我曾经在一个卖旧书的书店里工作，如果你没有在书店工作的经历，很可能会认为这里是天堂，会认为光顾书店的顾客有很多上了年纪的绅士，风度翩翩地翻看着装有牛皮封面的书籍。但是真相却让我吃惊，因为这里几乎没有几个真正热爱读书的人。我们的书店藏书丰富，但是顾客中懂得读书的人还不到百分之十。最常见的顾客是一些妇女，她们没有什么目标，只是买本旧书送给孩子当做生日礼物；其次是一些买廉价教科书的亚洲学生；还有只想买头版的假内行，而真正热爱文学的人却是少之又少。
许多到这里来的人都是很麻烦的，除了书店他们找不到其他地方施展这些制造麻烦的本事。例如，一位老妇人想要一本给残疾人看的书（这是一种很常见的要求），而另一位老妇人曾读过一本一八九七年出版的书，想让你给她找一本。不幸的是，她既不记得书名，也不知道作者的名字，更不知道书里写的什么，只是记得书的封面是红色的。还有一类人，他们几乎踏遍了每个旧书店，更是烦人至极。其中一些人浑身散发着变质面包的味道，几乎天天来卖那些毫无价值的旧书，有时候一天要来几次。还有一种人只是来订购大量书刊，却从来不真正付钱购买。我们书店从不赊账，只是把被订购的书放到一边，以便顾客前来索取。而订购书后又回来付钱购买的人还不到一半。起初我对这种现象很不理解。他们为什么要这样做呢？很多顾客来书店寻找限量发行、价格昂贵的书籍，找到后反复强调要给他们保留，而他们自己却一去不复返。当然顾客中也有十足的偏执狂。他们夸夸其谈自己的辉煌经历，又以最堂皇的理由解释今天碰巧出门没有带钱――这样的借口只有他们自己才会相信。在像伦敦这样的大都市里，街上总会有一些无所事事的闲人，对于这样的人来说，书店是最好的栖息场所，因为不用花钱就可以在这里呆上几个小时。他们话题陈旧、生活没有目标，时间长了，这种闲人几乎一眼就会被认出。如果觉察到顾客是这类人，通常是他前脚刚走，我们就把他订购好的书放回书架，因为他是不会回来购买的。他们中没有人想从书店偷书，只是订购――这可能会给他们一种似乎已经真正付钱的幻觉。
就像别的旧书店一样，我们也附带销售其他东西。例如，二手打印机，邮票――我指的是用过的邮票。集邮者大都性情古怪，沉默寡言，各个年龄的人都有，以男士居多。很显然，把邮票粘贴到集邮册的过程很难给女人带来愉悦。我们也卖六便士的讲占星术的书，书的作者声称自己曾预言过日本大地震。这样的书都被密封，我从没有打开过。但是买书的人经常回来告诉我们，里面讲的占星术是多么的准确（如果书中讲的是你对异性有吸引力或者你最大的缺点是慷慨大方，那么无疑任何占星术都是准确的）。我们也卖很多儿童书籍，大部分是廉价的滞销图书。如今的儿童书真是很糟，尤其被堆放在一起时。就我个人而言，我宁愿给孩子们看罗马时期佩特罗尼乌斯仲裁者的讽刺作品，也不会给他们读《彼得.潘》。不过跟后来拙劣的模仿作品相比，像巴里的《彼得.潘》这样的童话就显得更有精神内涵、更能启迪心智。在整个圣诞节期间热闹兴奋的十天里，我们要一直不停地销售圣诞节卡片和日历，虽然很无聊，却能赚很多钱。对基督教徒们的这种宗教情感我一度感到很好奇，觉得很滑稽。圣诞节贺卡制造公司的人一般六月份便开始行动，拿着他们各种各样的贺卡前来销售。我还清楚地记得他们发货单上的一句话，是这样写的：“带小兔的圣诞贺卡，两打。”
我们主要的副业是租赁图书，大概有五六百本图书可供出租，都是小说。那些偷书贼肯定很喜欢这样的书店。他们在这里花两便士租一本书，然后把标签撕掉，以一先令的价格卖给另外一家书店。我相信这是世界上最容易的偷窃了。不过书商们通常发现，就算这样被偷上几本书，他们也觉得更划算些（我们通常一个月丢十几本书）。如果你要求他们付定金，顾客一般会被吓得落荒而逃。
我们的书店正好位于汉普斯特德和卡姆登镇之间，因此来书店的人有男爵，也有公交车司机，各式各样的人都有，伦敦的整个阅读人群可能都会在这里出没。因此可以统计一下，谁的书最受欢迎――是普里斯特利？海明威？沃波尔？还是沃德豪斯？这些都不是，最畅销的是埃塞尔.M.戴尔的书，其次是沃里克，再其次是杰弗里。埃塞尔.M.戴尔作品的阅读人群主要是各个年龄阶段的女性，而不像大家通常认为的那样，只是一些饥渴的老处女或烟草商的肥婆娘。认为男人不看小说是错误的，但的确有一些小说是他们从来不读的。大致说来，我们常说的大众作品――即最常见，不好也不坏，像高尔斯华绥那种让人唏嘘落泪的作品，通常是女性热衷阅读的。男人要么读他们认为值得一读的小说，要么就选择侦探小说。他们对侦探小说的钟爱有时候到了走火入魔的程度。据我所知，有一个顾客每星期要读四五本侦探小说，这样持续了一年多，还不包括从其他书店租赁的类似书籍。同样一本书他从来不看两遍，这一点让我很纳闷。很明显，他已经把那些数量惊人的垃圾图书的内容（据我计算，他每年读的书页能铺四分之三英亩土地）牢牢地记在脑子里了。他对书名或作者的名字一无所知，但是一翻开书，他就知道自己是否已经读过。
在租赁书店里，能看出一个人真正的品位和喜好。让人意想不到的是，一些英国小说家的经典作品不再受青睐，几乎完全被读者忽视。没有必要把狄更斯、萨克雷、简.奥斯汀和特罗洛普的书摆在书架上，因为根本没人会读。人们瞟一眼十九世纪的小说，通常会说：“哦，那书太陈旧，早就过时了！”然后马上走开。但是狄更斯的书还是很好卖的，就像莎士比亚的书一直很畅销一样。狄更斯的作品就好像《圣经》，是人们必读的、书籍之一。在旧书店里他的作品很受欢迎。人们总是相互谈论狄更斯，比如你可能会听到比尔.塞克斯是一个夜贼、密考伯先生是秃头等谈话，就像在一个芦苇筐里发现了摩西，或“只能看见上帝的背”等关于《圣经》的传说一样。另外一件引起我注意的事情是，美国书籍越来越不受欢迎。另外一种不受欢迎的书是短篇小说，书商每两三年便会遭遇类似的商业尴尬。当顾客要求图书员给他们找本好书看时，通常开口先说：“我不看短篇小说。”或者说：“我不要短篇故事。”一个德国人就经常这样要求。如果你问其中的原因，他们会解释说，熟悉小说中那么多人物的性格太费力，他们只喜欢看那种读完第一章后就没必要再动脑子的书。我觉得，这种现象的出现，受批评的应该是小说作者，而不是读者。很多当代小说，不管是英国的还是美国的，大都乏味沉闷，没有阅读价值。但有些短篇故事还是很受欢迎的，比如劳伦斯的短篇故事就像他的长篇小说一样受欢迎。
以后我是不是也会卖书呢？大概是不会的――尽管我的雇主对我很好，在书店的日子也很愉快。
要是有资金和店面，任何一个受过教育的人都能靠书店维持生计。这个生意不难学，除非你要致力于珍稀图书和罕见版本的买卖。如果你对书里的内容有所了解，那就更容易了（大多数书商都不了解书的内容，看看他们在报纸上做的征订广告，你就知道他们是多么外行。广告上即使看不到鲍斯威尔的《大英帝国兴亡录》的字眼，也肯定会有T.S.艾略特的《弗洛斯河上的磨坊》）。这项生意很高雅，还很人性化。这些特点使小书商不会被排挤得毫无立足之地，然而杂货商或者送牛奶的人就不一样了。但是，这里的工作时间却很长――我只是兼职，我的老板一星期要工作七十个小时，还不包括出去买书的时间，这种工作方式对健康不利。书店里冬天大都非常寒冷，因为要是屋里太暖和，窗子就有水雾，而书店就是靠窗子做生意的。书籍几乎是所有物体中最能积攒尘土的，散发的气味也很难闻，放在顶上的书本上总是有死青蝇，好像那里是青蝇们理想的死亡之地。
然而当书商会让我失去对书的热情，这才是我不想当书商的真正原因。为了提高销售量，书商不得不撒谎，对书的内容胡编乱造，结果使自己更加讨厌这堆书。更糟糕的是，他们不得不经常给书除尘，还得搬来搬去。我曾经非常爱书――喜欢它们的气味和手感，因为这些书至少也有五十年了。最让我高兴的是能花一先令从县城拍卖会上买到一大堆批发图书。在这种拍卖会上，你总能无意中发现很多好书，例如，十八世纪的一些二流诗人、过时的早已经被人遗忘的小说、六十年代的妇女杂志等。当你没事可做时，比如在浴室里，或深夜还不想睡觉的时候，或是午饭前的无聊一刻钟，你都可以读读一些过期的书刊。但是自从我进书店工作以后，我就再也不想买书了。每天都有成千上万本书摆在眼前，有时候自己都觉得恶心，书也变得令人厌烦。如今我也偶尔买本书，但是只有当这本书我非常想读，而又借不到的时候才买。我从来不去买一些下三滥的垃圾书。发黄的书页散发出来的特有香气再也不能吸引我了，因为这种气味只会让我想起那些烦人的顾客和死掉的青蝇。
