Today we present our bookstore buddy Kurt von Hammerstein. Kurt owns the bookstore Hundt Hammer Stein in Berlin.
Dear Kurt, why did you choose to run a bookshop?
If you want your work to be around books, surely being a bookseller is the ideal choice! Though it’s essential that you care about people, too (it doesn’t always follow…). Working in a bookshop means that you don’t have to struggle with incomplete manuscripts and tiresome writers, like hard-tried publishers’ editors. Unlike literary critics, booksellers can bring good books to the attention of readers without having to write endless book reviews, trying to sound exceptionally clever. Normally, a straightforward recommendation is sufficient. Then, the real beauty of it: if I fancy reading a book, it is there for me and I have all the time in the world to get on with it. Couldn’t be better!
Please describe the final few meters of the route you take in the mornings to your bookshop.
I cycle to the shop whenever the weather is good enough. Luckily, it’s slightly downhill all the way. I cross the large intersection at the Tor Ecke Schönhauser (Gate at Schönhauser Corner) and roll slowly along the Alten Schönhauser (the thoroughfare Alte Schönhauser Allee). The last few metres are always a slalom run between at least five delivery vans parked in the street, all thanks to the online trade. But with the right music coming through my earphones (depending, either Sufjan Stevens to loosen up, or Christian Fitness for anger management), that kind of obstruction is easily dealt with. Once at the shop, I quickly put the bike away, turn into the narrow passage to the yard, check the letterbox – anything new for me? Other than bills, that is? I often find something special and, carrying the mail, it‘s off to the front door of the shop. I open up, switch on the music and the light. We’re away!
Throughout the day ...When the shop-door opens and someone steps inside...
Despite what everyone seems to think, I don’t settle down to read books. Much of my day is taken up by opening parcels, checking incoming goods you might call it. First, the books ordered for customers, then books for the shop –anything new and exciting? Do we have room to display the new books? Afterwards, it gets really busy: emails, phone calls, nice people turning up in the shop, and me forever talking about books, praising or criticising them. Naturally, regrettably, every day comes with a new load of paperwork: accounts, bills, catalogues to look through. Now and then, in the middle of all this, someone asks a stimulating question about some crazy book: “Please, I’d like to find this title, it’s the Portuguese original edition from 1953, can’t think why it doesn’t seem to be available any longer, it’s such good read ...” Every day, something different turns up, the job is very varied. There’s just one constant factor: six mugs of coffee, at least. At this point I must express my thanks to our truly marvellous coffee-making machine!
What is the wonderful thing that happens when we read?
Worlds take shape in your mind when you read a great book! Insights are gained, when some short clause seems, after all, to be nothing like as minor and incidental as you thought at first. It is always as wonderful when a book touches you emotionally, so much so that the imprint of that particular book stays with you for days and weeks. No film or TV series can do that!
Many say they don’t have the time to read. What can they do about that?
Honestly: get your priorities right! Everyone is forever short of time. Mostly, it might not be so much about lack of time as lack of enthusiasm. Only, that is harder to admit.
It really helps if one always (really, always) keeps a book on stand-by. Every day there’ll be the odd half hour that can be used for reading.
Has a Norwegian book given you a reading experience that you remember with pleasure?
Who would’ve guessed…? But I remember Karius und Baktus ("Caries and Bactus" by Thorbjørn Egner, 1949, has not been translated into English). It is a classical children’s book from Norway. As a child, I read that book again and again! One awful scene became etched into my memory for all time: Karies and Baktus had made themselves a great big apartment with a balcony and all (!) in a molar tooth, only to see it destroyed by the dentist and his drill. But even though the author’s aim was to instil the idea of good dental hygiene, his book didn’t really persuade me. The tiny tooth-trolls were simply too charming!
As adult, I read the Lillelord trilogy by Johan Borgen ( translated into English by Elisabeth Moen for New Directions, 1982) and it left a lasting impression on me. Borgen shows himself to be incredibly observant as he describes, with delicacy and wit, the childhood and youth of his protagonist Wilfred Sagen, who had a sheltered upbringing in a comfortable middle-class family in Kristiania (now Oslo). He grows up during the period just before the First World War and turns out to be an astonishingly nasty piece of work!
Translated from the German by Anna Paterson
Visit the Hundt Hammer Stein website here.
Are you a bookseller and would like to join our interview series "Our bookstore-buddies"? Read more.