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A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict, by John Baxter
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In the rural Australia of the fifties where John Baxter grew up, reading books was disregarded with suspicion, owning and collecting them with utter incomprehension. Despite this, by the age of eleven Baxter had 'collected' his first book - The Poems of Rupert Brooke. He'd read the volume often, but now he had to own it. This was the beginning of what would become a major collection and a lifelong obsession.
His book-hunting would take him all over the world, but his first real find was in London in 1978, when he spotted a rare copy of a Graham Greene children's book while browsing on a stall in Swiss Cottage. It was going for 5 pence. This would also, fortuitously, be the day when he first encountered one of the legends of the book-selling world: Martin Stone. At various times pothead, international fugitive from justice, and professional rock musician, he would become John's mentor and friend.
In this brilliantly readable and funny book, John Baxter brings us into contact with such literary greats as Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis, J.G. Ballard and Ray Bradbury. But he also shows us how he penetrated the secret fraternity of 'runners' or book scouts - sleuths who use bluff and guile to hunt down their quarry - and joined them in scouring junk shops, markets, auction rooms and private homes for rarities.
In the comic tradition of Clive James's Unreliable Memoirs, A Pound of Paper describes how a boy from the bush came to be living in a Paris penthouse with a library worth millions. It also explores the exploding market in first editions. What treasures are lying unnoticed in your garage?
- Sales Rank: #137248 in Books
- Published on: 2003-12-11
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.58" h x 1.44" w x 5.58" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 432 pages
From Publishers Weekly
As he stooped over a basket full of stuffed animals at a London flea market, Baxter (Robert de Niro; George Lucas) made a discovery that would change his life forever. It was there, in 1978, that he unearthed a children's book by Graham Greene, called The Little Horse Bus, selling for five pence. He snatched it up, then impulsively purchased another Greene novel and one of Greene's African journals as well. Just like that, a book collector was born. Baxter chronicles his growing obsession with books in a way that's utterly infectious, with sharp wit and self-deprecating humor. He flits across Australia, England, the United States and France in pursuit of the perfect collection, always spurred on by the knowledge that book collectors find treasures in the most unlikely places. In his words, "acquiring [books] meant midnight assignations in seedy corners of London, white-knuckle bidding at auctions, speculative drives across England to cities you'd never seen, and nervous knocking on the doors of strangers that, in all probability, would leave you, a minute later, humiliated and empty-handed on the doorstep a hundred miles from home." He takes gleeful pleasure in underpaying those who are ignorant about the worth of their rare books, but he also holds certain texts sacred (like the uncorrected proofs of two James Bond novels given to him by Kingsley Amis). Baxter's memoir will be of great interest to serious book collectors because so much of the book conveys the insider's perspective, but his narrative is truly amusing and rollicking enough to entice book lovers of all kinds.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
There is no small charm to a tale that begins where Baxter grew up, in Middle-of-Nowhere, Australia, and ends in the Paris penthouse above where Sylvia Beach once lived. Bibliographer, biographer, broadcaster, and obsessive book collector, Baxter has lived in London and Los Angeles, married three times, and can't resist a story or a list (the book ends with, among other things, what various folk would take with them if their book collections were afire). Baxter collected Graham Greene (he's quite vibrant on this obsession and its resolution) and reveals that Sarah Michelle Gellar of Buffy fame is one of the new breed of celebrity book collectors. A passion for film (he's written about Spielberg and Kubrick and DeNiro) and a working knowledge of collectible pornography are further nuggets in this sprawling, unedited, but quite engaging memoir. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Critics Rave About A Pound of Paper
"Baxter chronicles his growing obsession with books in a way that's utterly infectious, with sharp wit and self-deprecating humor . . . . Baxter's memoir will be of great interest to serious book collectors because so much of the book conveys the insiders' perspective, but his narrative is truly amusing and rollicking enough to entice book lovers of all kinds."--Publishers Weekly
"[An] entertaining account of his admittedly nerdy life. . . . Tasty junk food for book lovers."--Kirkus Reviews
"Baxter has written an informative book, and a delightful one, that guides the reader through a specialized and eccentric world with a wink and a smile."--Chicago Tribune
"A Pound of Paper leads us on a merry chase in pursuit of books, an undertaking as chancy as betting on the lottery. Baxter . . . prov[es] a most erudite and entertaining guide. . . . Essential to any current or prospective collector who wishes to engage in the hunt for a gem that might be worth a fortune or who simply wants to enjoy the pleasures of the game."--Roanoke Times
"Lively and colorful . . . . Baxter tells his stories with humor, suspense and plenty of style."--Virginian-Pilot
"Erudite and mirthful . . . told with ornery, self-deprecating wit."--Time Out New York
"A Pound of Paper--the weight, more or less of a book-is the peg on which Baxter hangs episodes of autobiography . . . the book collectors who buy this particular pound of paper will profit from it in every sense." --The London Times
"Of the making of many books there is no end. But who's complaining, especially when something as entertaining as John Baxter's A Pound of Paper comes along? At the outset he quotes Groucho Marx: " 'Outside a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read.' " --Glasgow Sunday Herald
"An addictive romp through the unconventional life of an obsessive . . . . John Baxter may claim books lack sex appeal, but he proves the opposite." --Metro [England]
"[An} entertaining account of his admittedly nerdy life... Tasty junk food for book lovers." (Kirkus Reviews)
"An addictive romp through the unconventional life of an obsessive . . . John Baxter may claim books lack sex appeal, but he proves the opposite." (Metro [England])
Most helpful customer reviews
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
A True Delight For Every Book Lover
By W. C HALL
This is a engaging, entertaining memoir by a true book lover. The leisurely, slightly discursive way in which John Baxter unfolds his life story led me into imagining I had struck up a conversation with him in a musty second-hand book shop; and found his story so entertaining that I invited him across the street to a dark, smoky pub to continue the tale over several tall pints of lager.
