Lunch at the Social Kitchen

Occasion to reflect

I recently had occasion to reflect, yet again, on what it means ”.. to be a bookseller.” As a group we are constantly assailed by complaints about what we sell. Some readers feel that this book is offensive, this one too prurient for the public taste. Others will tell us that a title that is missing from our shelves which, in their opinion has to be there; or that we have an incorrect edition…..the list is endless.

Regrettably, booksellers are, by definition, censors. What they hold in inventory is what they believe they can sell; they constantly make subjective decisions because, ultimately, they seek to maximize their return – on investment, on floor space. And while they are making these subjective decisions they are, of course, discarding one title for another: they are choosing for their readers.

And what makes one bookseller better than another is the critical faculty that allows better choices, better understanding of the customer, better service, better knowledge of the eclectic – indeed, better knowledge of literature and contemporary interest, whatever that is.

What takes me down this ever-narrowing road that I know will only end in a cul-de-sac where reason can find no further route through the thickets of logic or illogic, is a recent incident in one of our stores. It started harmlessly enough: the manager (who, by the way, is one of the best in the business) decided to promote books that were “so scary” they would keep you awake. This promotion was prominently displayed in the window.

All well and good, you might think…but here’s the rub: one of the titles was Mein Kampf – a masterpiece of absurd racist claptrap written by a uniquely evil man.

Now we have always stood our ground when it comes to selling this particular title. It is almost inconceivable in this day and age that anyone would wish to buy it as a handbook for racist thinking or as a manual on how to set up the neighbourhood Nazi party. We regard it as a historical document, as do our peers in London and New York; and most buyers, we believe, see it as a reference book if they have an interest in racism, or twentieth century German politics, or the rise of Nazism in what we might broadly call modern Germany.

However, there are unquestionably, still, sensitivities around this book and, for this reason, we have it on our shelves but we do not promote the title or advertise it. The excellent manager who used it rather tongue-in-cheek to highlight “horror” in a rather novel way, certainly had no intention to offend; but some members of the public certainly found it offensive. Interestingly, none of the complaints we received explicitly demanded the withdrawal of the book from our shelves – but they did object to its prominence.

If there is one lesson that any decent retailer needs to learn as soon as possible it is to listen to one’s customers; and then to acknowledge if something is wrong. So we apologized very quickly and the book went back to skulk among Sir Richard Evans’ masterful trilogy on the rise of Nazism and rest between the spines of books by AJP Taylor, Alan Bullock, Ian Kershaw and other noted academics who have written on the period.

But this incident triggered another line of enquiry for us. Is it enough that we have Mein Kampf in our inventory with a welter of counter-vailing criticism, argument to stand as a bulwark against the nonsense espoused by Hitler; is there not perhaps an edition of Mein Kampf that is properly annotated by academics, noting the half-truths, the lies, the fallacy and illogic of Hitler’s text.

Our search quickly yielded results. Christian Hartmann and his team of researchers have produced a two-volume edition titled Hitler; Mein Kampf, A Critical Edition with over 3,500 annotations. The new version has come out under the guidance of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich. The edition became available after the 70 year ban on sales and publication of Mein Kampf in Germany expired in 2015. A spokesperson for the Institute said, on publication, that “….the discussions about Hitler’s worldview and dealing with his propaganda presented an opportunity – at a time when authoritarian political beliefs and far-right slogans are again gaining in popularity – to re-examine the ominous roots and results of such totalitarian ideologies.”

This comment seems, to me at least, to place Mein Kampf in perspective. It should be available because the common-sense reader will readily understand where racist excess leads. Just by having the book on our shelves, we highlight its absurdity.

Now all that remains is for us to find the English translation of this monumental work. I will be the first buyer.

Benjamin Trisk