Meeting The Ferret Bookshop
In this edition of the ‘Maggie Meets’ profile series for Verb Wellington, I catch up with Terry and Aames who run The Ferret Bookshop. Terry admitted early in the interview that he has a penchant for inefficiency, which allowed me to quickly pigeonhole him into the “second-hand bookshop owner” stereotype. The more I dive into his story the more I realise that the story of The Ferret is not a linear one.
The Ferret Bookshop is one of the only Wellington bookshops surviving from the time it was established over 40 years. Since 1979 The Ferret Bookshop has had many homes nested in and around Cuba Street. According to its owner Terry, a couple of people in the book trade founded it, one of them a fellow named Rick who used to sit at the shop desk with a lit cigarette in hand and an ashtray in arm's reach. In 1988 Terry bought the business, which is now situated next to Loretta on Cuba Street.
Terry, where did your journey with The Ferret begin?
I'd been an irregular visitor to the shop (I worked at the other end of town) from the time I moved to Wellington in late 1980s. Given my tendency to render myself increasingly unemployable (I've always thought of myself as relatively easy to get on with but my work history would suggest otherwise!) I was interested to hear from a mutual friend that Rick was thinking of selling the business. We made contact, established an easy dialogue of books first, business second and after some negotiation and only one serious argument the shop/business passed from him to me.
Why name the bookshop after a demonic small predator?
The name and the store's books had always appealed to me. Its provenance is disputed: Rick was adamant that it was settled in a discussion with some friends shortly before setting up (he and partner had been amassing books over a period of months beforehand), a couple of people have claimed otherwise. The key is and was the play on words: ferret about and especially with focus on our byline: poke your nose in - which a few (younger) people have often been humoured by!
Although feedback from the name has been largely positive, The Ferret hasn’t always excited customers. Some are shocked to see a pair of stuffed ferrets on display in the shop, intimidated by the savage-looking mustelid and another with a bird in its jaws. Terry admits they have had the odd person say “yuck, ferrets!” and on the odd occasion some ferret-lovers have brought their pets in unannounced. Terry is a self confessed “bookie”, noting that his access to books and his interest in discovery has fed a perpetual hunger for more reading — an indulgence he has maintained without threatening the livelihood of the business (or our native species).
Do you sell any books about ferrets?
Curiously, none at all at present, although we have a couple of Ferret as Hero comics on display at our Featherston annex, a smaller sibling store which is open most weekends as part of Booktown.
This vintage sign originally featured in The Ferret Featherston shop. Featherston is officially recognised as A Book Town, defined as a small rural town or village, close to major cities, in which second-hand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated.
Have you always been an avid reader?
I come from a typically post-WWII working-class home and had a mother who valued books for her children. She is in a rest home now and one of her major bugbears is shaky hands and dodgy eyes that limit her reading options. Initially my reading meant Enid Blyton and condensed classics as well as Lotsa Comix. My "real" reading, began in my teens through the discovery of an alternative canon when I nurtured an appetite not just for the standard Kerouac and Salinger but much that was officially denied us, E.g Nabokov's ‘Lolita’, Selby's ‘Last End’ extended through many more obscure writers with a special nod toward Latin American literature. I could go on, I must go on, mustn't I! Finally to reference Stein and Beckett, Gertie and Sam are probably my 20th Century mainstays.
Are you a fast or a slow reader?
As I get older, I am probably slowing on that front as well. I was a relatively speedy reader but have a distinct preference for the sort of book that actively slows my reading down and makes me savour the journey. I despise the notion of speedreading with its inbuilt bias toward I'm-a-busy-man-gotta-run-time-is-money type.
What Impact has COVID-19 had on business?
Well, the obvious: it has made the viability of businesses like ours even more tenuous. Having said that, the interest shown in our books since we came out of the first major lockdown has been heartening with a more personal touch to it than previously. The average customer seems to be implicitly showing greater loyalty to books and stores like ours, less idle shopping-as-pastime and more focus. Although the demographic is shifting because a significant number of older people are not venturing out much. I feel in part recall’s times back with a return to "what might I find" rather than the search for a specific title AND NOTHING BUT! That (mentality) has increasingly defined an info-obsessed age.
