http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/23/3223935.htm?site=sydney
Anyone who has ever been to second hand book shops in a serious way would know Bob Gould. A figure of some girth with a long beard. He shop was generally chaotic but he would always point you in a direction if you knew the genre you might be interested in. The Newtown shop was gigantic, covered with books from floor to ceiling. (Talk about book shelves.)
He was a character and will be missed by many.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
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Here a sample of Bob Goulds with a summing up of the funeral of PP.McGuinness. A left wing, later right wing journalist and a popular rat-bag.
All credits to Bob Gould.
A left eye at the funeral of Paddy McGuinness
By Bob Gould
The send-off as a political and social event
Bob Gould
The send-off for Paddy McGuinness was of a special order of strangeness. The funeral chapel at Rookwood Crematorium was crowded to overflowing and the event in the Unity Hotel at Balmain later was probably twice the size of the requiem at the crematorium.
There were three groups of people at both events:
McGuinness’s extended family seemed to be mainly left-leaning, Labor-voting people, including a couple of active trade unionists. One of these trade unionists, who was obviously upset, as all the family were at Paddy’s death, said to a friend from the same union who was there with me that Paddy was a grumpy old bloke and a bit irritating but he was family and they loved him.
The second group, in which I include myself, were people from around The Push and other Sydney cultural niches who had known McGuinness for a long time and were coming along to give him a proper send-off despite the fact that they were hostile to his right-wing views in later life. These people, and there was a large number of them, particularly at the pub, were largely left of centre kind of people who vote Labor or Green. To some extent they were also remembering the days of their youth. It’s a truism that funerals are for the living, not the dead.
The third group, who did nearly all the talking at the crematorium, were McGuinness’s more recent right-wing mates, from the ultra-conservative wing of the journalistic and governmental chattering classes. These people are clearly shellshocked by the magnitude of the electoral massacre that they suffered at the hands of Labor in the federal election, and they have the greatest difficulty coming to terms with the new shape of Australian society and politics. This crowd, many of them suited and carefully coiffed, were like a roll-call of neocon punditry, including the right-wing columnist bunch, John Howard, Tony Abbott, John Stone and many others of the same ilk. Apart from Peter Coleman, they clearly didn’t know McGuinness very well, except from the last few years of his life, when he knocked around with them. All the euologists talked about McGuinness in the strange lingo that McGuinness himself used in his later columns, and the strange lingo these neocons use among themselves.
They spoke as if their lunar right, anti-working-class political and social views were some kind of conventional wisdom. They were strikingly like the Bourbon kings who were said to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
John Howard, in particular, was working the room even at the pub, as if he was still running for election, which is eccentric beyond belief.
A female leftist journalist of my acquaintance drew my attention to Howard chatting up Janet Albrechtson, one of the neocon journalistic bunch, who with metaphorical tears in her eyes had reluctantly said Howard should go, just before the election.
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Some time back, I wrote that Mulga could be Bob Gould. He too was an incorrigible lefty and I read that his biggest disappointment was Julia Gillard deciding to take the boat people to Malaysia. He thought the ALP was imploding and totally lost..
I since found out that he was not Mulga.
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My experience of Bob is very much like yours, Waz except my engagement with him was less effusive. I reckon about two thirds of the world’s carbon is locked up in Bob’s bookstore.
Like so many people and businesses of character, Bob will be sorely missed – for me, not because it was in any way easy to find what you were looking for – more like panning for precious stones – you never knew what you might find. Mostly not that for which you were looking. Not mostly. Always 🙂
I wonder what will become of the massive collection.
Thanks for the tip, Gez.
Do you think carking it just now was Bob’s final comment on the Sydney Writer’s Festy ?
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His shop on George Street was my introduction to what I consider real bookshops. Bob used to sit in a swivel chair near the entrance, elevated above the floor so he could watch the whole shop. His hair was darker then and his girth slightly less global. It was only the intrepid that engaged him. I certainly never did. I just mutely handed over my cash as he either approved or disapproved of my purchase with the merest grunt or bored exhalation. Proudly I can say that in later years I enjoyed a few very satisfactory conversations with him. He was canny and played everything close to his ample chest. You couldn’t write a character like Bob, he was a true individual and will be missed by many including people like me who never really knew him but none the less were affected by him and his bookshops.
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What a shame
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I’ll treasure the latest books I bought there. They are childrens books in Spanish, you feel like you are getting somewhere when you can read whole books in the language you are learning 🙂
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