About a minute after reading Susan’s review of White Spines by Nicholas Royle, I had ordered my copy – directly from the publisher Salt, which perhaps explains why it came with a surprise author signature on the title page.
It is exactly the sort of book I like: a book about reading, about buying books, and a love for literature that is more idiosyncratic than a slavish devotion to Lists of Great Works. The ‘white spines’ of the title are those that Picador used from the 1970s to the 1990s. If I’m honest, they’re exactly the sort of books my eye flashes past in a charity shop. It’s an era of literature that I know very little about and, except for a few stand-out names, I am pretty poorly read for those decades.
Royle does love some of the writers he buys from this period, but he buys books without necessarily ever anticipating reading them. He is a completist: he wants all of the titles. He wants the anomalies, from when some of the books had black or patterned spines. He wants a ‘shadow collection’, where he duplicates books already on his shelves of white spines. And his buying goes in tangents – an admiration for a cover artist will lead to him buying everything he can with the same artist on the cover, for instance. Almost anything can form the basis of a collection, and you get the sense of Royle’s – surely enormous? – house being a melting pot of different fascinations, grouped in overlapping collections.
Despite not sharing Royle’s particular tastes, and seldom buying books unless I have at least vague intentions of reading them, I loved reading about his bookish adventures. Next to going on a book buying spree, I enjoy experiencing them vicariously – and a lot of White Spines is about his book shopping. Sometimes far afield, sometimes in bookshops or charity shops that are regular haunts. He seldom comes away empty handed, and manages to convey both the excitement and the curiosity of the perennial haunted of bookshops. Here’s a trip to The Bookshop Experience in Southend… which I just kept writing out, because I enjoyed the journey we go on as he scans across the shelves.
As soon as I enter the Bookshop Experience, I know I’m in luck. I’m immediately taking the books off shelves. Paul Bowles – two Abacus collections, A Thousand Days for Mokhtar and Call at Corazon, in the same series, with excellent photographic covers, as two titles I already have. Calvino’s The Literature Machine, in the Brothers Quai (sic) series of covers from Picador (a separate series is credited to the Brothers Quay). And then – increasing heartbeat – I spot an early Sceptre paperback of Siri Hustvedt’s first novel, The Blindfold.
I love The Blindfold. My edition is later and features a woman’s midriff in a crop top that has always felt wrong to me. I like this earlier, uncredited cover with its blindfold, its disembodied eyes, Chrysler Building and 109th Street sign. Next, a King Penguin edition of BS Johnson’s best-known novel, Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry, that, as with The Blindfold, I hadn’t even known existed. Finally, I can’t quite believe it, but, yes, there, under K, a copy of the white-spined Picador edition of Kafka’s The Trial, which I have only seen once before, in the home of writers David Gaffney and Sarah-Clare Conlon.
When I saw it at the Gaffney-Conlon residence, I was tempted to become a book thief. The Trial exists in many editions, from different publishers, with different covers. This Picador cover, by Steven Singer, has the distinction of having previously been, to me at least, invisible. Normally, if there’s a Picador I know I want, I don’t order it, as previously discussed. In the case of The Trial, however, I weakened. Having seen it in the wild, having even handled it, I couldn’t resist and did go online and did order, off eBay, what appeared to be the same edition. When it arrived it was a Picador Classics edition. The same translation, by Douglas Scott and Chris Waller, but in the black spine of Picador Classics, with a cover illustration by Peter Till. The search for the white-spined edition would continue, but my lesson learnt, only in the real world.
If this sort of thing is your jam, then this is the book for you.
There is a lot else of interest here, including Royle’s own writing career and his experience of sending stories to small magazines, his interviews with people connected to Picador and other publishing ventures, and an entertaining tangent into authors with the same names. He has reason to find this interesting: there is another Nicholas Royle, and they even both appeared in a collection I read about writing. The other Royle wrote a novel called Quilt that I found impenetrable and a book called The Uncanny that was rather too self-indulgent to be useful as the critical text I was hoping it would be for my DPhil. Safe to say, I prefer this Nicholas Royle.