Terry talks of the revitalization of the book and the trend of the ‘bookoid’ and how less is more with bookstores. He notes the film The Booksellers which celebrates the few survivors of New York’s book scene and their love of the book. Terry acknowledges the ability to survive so long “given the bloodyminded amateurism of the ownership/management model and shoestring economics of it all” does surprise him. It’s clear he’s grateful, “even if I don't often show it” for the ongoing support of customers.
Terry.
What books are you invested in right now?
Many works of history, both local and international (especially Latin American). I also have a liking for first novels, this also reflects my past reading where I'm often much more familiar with the early parts of a writer's work than with the more established, e.g. Margaret Atwood who, since I mention her, had absolutely no right to half the Booker which morphs into another aside on behalf of Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport which, fortuitously I was able to devour during our first lockdown — she is a criminally underrated writer and hers a savagely comic and sharp portrayal of a large part of past and present. And NZ? Janet Frame is hard to top and I still regret not stopping on a severely windy Wellington day to tell Patricia Grace how much I was enjoying Pōtiki which I just happened to be halfway into at the time!
Favourite time of the year?
Any Wellington day that combines literally and figuratively sunshine, the slightest (and not cold!) of winds and a soft rainy night. Oh, and of course LitCrawl past and future!!
Aames Bell joined The Ferret around a decade ago while looking for a job during his studies at University. After a stint sailing across the Pacific to Mexico in a three-masted classic schooner, he travelled in the Americas and Europe. Later he settled in Japan, becoming a pint puller, coffee maker, and handy person in a hostel. In Mallorca, a researcher, classifier of public domain books, a builder and a web designer. He is reluctant to talk about himself anymore so I instead ask him to describe the customers of The Ferret, who he calls, “a colourful range of individuals crossing a bookshop spectrum”.
Aames, who are your customers?
Firstly there is a book for (almost) everyone, and the people who come nosing around the shelves tend to reflect that.
I’ve had people unclear about whether we sell books or hire them out, customers who will read every book spine in the shop, unafraid to get down on all fours, crawling face near the floor to scour the bottom shelves! Then there’s young readers - being those for whom I have great affection and empathy, who are beginning in a world that is about to gain greater depth and breadth. I’ve had a man who claimed to be an ex-gun-runner who half undressed in the shop to show me his bullet wounds and scar-messed body. He was interested in haiku!
Of course not to mention those wonderful and increasingly rare folk who are comfortable browsing all areas of the shop and buying up an armful of books.
Do you have a favourite book in the shop?
If we are talking about a personal favourite of the books currently on the shelf (and not those secreted away in the back room), there is ‘Underworld’, by Don Delillo. But this is one of any number of authors and titles. A copy of David Byrne’s ‘Bicycle Diaries’ recently came into the store too!
What are you most inclined to read?
I’m inclined to read anything that will deepen my understanding of the world, mostly in terms of the human condition - writing as proof of life, so to speak, from within our modern condition, which can feel something like a hostage situation. I tend to need that existential nod to death or a gravity of purpose, but also a sense of humour. Anything that will hopefully leave me a little wiser and make me laugh. So I tend towards literature for the most part, though not exclusively. I also read the odd crime novel, spiritual/philosophical/cultural/psychological text, science fiction story, shampoo label, comic, and some Gary Larson too…
What role has literature played in your life?
My interest in literature developed reading from my father’s bookshelves, which introduced me to authors like Kundera, Garcia Marquez and Canetti. From there my interest led me down what felt like a quite natural path, from author to author. Since then books have always been with me and when in different cities I tend to seek out bookshops the way others might go sightseeing. Going places and doing things, books have always been within arm’s reach, whether on a night stand or travelling with me in a backpack.
Aames.
Poke your nose into The Ferret and check out their impressive collection of ‘favourites in shop’. You might even find some short stories like - ‘The Knife Thrower and Other Stories’ from Steven Millhauser ahead of Verb’s LitCrawl event on short stories! The Ferret packs out during Litcrawl and both Terry and Aames agree it is heartening to acknowledge that there is still vibrancy and interest in the local literary scene. Hype that exists within pages... outside of noted reviews, commentary and trends in a Bookshop that was ‘established in the pre-digital era of slowness and depth’.
