By Amanda Knox

Weeks in advance Gregg broke out his mischievous, knowing grin. Based on past years, he anticipated first light-hearted procrastination, then a few frantic days of selecting, boxing, loading, unloading, unboxing, displaying…all accompanied by frustration and regret over last minute details fallen through in midst of the rush. Dean caught the hint and nudged me to suggest to Phil what Phil was already fretting over deep down below all the rest of the projects on his plate. I know because he occasionally muttered wisps of afterthought: Arundel Books had to get ready for the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair.

Thus commenced the light-hearted procrastination. Never having been to one of these events myself, I suggested that we all dress in Renaissance Fair costumes and adopt Old English accents. Dean wrinkled his nose at the prospect of trying to locate for himself a pair of appropriate pantaloons. I tried to coax Phil to my side by promising to make use of my super thrift-shopping skills to find him an important looking cavalier hat…or something! Alas, Phil laid down his veto. “This is serious. Just wear something nice,” he pleaded.

Then commenced a few frantic days. We filled approximately sixty boxes with whole shelves from our rare room, gouged gaping holes in our fiction and poetry sections, lugged awkwardly large and delicate manuscripts, even dislodged whole bookcases from the walls to take with us and reconstruct in the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall for the weekend.

Perhaps a combination of jaded experience and newbie enthusiasm made for comparatively fewer frustrations and regrets than past years. Shelves went up and were screwed down without incident. Books found alphabetical homes over the course of the day. Special pieces were displayed and appropriately labeled with Annie’s delicate handwriting on strips of fine printing paper with deckled edges.

It turns out that the true first day of the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair, scheduled for the October 10th-11th weekend, belongs to the dealers. Friday, October 9th, the Exhibition Hall opened its doors at 8am for a full day of set-up. Of course, it doesn’t take a whole day to set-up shop when shop consists of a 100 square foot booth. Phil, Dean, and I dallied until 9am and were done setting up by noon.

This, despite the fact that ours was a heavy set-up compared to most of the other dealers. Such is the benefit of picking up and carrying ourselves from only the other side of downtown, as opposed to coming from across the United States, or even across the Atlantic Ocean. Where other dealers had to work with temporary shelves and cases, Phil and Dean cocooned our booth with actual wooden, backed bookshelves. Once these were drilled into place and packed with our wares, our booth resembled a small, condensed version of our actual bookstore.

How else might bibliophiles such as ourselves spend the rest of our working hours than by perusing our neighbor’s shelves, greeting old friends and meeting new ones, and glutinously partaking of the free coffee and pastries?

Some observations from a newbie’s perusings. At first glance, the Book Fair, and, for that matter, the rare/collectable book business, is a bit of an old boy’s club. Most of the dealers are middle- and post-middle-aged gentlemen. They scrutinize the integrity of book spines and offhandedly boast of their rarest wares. At first glance, a few are not necessarily the most tactful. Take the following exchange that occurred at the coffee counter between me and a long and scruffy-bearded man in a purple Hawaiian T-shirt:

Him: “Hi, there. You must be a book babe.”
Me: “Oh?”

Wait for it. The punchline:

Him: “Me too.”

The truth is the book business is not an easy one, and to stay in it for 10, 20, 50+ years is a animated effort of passion and love. In just one day I glimpsed dealer’s eyes sparkle at the beauty of a delicate and fading fore-edge painting on a rare, illustrated edition of Don Quixote. A man with quivering, grey locks bobbed and bubbled over the “marvelousness” of a first edition poetry pamphlet. A younger dealer described his heartbreak in trying to find good homes for thousands of pieces of his collection before he relocated across the country.

And just as these older men had preserved their youthful enthusiasm for literature and art, so did I witness a rejuvenating of the business. Dealers my age set up smaller booths with their personal favorite fine press broadsides and first edition science fiction titles. Once the doors opened to the public, middle school- and high school-aged youth ogled Medieval manuscripts. Tucked behind my own counter, I was proud and grateful to be a part of it.