Today, we continue our author interview series by speaking to Rick Gekoski, a rare book dealer and the author of several books of his own including Tolkien’s Gown and Outside of a Dog.

We’ve already reviewed Tolkien’s Gown over on the main site, and when Rick was kind enough to answer a few of our questions, we jumped at the chance to speak to him. Read on to find out what we talked about…

Rick Gekoski

“From Henry James to Lee Child - the story of my life?”

We speak to with author Rick Gekoski

Where do you begin with a man like Rick Gekoski? He’s a hugely influential figure in the world of literature and academia, serving as a senior lecturer at Warwick University and earning comparisons to Bill Bryson. Rick was the subject of a parody by William Golding, and he even served as a judge for the 2005 Man Booker Prize - as you can imagine, he’s a busy guy.

He’s also met and worked with some of the most well-known authors of our time, but he says that it’s too hard to choose which of them was the most fascinating, “But I really loved my few years knowing Graham Greene,” he admits, describing him as “an unfathomably interesting and complex person.”

Greene is one of my own favourite writers, and I’ll confess to being fascinated by his depiction in Tolkien’s Gown - Gekoski bought the author’s rarest book, a copy of Lolita that was signed by Vladamir Nabokov and dedicated to Graham Greene. Such an artifact is pretty much priceless, and I doubt I could ever afford it.

Rick Gekoski - Tolkien’s Gown

Gekoski has been through a number of transformations in his life, from lecturer to book dealer to author. “I think we all start off as readers,” he says. “Yet it’s been clear to me from a very early age that being a writer is a pretty damn fine thing to be - almost as good as being an architect. I’ve always doubted my capacity to write well over any sustained period or length, but I can write a mean sentence sometimes.”

Of course, Rick is still a keen reader, and despite the fact that he reached maturity well before the release of the first e-readers, he’s willing to give them a good go. “I have a Kindle,” he says. “And I use it for more than half of my reading. I travel a great deal, and it’s incredibly useful as a way of bringing a box of books in portable form.”

“I’m certain that hard copy books are on the wane,” he admits, a surprising revelation from a bookseller. “But I suspect there’ll be a niche market for them in the long-term. Most young people today are used to reading from screens, and paper feels anachronistic to many of them. In fact, it’s starting to feel that way to me, which I rather regret.”

Rick Gekoski

As a man who’s been a keen follower of literature for the past several decades, Gekoski has seen many styles and trends come and go. He’s enjoyed some of them more than others - “I can’t regret the demise of the free verse of the 1950s Beats,” he says. “Although Ginsberg was sometimes masterful in that form, or lack of form. But poetry needs more rules than that, in order to be able to break them.”

Beat poetry is one of my favourite genres, but I admit that it isn’t for everyone. As for Rick, he’s recently been reading Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah while on holiday in Zanzibar. “It’s very fine,” he tells us. “And immeasurably richer if you read it in East Africa.”

“I don’t have favourite authors,” he continues. “When I think I have one – it was Henry James for a while – I sort of move on. Or maybe they do. But if you want to know whose next book I will read the hour it comes out – without stopping for a break – the answer is Lee Child. From Henry James to Lee Child - the story of my life?”

Henry James

Now, you might remember that a little while back we interviewed Sarah Henshaw, the author of The Bookshop That Floated Away and the owner and proprietress of the Book Barge. When we told Sarah that we were speaking to Rick, she had a question of her own - she wanted to know about “the one that got away”, the book that Rick bought and secretly hoped that no-one would ever purchase, and which he subsequently had to sell.

Every bookseller has one, or so I’m told, and Rick is no different - his was “an inscribed copy of the first edition of Ulysses, presented by James Joyce to a young woman who appears in the Circe episode.” He sighs, and it makes me think of how bookish types (myself included) form a special bond with the works that they read, and while they say that you should never judge a book by its cover, Rick also remembers “the dust wrapper of the first edition of The Great Gatsby“, the most beautiful cover he’s ever seen.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (First Edition Cover)

According to Rick, bookselling itself has “changed enormously, and so quickly that anyone who claims to know what is happening or is going to happen is likely to feel a fool, soon. But for every reaction there is often a counter-reaction, and I think we may be entering a period in which high quality independent bookshops have a renaissance.” I’ll drink to that!

As for Mr. Gekoski, he’s not done by a long shot - “I’m working on a novel at the moment,” he reveals. “And I won’t even tell my wife about it.”

Rick Gekoski

Rick Gekoski is a rare book dealer and the author of Tolkien’s Gown and Outside of a Dog. You can find out more about him on Wikipedia, or click here to visit his website.

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