country where kids want to steal philosophy books."
I was reminiscing about all of the above as I walked to my favorite used book store here in the Condesa neighborhood. It is called "El Hallazgo" (The Find). It has been on Mazatlán avenue for decades. Like the bookstores in France, the owner puts less interesting books, LP records, and magazines outside, piled up on the sidewalk and sells them for ten pesos each. But inside one finds a plethora of good used books, divided into section on everything from philosophy to great English language literature. Conveniently, next door to it, there is a nice café where one can sit to peruse a book just bought in El Hallazgo. The bookstore has never closed during the pandemic, although it warns that you will be asked to leave if you enter without a proper mask to cover your mouth and nose. But, the fact that it opens six days a week, without fail, gives me hope that we will soon be out of this mess and back to enjoying the simple things of life, like browsing the bookshelves of this wonderful bookstore, El Hallazgo. My other favorite bookstore in the neighborhood is the marvelous La Bella Época cultural center, also known as the "Librería Rosario Castellanos" and which is run by the Fondo de Cultura Económica. I miss going there on a Sunday afternoon to have a cappuccino in its cafeteria and then to sit in one of its comfortable easy chairs to peruse a book from the "novelties" section, or something from its huge inventory. The other day I stopped by and asked the policeman at the door when the cultural center would be open again and he said, "Not until further notice." Hmm, bad news.
