Marius Kociejowski I think I’ve always written seriously, which is not to say I’ve always written well. It took me years to find my voice, with a hundred failures behind every success, only for those successes to be later seen by myself as failures. At times I’m so self-critical I wonder if I will ever arrive at that imaginary goal I carry within me.
Many good memoirs have been written by antiquarian booksellers. But Marius Kociejowski's is by far the grouchiest Grouch
In his grouchy, funny memoir, “A Factotum in the Book Trade,” Marius Kociejowski writes about what a good bookstore should feel like, famous customers he’s served and more.
A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE
A Memoir
By Marius Kociejowski
349 pages. Biblioasis. $18.95.
I love the smell of old books. More than once, I’ve said those seven words aloud after entering a used and/or rare bookstore. It’s a mistake I won’t make again.
In his dyspeptic new memoir, “A Factotum in the Book Trade,” Marius Kociejowski, who has worked in some of London’s best antiquarian bookstores, turns me into a kebab when he writes:
There is a breed of Homo sapiens that will walk inside, take a deep breath, and say, “Mmm, I just love the smell of old books.” They are to be got rid of as quickly as possible, with whatever violence it takes. I have heard the line a thousand times and never, never have I sold a book to any one of those people.
Barely recovered from that puncture, I ran headlong into Kociejowski’s next skewer:
Also one must be ruthless with those who ask, “What is the most expensive book you’ve got here?” Often it is the male of the species trying to impress the female.
I winced, having posed that question. Now doubly impaled, I stopped to examine my wounds and gather my wits.
I do buy used books, and I’ve been married a long time, so I decided to acquit myself of these charges on technical grounds, fending off the journalist Heywood Broun’s remark that “a technical objection is the first refuge of a scoundrel.”
- Read an excerpt of The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool at Eland Books.
- Henry Hitchens reviews A Factotum in the Book Trade in the Times Literary Supplement (May 27, 2022).
- Interview with Nigel Beale at The Biblio File.
- “Reading Marius Kociejowski’s A Factotum in the Book Trade is like walking through an endangered species of bookstore. A series of essays that stand on their own yet form a coherent memoir and defence of antiquarian bookselling, the reminiscences of a man who describes himself as a “marriage broker” between people and books is like a strange find at the back of the shop.”
- — David Moscrop reviews A Factotum in the Book Trade in The Globe and Mail (June 10, 2022).
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