The Pope's Bookbinder : A Literary Memoir Paperback / softback

Includes episodes on: hitchhiking cross-country and provoking arrest to get out of the cold, being itinerant in Europe, sleeping off an amphetamine high on the floor in William Burrough's Spanish hotel room, working at a bookbindery in Spain doing a special commission (in white morroco) for the Pope, and blackmailing the head of the Royal Ontario MuseumChapters about his youth are as much about the beat movement & drug culture as they are about booksSnapshot of book culture in the 50s and 60s, including time spent in Spain at the Beat Hotel and in Paris at Shakespeare & Co. Compare to Larry McMurtry's Books: A Memoir (2009), Nicolas Basbane's Among the Gently Mad: Strategies and Perspectives for the Book Hunter in the 21st Century (2003), David Meyer's Memoirs of a Book Snake (2001), Lawrence Goldstone's Used and Rare(1998), or John Baxter's A Pound of Paper (2005)Insider takes on the secrets of bookselling, including the risks of high-stakes auctions, dos and don'ts, costly mistakes, happy accidents, and wonderful findsAuthor is now a very well-respected and well-connected dealer who's been in the book business since 1967Antiquarian memoirs have a built-in audience with a higher price-point32 pp B&W photographs