Transcript for the Piece Audio version of A Well Read Book Fair

[low voices]

The annual book fair Books at the 25th Street Armory, is underway in the early afternoon. There’s a big domed hall in the center of the 69th Regiment Armory on Manhattan. Collapsible tables have been set up. Dealers of rare books and collectibles have finished arranging their merchandise. Buyers circulate among their booths

Gary: A book fair is essentially an extraordinarily large book shop.

Gary Austin is a regular on the book fair circuit. He’s a rare books dealer based in Wilmington, Vermont.

Gary: Each dealer comes in and brings what is fresh to their stock, is what they’re known for in terms of their specialty or what they’re particularly excited about. When you step into each booth you step into a particular bookseller’s world because each booth reflects the personality of that bookseller.

Peter Luke is from New York, near Albany. He grew up upstate and specializes in nineteenth century Americana.

Peter Luke: Well this is quite a beautiful thing which was made in Rochester, New York in the late 19th century, advertising, it was a seed company and they’re promoting their products, their apples and pears and seeds and flowers and whatever.
And this is a pamphlet with a folding plate of Samuel Colt’s factory in Hartford Connecticut.

Only the most expensive items on display today are wrapped in protective plastic. Most of the books, you can pick up and turn their pages.

Peter Luke: If you have a, you know an understanding and appreciation of the time periods and the uh, this is the sort of thing that people handled and most of it was thrown away. It was made for you know a temporary use. Here’s something on the ferry from Brooklyn to New York and you know, these are the kind of things that would have been made for people to use at the time, and they would have been discarded and uh, I don’t know, it’s just a side of history that’s more real that reading about dates and political events in the history books.

[laughter]

This is Joe Maynard. Normally he sells his books at a flea market in the West Village.

Joe Maynard: So this Machiavelli thing, the reason why I like it better is there’s just this aesthetially speaking it’s very nice to touch and handle. And you know, it was printed by Thomas Payne, so Thomas Payne was putting this together and it was owned by this dude here, who was actually—there is a record of him being a merchant tailor in London circa 1630s. So you just have this object that connects you to the history of humanity, like you’re just part of the flow. You kind of hold it and get a little vibe off it, or imagine you do, at any rate.

[Low music]

A lot of these booksellers have migrated to the internet, but their work is inseparably bound up with print. What’s interesting is that the internet had a sort of leveling effect. Prices for some of the easiest titles to find went way up as everyone realized they could own their own historic copy. On the other hand, prices for the some rarest titles have gone down.

Gary: There was a time when we knew certain books were desirable, but we didn’t know where they were. So when you came across them, you snapped them up—that was a false rarity, actually, now we know where all those books are.

But, in any case, Austin says the greatest book you’ll ever buy is the book you’ve never seen...

Gary Austin: and it’s next to the book on the shelf you’re looking for. In other words, you can order a book from my store in Vermont but you won’t see the book on either side of that, and that may be the book that will change your life. (1215)

[audio of Peter Luke describing literature about American West]
[Fiddle music]