Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller

by Oliver Darkshire

one has to be guided by the cardinal rule which supersedes all others: one does not sell books to Nazis. A bookshop is not a court. As a custodian of books you can use your discretion to decide who you sell to, and unlike a court you don’t have to give a reason. If you sell to one racist, you’ll just attract more of them. It’s your responsibility to try and make sure that important materials about topics like the Holocaust end up with institutions and with collectors who are not going to destroy them (and yes, this is absolutely a possibility). Some of you will undoubtedly baulk at this – ‘it’s not your job to decide whether I’ll be a responsible owner’, you might say. And indeed, we don’t hand out a quiz to everyone who steps over the threshold, we assume people are fundamentally decent unless they show us otherwise. However, if it looks like a goose, honks like a goose and steps like a goose, then it’s probably a Nazi, and there’s honestly only one kind of person who complains when I say ‘I don’t sell books to racists’, whatever they are calling themselves right now.