Personally, I seldom care what edition a book is, and the only books I’ll get simply for the series they’re in are Persephone Books and Slightly Foxed Editions. But Royle still conveys much of what most of us will recognise in ourselves: someone who is not simply an occasional reader, but someone for whom books mean an enormous amount. We love reading them, but we also love being around them, choosing them, collecting them, and hunting them down. Royle is a witty, friendly writer, and it was a delight to go on this voyage with him.
I loved this and it *is* my jam – particularly as I love Picadors and they were some of the earliest books in my collection (and I still have them!) And the book rang so many bells as I read about his booksearching experiences – wonderful!
Oh that’s fun, to have that connection to Picadors. I think you’d like this even more than I did, which was a lot!
Oh, this one is right up my alley (meaning, I think, the same as saying it’s my “jam.”). I was very self-indulgent on this and ordered a copy from Blackwell’s immediately after reading Kaggsy’s review.
I love your quotes, which convey the heart-stopping excitement of an unexpected find. I also love the idea of spotting a book “in the wild” rather than ordering it online!
Hurrah! I look forward to seeing what you think of it. And it’s so much more fun to find them in the wild – such a shame so many bookshops are dwindling.
I ordered it too! Love this Nick Royale. His other books for Salt, a memoir Mother and a novel are both fab too.
Oo good to know, thanks
Everything about this appeals to me! What a joy.
Oh I think you’d love it!
Saving this as I have a copy TBR but haven’t got to it yet …
Enjoy!
Such an interesting review. My heart flutters over Persephone, but I doubt I would ever meet, in person, anyone who knows what I mean were I to mention it. So satisfying to find kindred spirits online. Thank you, Simon.
Thanks Eileen! And thank goodness for the internet providing these kindred spirits.
Oh, I’m going to be a party pooper here. I love book shops. I love second hand bookshops. I love charity shops with good book collections. But I can’t imagine making collections for the sake of them, or collecting white spines, or whatever, even though I have been known to buy nicer editions of much-loved books that I already own. I don’t think I’d enjoy book shopping with him. But then, book choosing, in shop or library is an essentially solitary pursuit I guess.
Yes, I definitely have a different approach to him – but loved reading about his. And I love going on book buying jaunts with people as long as their tastes aren’t TOO similar to mine – or, if they are, you agree that whoever sees the book first gets to have it :)
Thanks for the link, Simon. Pleased to hear that White Spines lived up to expectations.
Thanks again for your review!
HA! I wouldn’t have thought that someone would write about reading and buying books. Sounds interesting.
Really??! There are SO many books for you to discover then! There are dozens and dozens in this world.
I love how you’ve conveyed the appeal of this book, even to a reader (such as yourself) whose tastes in literature are rather different from Royle’s. It’s the universality of the book buying experience — ‘choosing them, collecting them, and hunting them down’ — that will resonate with so many of us.
Thanks Jacqui! I think that’s what Royle does so well – conveying the universal (for readers) from his specific tastes.
Intriguing angle. The edition is something that has only really been on the periphery of my vision so far as my personal taste goes to date, but I have noticed it becoming more central recently. For example, I have an older paperback of V.S. Naipaul’s In a Free State which features two naked men painted white, running alongside the road. The image is taken directly from a scene observed by the driver in the title story, and it’s quite ‘othering’ and more challenging as a cover illustration than the blander vanishing perspective of a road through African bush, no human figures, in later editions.
I’ll be more alert to this element now.
Yes, I certainly don’t think about it – but it can really change a reading of the novel, or at least our expectations as we come to it.
Simon, and other readers who have kindly commented, thank you – really, thank you so much. It’s gratifying and encouraging to read these kind words and to realise that people get it. Annabel, actually ‘Mother’, published by Myriad Editions, is by the other Nicholas Royle. ‘White Spines’ is my only non-fiction book (apart from a couple I edited); normally I write fiction. Margaret, don’t worry about preferring not to go book shopping with me :) I prefer to do it on my own. I write in the book, I think, about a time when I imagined being stuck in an Oxfam Bookshop with an acquaintance and our having to browse the shelves together. I feared it would be like standing next to him in the gents and being unable to go. Basically, for me, it’s a solo pursuit. But then, obviously, I like to share my recollections with like-minded readers :)
Thanks for your comment, and for the clarity on Mother! Your book certainly seems to be spreading like wildfire across the corner of the bookish internet that I see, and thank you so much for writing something so wonderfully bibliophilic.