I used to work in a used book store, and if you hadn't worked in a bookstore, you'd probably think it was heaven, that there were a lot of older gentlemen in the store, flipping through books with cowhide covers in style. But the truth surprised me, because there are very few people here who really love to read. Our store has a large collection of books, but less than 10 percent of our customers know how to read. The most common customers are women with no goals other than buying a used book as a birthday present for their children, Asian students who buy cheap textbooks, and snobs who only want to buy the front page, there are very few people who really love literature. Many of the people who come here are trouble, and they can't find anywhere else to show their trouble-making skills. For example, an old woman wants a book for the disabled (a common requirement) , while another old woman has read a book published in 1897 and wants you to find one for her. Unfortunately, she didn't remember the title, the author's name, or what was in the book, except that the cover was red. Then there are the annoying ones who have visited almost every second hand bookstore. Some of them smelled like stale bread and came almost every day to sell their worthless old books, sometimes several times a day. There are those who just come in and order a lot of books and magazines, but never actually pay for them. We Don't give credit. We just put the books away so that customers can come and get them. Less than half of those who ordered the books returned to pay for them. I didn't understand this phenomenon at first. Why would they do that? Many customers come to the store looking for a limited edition, expensive book, and when they find it, they insist that they keep it, but they never come back. Of course, there's a fair amount of paranoia among the customers. They bragged about their great experiences and explained in the grandest of reasons why they happened to go out without money today. In a metropolis like London, where there are always idlers on the streets, bookstores are the perfect place to stay for hours at no cost. They have old topics, no purpose in life, and over time, they are almost instantly recognizable as idlers. If we sense that this is the type of person we're dealing with, usually right before he leaves, we put the book back on the shelf because he's not coming back to buy it. None of them wanted to steal books from the bookstore, only to order them, which might give them the illusion that they had actually paid for them. Like any second-hand bookstore, we sell other things as well. For example, a used printer, a stamp, or a used stamp. Most stamp collectors are eccentric, taciturn people of all ages, mostly men. It is obvious that the process of pasting stamps into a stamp album is not very pleasant for women. We also sell sixpence worth of astrology books by people who claim to have predicted the great earthquake in Japan. Books like this are sealed. I never opened them. But people who buy books often come back to tell us, how accurate the horoscope is (if the book is about your attraction to the opposite sex or your biggest weakness is generosity, then surely any horoscope is accurate) . We also sell a lot of children's books, mostly cheap, unsalable books. Children's books are terrible these days, especially when they're stacked together. Personally, I would rather show my children the Roman arbiter of Petronius satire than read Peter to them. But