Chez Voltaire & Rousseau in Otago Lane

'What thou seest, write in a book...' [Revelations 1:11]

Second-hand bookshops are in some ways the lifeblood of the slow spirit (is there any other kind?). Glasgow has its fair share, and I salute them and their owners who struggle to keep them ticking over. For some it is an end itself I imagine, for the love of it. Profit doesn't come into it. Why should it? I've always thought that when art (and literature) gets mixe up in the pernicious penny-counting of profits, it anihilates itself. Art is a gift, or an exchange. It is not a commodity, not product.

The west-end of Glasgow is particularly fortunate in having several 2nd hand bookshops: Voltaire & Rousseau in Otago Lane (Waterstones it ain't!), Thistle Books (a lane away from V&R), Caledonian Books on Great Western Road just around the corner, and the more florescent well-organised Oxfams on Byres road. These four bookshops are all within the same ward of Glasgow, namely Hillhead, with the first three literally being within book throwing distance of each other.

Whilst browsing in Caledonian Books the other day I overheard the owners blethering away (as is their custom at the far end of the store next to the hearth) about Messieurs V&R : 

'Aye, you need a flask and a climbing rope when you're in there. People have gone missing in that back room.'

It's true that if you're in a rush, or even just looking for something in particular, perhaps V&R is not for you. It's a place to while away a rainy afternoon, to slowly pore over the obscure titles and the ones that you vaguely recall from long long ago.If the truth be told it's like a great mine which occasionally throws up a diamond from its depths. It was here I uncovered a first edition of Guillaume Apollinaire's 'Zone' (translated by Samuel Beckett), and an exquisite cloth-bound edition of R.D. Laing's poetic compendium 'Knots'. You just can't get that on the interweb, that feeling of surprise, of book-nirvana, when you clear away the deposits and finally strike the bedrock.

Just remember your flask and rope - you'll need it to get up there on the high ground.