The Bookstore on an Island (part 1 of 2)

I got the idea for this piece from a recurring dream I had a few weeks ago. I find it turned out kind of Borgesian in its fantastical and allegorical vibe of fiction trying to look like non-fiction. Enjoy!

No one remembers, now, (if anyone has actually ever known, that is) exactly when or under what circumstances Leed’s Books opened and became so renowned. What is certain is that, by the mid-1970s, people had stopped asking questions about the place – it had already become something of an institution in the book world. All the booksellers, book buyers, books collectors, book historians, bibliophiles, bibliomaniacs, auctioneers, and antiquarians of the world knew of Leed’s Books as a place of exception, and indeed most of them had already been there at least once.

The one thing that was so problematic about Leed’s Books – but which, in a sense, also added to its fame – was its location. For reasons unknown, the proprietor, manager, and sole employee of Leed’s Books, Mr. Leed himself, had opened his bookshop on the tiny island of Tiga, in the South Pacific. Tiga, also known as Tokenod, is a six kilometer long island with an approximate population of 200 individuals, situated in the archipelago of New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France. Tiga is about 25km from the nearest island and its airport, which only flies to New Caledonia’s main island, Grande Terre. These geographical inconveniences made it rather difficult for book enthusiasts to reach the place at all (mind you, for reasons as obscure as the store’s location, Leed’s Books did not ship).

In any other place, a kind of book-tourism market would have developed around the store. However, by all accounts the New Caledonians were quite oblivious to the strange influx of outsiders wanting to reach the secluded bookstore, and made few efforts to facilitate transportation to Tiga. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some book collector had to swim to reach island. That people did go there at all, and for books, of all things, is perhaps the most remarkable of all aspects of the place. It is very difficult to imagine why anyone nowadays, when the demand for paper-and-ink books has diminished so much, would undergo all this trouble for an overpriced old volume. But people did indeed go. They flocked to that tiny island by the dozen, from Europe, the Americas, and Asia, buying and selling their rare books in the best store on the planet.

Richard Manney, the famous art collector, amassed an impressive rare books collection in the 1980s and had multiple transactions with Leed’s Books. Usually, he sent out agents to Tiga to secure what he was looking for, but he did travel to the island on one occasion to shop there in person and finally meet Mr. Leed. His experience was recorded in an interview he gave to the New York Times, in which he said: “There were so many people in the different rooms that it was quite hard to walk around and actually get to the books. I remember I was there for about a day and there were at least 30 other people, Americans, mostly, a few British men, and a well-known millionaire from the Middle East. The bookstore isn’t really big, and it was quite surprising to have so many people in that shop, seeing as how it’s on the other side of the world, and all. In the end I had to ask Leed himself for what I was looking for, which I think is what everyone does in the end. The place is filled with books, and there’s no apparent system of organization. So you go up to his little desk, hidden behind piles of books and papers, and ask him what your looking for and he goes off and finds it for you. He knows exactly what he has in stock and where everything is. I was also surprised by how young Mr. Leed was. Probably in his late 30s or early 40s, something like that. He was very nice, a bit shy, maybe.”

Leed’s Books was housed in a small colonial manor house, an elegant whitewashed building with large windows and a many-stepped and columned façade. Inside, the two floors were laid out like any colonial house with a large entrance and staircase, a kitchen, parlor, sitting room, dining room, breakfast room, study, and several bedrooms and bathrooms, except the building was filled with books. The walls were covered in bookcases and shelves, loaded with books, and similarly the tables, chairs, and mantelpieces held piles and piles of books, apparently stored haphazardly. Despite the want for a more traditional organization of the product, quality and quantity greatly accounted for the popularity of the bookstore. Over the years, many articles in magazines and newspapers recognized Leed’s Books as one of the top book havens in the world when it was still up and running.