“I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here….”
So begins Hanff’s now legendary correspondence with the staff of a small London bookshop called Marks & Co. The BBC made it into a television play in 1975, Hollywood covered it in 1975 & 1987 with Anne Brancroft playing Hanff and Anthony Hopkins and Judy Dench playing the Noel’s.
Leigh Buchanan has a piece on Jewcy titled ” Good Book Hunting: The writer who taught me about obscure objects of desire”. It is her homage to Helen Hanff and her biblio hi-spot 84 Charing Cross Road.
How important was 84 Charing Cross Road to Ms. Buchanan?
She changed her first name from Lois to Leigh (after Leigh Hunt) one of the authors mentioned in the book.
Buchanan says “I compared Hanff’s tenacity to my own passivity. And I was shamed. Determined to stalk more exotic prey, I copied into a notebook every author and title mentioned in the letters and went in search.”
Hanff showed her “the difference between merely reading, and living a reading life”
She eventually tracked down each of the books mentioned and read them. Many she did not enjoy but she “never regretted the hunt”
The advent of the Internet has changed the hunt considerably.
“It’s been years since I felt my heart skip upon discovering some rare-to-the-point-of-seeming-mythical volume among the miscellany of a second-hand bookstore” Buchanan says
This doesn’t happen online.
Do we really want to let the second-hand bookshops die?