fairy tales like Bary's Peter are more spiritual and illuminating than later parodies. During the 10 exciting days of the Christmas season, we had to keep selling Christmas cards and calendars. It was boring, but we made a lot of money. At one point I was intrigued and amused by this religious sentiment among Christians. People from the Christmas card company usually start in June with their various cards for sale. I distinctly remember one of the lines on their invoice: "Christmas cards with bunnies, two dozen." Our main sideline was renting books, about five or six hundred of which were available for rent, they're novels. I'm sure the book thieves would love a bookstore like this. Here they rent a book for Tuppence, tear off the label and sell it to another bookshop for a shilling. I believe it's the easiest theft in the world. But booksellers often find that even if a few books are stolen in this way, they find it more cost-effective (we usually lose a dozen a month) . If you ask them for a down payment, customers will usually run for it. Our bookstore was right between Hampstead and Camden Town, so there were barons and bus drivers and all kinds of people, the whole reading population of London could be here. So Who's the most popular book, by the way? Priestley? Hemingway? Walpole? Or Wodehouse? None of that. The best seller is Essert. M. Dyer, then Warwick, then Geoffrey Pearson. Essert. M. Dyer's work is read primarily by women of all ages, not by horny old spinsters or fat tobacconists, as is commonly believed. It's wrong to think that men don't read novels, but there are some novels that they never read. Generally speaking, what we call popular writing is the most common, not good, not bad, John Galsworthy, which is often read by women. Men either read novels that they think are worth reading, or they choose detective novels. Their love of detective fiction sometimes reaches a Zou Huo ru Mo level. As far as I know, one customer read four or five detective novels a week for more than a year, not including similar books rented from other bookstores. I wonder why he never reads the same book twice. It was clear that he had memorized the staggering amount of rubbish that, by my count, covered three-quarters of an acre of land each year. He knew nothing about the title or the name of the author, but as soon as he opened the book, he knew whether he had read it. In a rental bookstore, you can tell a person's true tastes and preferences. Surprisingly, some of the classic works of British novelists have fallen out of favor and are almost completely ignored by readers. There's no need to drag Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Jane. Austin and Trollope's books were on the shelves because no one could read them. A glance at a nineteenth-century novel usually says, "Oh, that's so old, it's out of date!" and walks away. But Charles Dickens's books sell well, just as Shakespeare's has always sold well. Charles Dickens's work, like the Bible, is one of those must read books. His work is very popular in second-hand bookstores. People talk about Charles Dickens all the time, like you might hear about Bill. Sekers is a burglar, Mr. Micawber is bald and so on talk, like in a reed basket found Moses, or "can only see the back of God," and so on about the Bible legend. Another thing that caught my attention was the growing unpopularity of American books. Another type of book that is not popular is the short story, which booksellers