The Pope's Bookbinder

May 1, 2013
Atmospheric, informative memoir by a Canadian seller of used and rare books. Born in 1938, Mason as a kid was more comfortable in pool halls than the Toronto school system and got "permanently suspended" at 15. He wound up bumming around Europe, taking odd jobs and drugs, talking passionately about books with fellow free souls. A brief stint as a bookbinder in Spain (source of the unnecessarily mystifying and misleading title) gave him a marketable skill when he returned to Toronto in the late 1960s, but a part-time bookstore job showed him his real talents: talking to people and finding books for them. After a few years' apprenticeship with Jerry Sherlock, one of the many rare booksellers to whom Mason pays affectionate tribute, he went out on his own. One of his first areas of expertise was Canadian editions of books by foreign authors, a bibliographic area he pioneered in a project for the National Library of Canada, until he broke bitterly with the library and a colleague over what he considered a breach of faith. His memoirs reveal Mason as a good grudge holder, and his feelings about librarians are mixed; affection for those at local branches who initiate youth into the wonders of books balances disdain for the bureaucrats at major institutions. He wholeheartedly loves anyone who loves books--no matter how eccentric--we see in a hilarious chapter about private collectors. Another great chapter about bidding at auction, and numerous passages on pricing rare books, demonstrates that Mason is a shrewd commercial operator when he needs to be, but his main focus is on the vital role nonchain booksellers play as preservers of our cultural heritage. His burning sense of mission more than compensates for some repetitious passages and a few too many instances of score settling in a narrative that gives a vivid sense of its author's idiosyncratic personality. Gossipy, rambling and enchanting, alive with Mason's love for books of every variety.

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August 1, 2013

Raised in a bookless home, Mason discovered the pleasures of reading in Toronto's public libraries. A rebellious adolescent, he dropped out of high school to bum around Europe, residing briefly at the Beat Hotel in Paris, where he met American novelist William S. Burroughs. In Spain, Mason apprenticed to a bookbinder and worked on a volume the Spanish government had commissioned as a gift for Pope John XXIII. Returning to Toronto in the late 1960s, Mason began his career in used and rare books. Designed to "impart some sense of the sheer richness of the bookseller's life," his memoir is full of anecdotes on buying, selling, and collecting books, offering a lively account of his adventures in the trade. In his experiences with fellow booksellers, rare book librarians, private collectors, auction houses, and eccentric customers, Mason provides a window into what he considers to be the "Golden Age of Bookselling in Canada," as well as a portrait of the changing scene for the book trade in Toronto over the last half century. Although evidence in the digital age points to booksellers becoming as "obsolete as blacksmiths," Mason clings stubbornly to his faith in the book. VERDICT For booksellers, librarians, and other bibliophiles, particularly those interested in the Canadian book trade.--William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY

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