Baxter grew up in Australia, and has since called London, Los Angeles and Paris home. He's been a broadcaster, novelist, biographer and film critic. The one constant thread in this far-ranging life has been his love of books. As a young adult, he became obsessed with science fiction. While living in London, he stumbled on a rare copy of a Graham Greene children's book, which served as the basis for a Greene collection he spent several years building.
In this book, he celebrates some of the most memorable people he's encountered along the way, including book runner Martin Stone (A book runner makes his living, if you can call it that, by buying and reselling books from flea markets, thrift stores and the like); and several literary greats, including Kingsley Amis, Ray Bradbury and Harry Harrison. He also explores collectors of erotica, the difference between Paris and London bookshops, skewers the ignorance of many eBay sellers, and has a grand good time through it all. The closing scene, where he brings all the books he owns together in one place for the first time in his life, had a special resonance for me....it's something I dream of in my own life. For book lovers everywhere.--William C. Hall
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Memoir and Peek at the World of Book Collecting
By Timothy Haugh
I am a book collector and I enjoy my passion very much. Many people would say I'm obsessed but it only takes a book like this one to remind myself that I'm in the minor leagues.
Part memoir and part peek into the world of book collecting, Baxter tells of his youth in the wilds of Australia where, like many of us, he delved into the world of comic book and science fiction collecting. He matured along the way with an interest in Graham Greene before dumping that collection and moving onto other literary interests.
And he did not stay in the wilds of Australia forever. He travelled and made his way up in the world of film and publishing. Baxter has had the fortune as a film critic, writer and collector to meet a number of interesting people, from the writers he collected to eccentric bookmen like Martin Stone. The book has a definite British flavor, though Baxter has made some forays into the United States. Still, any book collector will see things he recognizes in Baxter's experiences and, in some cases, things we wished we could have experienced ourselves.
Let's face it, a person with a passion for book collecting will feel some jealousy when reading of some of Baxter's finds and encounters. Unfortunately, most of us do not have the means and/or opportunity to do some of the things Baxter has done. But this does not totally diminish the fun in seeing how he was able to come to have the experiences he had and it makes for a great read for anyone interested in books.
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
A Pound of Paper
By Debra Hamel
In his memoir A Pound of Paper, novelist and film biographer John Baxter meanders through the story of his life-long obsession with books and book collecting: from his precocious childhood in the Australian hinterland, where he devoured the science fiction magazines that were piled in a friend's garage, through years spent hunting Graham Greene first editions, to his Parisian penthouse in the present, in a building whose stairwell was once splattered with F. Scott Fitzgerald's vomit. Reading the book is akin to the experience of overhearing the eclectic chatter of a cocktail party. There is a lot of talk about people and places and books and films one has never heard of: my one complaint about Baxter's book is that he spends too much time mentioning publishers or book sellers that can mean nothing to the average reader (though book collectors will doubtless relish the detail). But interspersed among the forgettable bits are some delightful passages that any neophyte reader can enjoy--Baxter's description of the eccentricities of movie theaters in the small-town Australia of his youth, or of book browsing in Parisian librairies, an activity quite unlike shopping in English or American bookshops:
"The aristocratic attitude to bookselling meant that whole areas of Anglo-Saxon book-dealing expertise simply didn't apply. In visiting a librairie, you were paying a social call and admiring a collection. You were expected to walk appreciatively along the shelves, taking down books at random, admiring the bindings, rubbing a hand over the worn morocco, perhaps reading a few pages, nodding at a well-turned phrase, even smiling. Browsing, yes, but not as we know it.
There is, too, for those interested in flayed humans, a catalogue of anthropodermically-bound books, and also a story about a certain Bea Miles--"smelly, dumpy but charismatic,"-- that is worthy of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair: she "roamed Sydney, wearing a hand-lettered cardboard sign offering to recite Shakespeare for a shilling a time." A Pound of Paper has many such anecdotes to offer readers.
In the end, one does not leave Baxter's book feeling that one knows the author particularly well--he does not offer readers an intimate entree into his life. But one does leave the cocktail party entertained, for the most part, by the chatter.
Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
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