Ink In The Blood

The Sunday Age

Sunday April 16, 2006

Christopher Bantick

BOOK REVIEW: LEFT BANK WALTZ: THE AUSTRALIAN BOOKSHOP IN PARIS; MY LIFE IN PRINT

BOOKSELLING

LEFT BANK WALTZ: THE AUSTRALIAN BOOKSHOP IN PARIS

By Elaine Lewis

Vintage, $27.95

MY LIFE IN PRINT

By Michael Zifcak

Lothian Books, $45

LEGENDARY Melbourne bookseller Margareta Webber reflecting in 1981 on her life in books said: "I see bookselling as a very satisfying and worthwhile career for a woman to take up. Women are good at it; they are willing to give time, patience and research in order to satisfy the customer."

Elaine Lewis, owner of the short-lived Australian Bookshop in Paris, amply reflected Webber's view of a bookish woman. In Left Bank Waltz, Lewis has written a lament for a lost enterprise. There is an unmistakable air of melancholia that pervades the pages.

Lewis opened the Australian Bookshop in Paris in the autumn of 1996. It was a dance over by 1999. The shop was to become a place of pilgrimage for Australian writers and readers. But more importantly and enduringly, Lewis introduced Australian writing to many French readers.

Literary events, sponsored by Lewis, continued to occur in a variety of locations in Paris after the bookshop's closure. The Australian Bookshop diary's final entry occurs in 2003.

What is soon evident is the personal journey that opening a bookshop in Paris proved to be. She says, redolently, that it was "a long-term plan" and an idea, her "dreaming", that stirred in 1984. From the initial tentative steps, and after substantial market research, by 1996, her diary musings are replete with optimism and energy.

The personal, conversational tone presents events with both immediacy and verve. She writes as the shop nears it opening: "I am happy at the progress I have made as though I am floating on air."

Even so, the shop on the Quai des Grands Augustins, begins to establish a presence and Lewis feels, "as though I'm living out other people's dreams as well as my own".

This is well expressed in many writers who were drawn, much like moths to light, into the comforting welcome of her Left Bank bolthole. The rollcall of authors who visited her shop, gave talks to French and expatriate Australian audiences and encouraged a greater awareness of Australian writing in France, is perhaps Lewis' lasting legacy.

Nikki Gemmell described Lewis as "a great champion of Australian literature", while Nick Earls noted: "We need people like Elaine everywhere there is a flicker of interest in reading."

The demise of her Australian Bookshop through a combination of high rent and internet buying of books is movingly portrayed. Still the pain of loss is lessened by Lewis' assessment of the shop's impact: "The net spread much wider than I could ever have imagined."

LIKE Lewis, Michael Zifcak was a lover of books. Where Lewis centred her attention on one bookshop, Zifcak's long association with Collins Booksellers was one of diversity and substantial growth.

In My Life in Print, Zifcak presents two stories. The first is the account he gives of a Lutheran childhood in Czechoslovakia through the deprivations of Nazi occupation and the fears of the Communist thrust in 1948. After fleeing, with his wife Ludmila, he arrived in Australia in 1950.

The second part of this memoir is a retrospective consideration of the Melbourne book trade over half a century. In 1951, Zifcak joined Collins newsagency as a clerk. His rise through the ranks led him to instigate the growth of Collins Booksellers and become a major figure in Australian bookselling.

Zifcak captures well the great days of post-war Melbourne bookselling. How different the situation is today in Melbourne and nationally. Something Sydney bookseller Ron Abbey noted in The Golden Age of Booksellers: "A glutted trivia market is now causing publisher bankruptcies and takeovers." The historical perspective that Zifcak provides will please serious bibliophiles and general readers alike. The acquisition of Hill of Content Bookshop from Angus & Robertson in 1952 and then the establishment of the Hill of Content Publishing Company is informative and revealing. So too are the forays of Collins into suburbs such as Chadstone, Northland and Doncaster.

Besides Zifcak's long involvement with Collins until his retirement in 2001, My Life in Print also presents a commentary on the development of the administration of the book trade. Zifcak was the founding chairman of the National Book Council in 1973, a position from which he "urged" the undertaking of the "first comprehensive book industry survey and the acquisition of Australian Book Review, which became the NBC's official journal".

Besides a lively and detailed account of Collins' decline from market dominance into voluntary administration last year, Zifcak has produced a measured and invaluable social history of how books continue to matter in Melbourne. The black-and-white photographs that augment Zifcak's observations offer an insightful commentary.

© 2006 The Sunday Age

Back to News Index | Back to Home