Christelle Gonzalo

 

A bookseller needs to be able to tell a good story to engage the customer’s interest.  I learnt the importance of transmitting information with enthusiasm from some impressive teachers at my secondary school. We were learning about the Second World War and to help us to remember the significant moments, the History teacher would act the part of the key characters. I had never heard of Neville Chamberlain or the speech about peace in our time, but I shall never forget the teacher’s performance. It taught me how to bring the past alive, which is my approach to cataloguing and bookselling. 

   I come from a family of restaurateurs. We lived in a small town around 50km from Paris, where there was nothing to do for a child except watch black and white television or read. I learnt to read at quite an early age, working my way through the titles in La Bibliothèque Rose et Verte, the famous series of books published by Hachette Jeunesse. The green collection was intended for older children, and contained Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators, which I adored.It was a series of American juvenile detective books created by Robert Arthur Jr. 

   As I began to read more widely, including historical works, I was struck by the frequent references to Paris and its inhabitants. From an early age, I knew that I wanted to move there and somehow to make it my life’s work. I remember being taken with my sister to Paris for the first time, and being thrilled by the skeletons of dinosaurs in the Jardin des Plantes, and marvelling at the grandeur of the Galeries Lafayette. Later on I realised that it was the world of the department store epitomised in Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames.

   When the time came to go to university, I chose to study History at the Sorbonne. It was not quite my dream of living in Paris, as I commuted from the family home to the Gare du Nord every day.  My university department was in an ugly building in Porte de Clignancourt, hardly the most romantic part of Paris - in fact I hated it. After two years of travelling back and forth, I was feeling tired and depressed.  I decided that the only solution was to find a tiny apartment in the Paris of my dreams. The moment I arrived in the heart of the historical Marais, my life changed.

   The fourth year of my university course was taught at the Centre Malher near the Musée Carnavalet and the National Archives in Le Marais. By 2010, I was living and studying in the ‘vieux Paris’ of Jacques Hillairet’s famous books on the city. I’m not exaggerating when I say that every stone, every doorway, every building spoke to me. I began systematically to explore my surroundings, to buy books about Paris and to immerse myself in the subject. My friend and I went around on roller blades, historic guide-books in hand, absorbing everything that we saw. I began to publish at my own expense illustrated pamphlets devoted to the history of the various streets in Le Marais, which were sold in La Belle Lurette, a bookshop in rue Saint-Antoine. The pamphlets were a success, and I knew that I had found my métier - c’étais Paris!

   When I was required to submit a dissertation for my degree, I chose to write about Boris Vian, whose novels I had loved since I was a teenager. A friend of Sartre, Vian’s writing is often compared to the style of Raymond Queneau and George Perec, sharing their playful approach to the written word. Vian is probably most famous outside France for L’Écume des Jours, the inspiration for the 2013 film Mood Indigo starring Audrey Tautou.

   Since Vian’s death in 1959, his family had been looking after his extensive archives. When I approached them, I was given permission to consult the archives for my research in return for helping the family to put things in order for one day a week.  After a year or so, by which time I had finished university, they offered me two days and then three days’ work a week. While I was working in a new bookshop to supplement my income, I was approached by the estate of Jacques Prévert of Les Enfants du Paradis fame. Boris Vian and Prévert had been neighbours in Montmartre. It was such a pleasure to have the opportunity to work on both their libraries, and to handle inscribed books given by their friends, who included Miró and Picasso.

   During the same period, I was offered a job with the publisher Gallimard, working on La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, a collection of critical editions of the greatest works of French and foreign literature and philosophy, beautifully printed and bound. The collection has a special significance for me. When I was seventeen, our French teacher invited the class to her home, where she had an entire wall of Pléiade editions. It made an enormous impression on me, and for my eighteenth birthday, I was given a copy of the Pléiade edition of Blaise Pascal.

   It was a huge pleasure to work for La Pléiade, where I had a colleague called François Roulmann, who later became my boyfriend, and to whom I’m getting married later this year. François shared my passion for Boris Vian and, in 2010, we had the exciting opportunity to collaborate on the Pléiade edition of Vian’s Oeuvres romanesques complètes, and on the catalogue for the Exposition Boris Vian at the Bibliothèque nationale. François is an antiquarian bookseller specialising in music and literature. We became friends and he encouraged me to think about starting my own business, but I didn’t feel entirely sure of myself. I was thirty years old at the time, and I thought that  perhaps I was a little too young to be running my own business.