encounter every two or three years with a similar commercial embarrassment. When customers ask a librarian to find them a good book, they usually start by saying, "I don't read short stories." or, "I don't want short stories." A German often asks. If you ask why, they will explain that it is too laborious to acquaint themselves with so many of the characters in the novel, and that they prefer books in which the first chapter is read without further thought. I think it is the author of the novel, not the reader, who should be criticized for this phenomenon. Many contemporary novels, whether British or American, are dull and unreadable. But some short stories, like Laurence's, are as popular as his novel. Will I be selling books in the future? Probably not. Although my employer was very kind to me, I had a good time at the bookstore. With money and a storefront, any educated person could make a living at the bookstore. The business isn't hard to learn, unless you're dealing in rare books and rare editions. If you know anything about the book, that's even easier. (most booksellers don't know what a book is about. Just look at the subscription ads they put in the paper. If Boswell's The Rise and fall of the Empire was not to be seen, T. S. T. S. Eliot's the mill on the floss. It's a very elegant, very human business. These characteristics prevent small booksellers from being squeezed out of their A Place to Stand, a Place to Grow, whereas grocers or milkers are different. However, the working hours here are very long. I only work part-time. My boss works 70 hours a week, not including the time to go out to buy books, which is not good for my health. Most of the winters in bookstores are very cold, because if the house is too warm, the windows are misted, and bookstores do business by the windows. Books are the most dusty of almost all objects, have a bad smell, and there are always dead bluebottles on the books at the top, as if that was the ideal place for them to die. However, being a bookseller would make me lose my passion for books, which is the real reason why I don't want to be a bookseller. In order to boost sales, booksellers had to lie and make up stories that made them hate the pile even more. To make matters worse, they had to dust the books regularly and move around. I used to love books very much. I loved the smell and feel of them because they were at least fifty years old. What pleased me most was to be able to buy a large number of wholesale books for a shilling at the county auction. At these auctions, you can always stumble upon good books, such as minor poets of the 18th century, outdated and long forgotten novels, and women's magazines of the 1960s. When you have nothing else to do, like in the bathroom, or late at night when you don't want to go to bed, or a boring quarter of an hour before lunch, you can read old books and magazines. But ever since I started working at the bookstore, I don't want to buy any more books. Every day there are thonds of books in front of me, sometimes I feel sick, books have become boring. I buy a book now and then, but only when I really want to read it and can't borrow it. I don't buy shitty books. The distinctive aroma of the yellowed pages no longer appealed to me, for it only reminded me of annoying customers and dead flies. 标题: 书店轶事作者: 乔治·奥威尔
字数: 3469
简介: 我曾经在一个卖旧书的书店里工作，如果你没有在书店工作的经历，很可能会认为这里是天堂，会认为光顾书店的顾客有很多上了年纪的绅士，风度翩翩地翻看
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