The Booksellers movie review (2020) | Little White Lies

The Book­sellers

26 Jun 2020 / Released: 26 Jun 2020 / US: 26 Jun 2020

Words by Anna Bogutskaya

Directed by DW Young

Starring Fran Lebowitz, Gay Talese, and Parker Posey

Extensive bookshelf covering entire wall, containing numerous books of varying colours and sizes. Ornate lamp and chair visible in foreground, suggesting a cosy reading nook.
Extensive bookshelf covering entire wall, containing numerous books of varying colours and sizes. Ornate lamp and chair visible in foreground, suggesting a cosy reading nook.
4

Anticipation.

A film about rare book dealers is the niche content we need right now.

3

Enjoyment.

Who knew the book trade world was sexist, huh.

3

In Retrospect.

Funny, insightful and makes you miss bookstores even more.

The curi­ous world of rare book sell­ers is the sub­ject of this doc­u­men­tary from direc­tor DW Young.

In my stu­dent days, I worked for a year at a used book­store on a small street in Madrid where all the shops, bar a design agency and a café, were rare book­sellers. All the book­sellers were friend­ly with one anoth­er, and would come in often into the shop try­ing to sniff out some inter­est­ing rar­i­ty who’s val­ue we might not have been able to spot.

So you can imag­ine my excite­ment when DW Young’s doc­u­men­tary about this rare, fas­ci­nat­ing breed of trea­sure hunter land­ed in my inbox. The Book­sellers doesn’t focus so much on the dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties and quirks of the col­lec­tors as it does on try­ing to find what makes rare book­sellers tick, and unearthing the pol­i­tics that make up the very par­tic­u­lar New York book scene.

The film is nar­rat­ed and exec­u­tive pro­duced by Park­er Posey (the star of icon­ic librar­i­an movie Par­ty Girl), who became involved with the project as she was a reg­u­lar at one of the bookstores.

We meet Dave Bergman, who can bare­ly move in his apart­ment, crammed as it is with antique books from floor to ceil­ing; then there’s sis­ters Adi­na Cohen, Nao­mi Ham­ple and Judith Lowry, who took over the fam­i­ly busi­ness of Argosy Book Store (and who total­ly demand a book­shop-set TV series to be based on them); and Rebec­ca Rom­ney, who habit­u­al­ly nerds out about books on Pawn Stars and runs her own rare books firm.

While it paints a pic­ture of the book scene in New York (includ­ing wit­ty con­tri­bu­tions by leg­endary com­men­ta­tors like Fran Lebowitz and Gay Talese), the most intrigu­ing thing about the film is how it cen­tres what makes a col­lec­tor. With the hunt for a rare edi­tion is trans­form­ing because of the online mar­ket and new voic­es com­ing onto the scene, with some peo­ple los­ing inter­est as the inter­net takes away the roman­tic, scav­enger-like aspects of it.

The film does a lot to under­line the ingrained sex­ism in this spe­cial­ist world of rar­i­ties, first edi­tions and spe­cial­ist knowl­edge. Female and Black book­sellers talk about the lack not of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the pro­fes­sion, but of the impor­tance of their work as a form of conservation.

The inher­ent bias­es that exist with that space are brought to the fore­front, with sto­ries of women book deal­ers not being tak­en seri­ous­ly, or not being cred­it­ed for their work. The bias­es can man­i­fest itself most­ly in the con­tent that’s being col­lect­ed, because the act of col­lect­ing some­thing is giv­ing those items and those per­spec­tives val­ue. As Young puts it, Rare book deal­ers and col­lec­tors play a fun­da­men­tal role in pre­serv­ing history.”

Like Syree­ta Gates, who began col­lect­ing 90s hip hop mag­a­zines while try­ing to find an arti­cle that hadn’t been digi­tised any­where. That mag­a­zine became a col­lec­tion, and she in turn became an archivist of hip hop cul­ture. Or Heather O’Donell, own­er of Hon­ey & Wax Book­sellers and founder of the Hon­ey & Wax Book Col­lect­ing Prize, which encour­ages young women to pay atten­tion to the books that fas­ci­nate them, even if they’re not yet sure why.”

The hunt” may be the dri­ving force of the book­sellers, but the film shows rare book­selling evolv­ing into a form of cura­tor­ship – and that being the key of its evo­lu­tion, sur­vival and acces­si­bil­i­ty. Any­one who is inter­est­ed in a par­tic­u­lar sub­ject area can become a col­lec­tor. The most inter­est­ing col­lec­tors, the film posits, are peo­ple who see some­thing oth­ers don’t.

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