Word: bason
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Those who enjoy conning the ups & downs of bookselling will find plenty to please them in Fred Bason's Diary, whether his particular experience of what the market admires is a general one or not. Writes Fred in summation...
...desperation, Fred bought a batch of 28 books at a sale for 8s., cleaned them up and hawked some of them around the second-hand shops in a sack. At day's end, Bookseller Bason had made enough profit (15s. 8d.) to convince him that a load of second-hand books and some stout burlap were all a true bookworm needed to "make a living and be free...
Reluctant Lions. Today, Cockney Bookman Fred Bason is a minor British institution. He addresses Rotary luncheons, mimes on BBC television and exchanges bibliophiliac chatter with his pal, "Willy" (Somerset) Maugham. Nonetheless, at 42, Fred still lives in shimmy Walworth, and though he also owns a bookshop now, still hawks books from a barrow "in the gutter." Like every famed "character," he is permanently hoist with his own reputation: he can no more afford to become rich, or grammatical, or stop collecting autographs or saying "blimey!" than Groucho Marx can afford to adopt an upright, manly stance and a look...
Fred's Diary (1921-50) is at once an abbreviated record of Bason's daily life and a rung-by-rung account of his climb to Cockney notoriety. By dint of hanging around theater exits with an autograph album and writing very polite letters to celebrities, young Fred soon got on signature terms with everyone from Arnold Bennett to George Bernard Shaw. A few literary lions headed into the deep bush when they scented Fred on their trail. Poet John Masefield, for instance, responded to Fred's advances with a "chilly" printed card, and that "awful snob...
...Gentle Art. Occasionally, Fred Bason worried about his writing style, once went for advice to Virginia Woolf ("a tall, thin . . . miserably sad-looking woman . . . not in any way distinguished to look at"). She replied (or so Fred thought): "You would perhaps do well to read Stern." So Fred promptly bought a work by G. B. Stern-"but for the life of me I could see nothing [in it] to teach me the gentle art." On complaining to Mrs. Woolf, ha got back a cross note: "Sterne -Sterne with an E on the end! L. Sterne! V.W." And so, continues Fred...