   Four years later my various part-time jobs came to an end, and I knew it was the moment to take the plunge. My family helped my financially, and François gave me valuable advice. When I opened my shop I only had around 200 books, and François helped me to fill the empty shelves with books on theatre and literature. He’s been in the business for thirty years and has a shop in Le Marais, close to my premises in rue de l'Ave Maria. Although we have separate shops and different specialities, it’s very useful to be able to discuss business together, and to publish joint catalogues from time to time.

   From the outset I knew that I wanted to work alone, and to specialise in books on Paris - in fact any historical documents showing the development of the city,  including maps, posters, photographs, prints,  guide-books, publicity material and postcards. There are advantages to being a specialist; you can manage with quite a small shop - a generalist needs more space - and you have an excuse for turning away random books that people are just hoping to dump somewhere. I also like the idea of focusing on one subject and continually adding to my knowledge. For example I recently bought a collection of books about the catacombs of Paris. It’s a fascinating subject, and I’m keen to learn more about it before I publish a catalogue.

   There are so many ways of starting a collection on Paris, and it’s possible to do so without spending a lot of money. If you can’t afford to buy the original edition of Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s Tableau de Paris, published in twelve volumes from 1781 to 1788, you can find a nineteenth-century edition. Incidentally Balzac was deeply influenced by Mercier’s work, which I regard as the cornerstone of any collection of books on Paris.

   In 1878 the French artist Adolphe-Martial Potémont, known as Martial, published Notes et dessins d’un Japonais sur Paris. Illustrated with his own etchings, Martial’s book records the visit of a young Japanese to Paris during the universal exposition in 1878. It’s a book that deserves to be much better known, and so I decided to produce a facsimile edition, which I launched at the Salon International du Livre Rare et des Arts Graphiques in Paris this year. I look forward to publishing more facsimile editions when I come across rarities that add substantially to our knowledge of the history of Paris and its inhabitants.

   Twentieth-century photobooks are much collected, particularly Brassaï’s Paris de Nuit (1933) and Voluptés de Paris (1934). Television and film adaptations of famous novels always increase the demand for the books. At the moment customers are asking me for The Count of Montecristo since the latest film version was released in 2024. After the filming of Emily in Paris, parts of Le Marais have almost become pilgrimage sites for fans of the Netflix series. It’s certainly resulted in more tourists visiting my shop, but it’s far from being on a level with the Harry Potter phenomenon in England.

   Exhibiting at a book fair in the centre of Paris is expensive, and so dealers tend to bring their most valuable items. Exhibitors need to cover their costs, but the high price of much of the material on display can be discouraging for young people. This is one of the reasons why book shops are essential for the development of new collectors. Established collectors are not put off by having to ring a door bell and look at books in a private premises, but it’s daunting for everyone else. My shop is bright and welcoming, and I make it clear that you can find anything from a postcard of the Eiffel Tower to something more substantial.

   It’s important to have a sense of solidarity within the trade and to pass on information and experience. Some dealers have been in the business for 50 years, and handled material that my generation will never see. Last year the Syndicat National de la Librairie Ancienne et Moderne founded a training programme for rare book professionals aiming, amongst other things, to provide a substitute for apprenticeships which have all but disappeared in the book trade. I believe that we have a problem in France in attracting young people to join our trade. Interestingly, this doesn’t seem to be the case in England, where I’m struck by the number of young dealers - and young collectors.  When I visited the York National Book Fair last year, I was astonished by the range of people of all ages - buyers and sellers.

   I’ve noticed in my shop that young people are often more interested in ephemeral material than printed books. For example, they may buy a placard from the Paris Commune rather than a book on the subject, even if the latter is cheaper. I try to transmit my enthusiasm and knowledge, but it’s important for customers to make their own discoveries. I believe that we must all try to keep as many bookshops open as possible. In our digital age we have to make it easy and enjoyable for people to handle physical books, and to show them the pleasure of touching and holding something beautiful.

Interviewed in May 2025