Innovative bookseller earned wide respect
VISIONARY and trendsetting, Bill Noble was the University Book Shop’s youngest manager and became one of New
Zealand’s most widelyrespected booksellers.
Mr Noble died unexpectedly in Dunedin Hospital on April 3, aged 68. His death notice describes him as ‘‘legendary bookseller, reluctantly reformed smoker, and friend to sopranos everywhere’’.
In a recent tribute, Gillian Newman, who worked at the bookshop for 15 years, said Mr Noble was ‘‘one of the most significant figures in New Zealand bookselling’’.
However, it was difficult to sum up his ‘‘complex and unforgettable character’’, she said.
Born and educated in Canada, before working in the book trade in Auckland, Mr Noble brought ‘‘new life and vigour’’ to the University Bookshop when he arrived in 1978, as a freshfaced 25yearold, to take over as the shop’s youngest manager.
Ms Newman said that staid and conservative city fathers were sometimes appalled by his cavalier ways and at first he met consternation and distrust.
However, this later turned to admiration as his methods proved not only successful but exciting and awardwinning.
He was a risktaker, backed by confidence and knowledge.
The University Book Shop today, recognised around the country as one of the very best, owed its success in no small part to Bill, and his pizzazz, acumen and deep love of literature.
Under his stewardship, the old former Regina Confectionery Company sweet factory building in Great King St that was home to the bookshop was renovated to create ‘‘a welcoming and popular place’’.
The general part of the business grew so that textbooks and general books were both integral to its success.
He encouraged youngsters from preschool onwards, donating prizes and enticing them into the bookshop with a dedicated area, filled with comfy floor cushions and great stock.
He instigated a joint programme with the Public Library to provide all newborns at Dunedin Hospital with a book package.
And in 2002 he was awarded a Dunedin Public Libraries Citation recognising his ‘‘generous support over many years for encouraging the development of literacy, a love of books and reading among children and young adults”.
He hosted book launches and generously supported local writers, Ms Newman said in a recent tribute in the Booksellers New Zealand Book News.
He also looked for stock beyond the traditional market of the UK, and ran the permanent remainder shop upstairs, importing a wideranging mix of titles.
He travelled to the London and Bologna Book Fairs and was active in the New Zealand book world, serving as a board member of Booksellers New Zealand during the 1990s and early 2000s.
A wonderful manager, he hired an eclectic mix of characters who melded to become part of the UBS family.
Employees have included poets Peter Olds and David Howard, political commentator Chris Trotter, historian Paul
Star, and artist Katy Buess.
Once hired, he left you to do your job with little interference.
He was also witty and sharp and did not mince words.
Ms Newman still had a mental picture of him, sitting in his upstairs office, opera often playing, and receiving his favourite book reps.
He added to the richness of Dunedin city, supporting the arts, especially music.
Many people owed him a debt of gratitude for his kindness, which could be disguised in a gruff and brusque manner.
In an earlier Otago Daily Times article linked to Mr Noble’s retirement in 2012, she said he had ‘‘enhanced the whole literary life of Dunedin’’, and become well known for supporting the arts.
In retirement, he wrote a blog called Winnipegland, subtitled ‘‘Down the gopher hole and what I found there’’, recounting stories of his Canadian childhood.
He recently proudly announced that the blog (https:/ /winnipegland.wordpress.com) had attracted more than 10,000 followers.
‘‘I try in these pages not to slip into plain old nostalgia,’’ he wrote, although the ‘‘world of the past was, is, and always will be better than the world at hand’’.
‘‘So I stick with the Three Ems: memory, meaning—where there is any — and now and then, murder,’’ he wrote.
In an entry titled ‘‘The Old Man and the Lake’’, he not only vividly recaptured the magical world of his childhood, but also reflected, with a certain absurdist spirit, on some early signs of mortality.
His father, who, as head of Manitoba’s county library network, was often required to travel in the wilds, ‘‘occasionally with me in tow and making a bit of a holiday of it’’.
‘‘Completely out of character, he took me camping in the woods near the Minnesota border when I was 9 or 10, taught me how to use a lowpowered rifle on targets and a fullsized axe on firewood and on a couple of perfectly innocent garter snakes.’’
Father and son had the previous year steamed to the top of Lake Winnipeg on ‘‘the beautiful, long since retiredsome say hauntedMS Keenora’’.
Bill was then bounced out of his bunk ‘‘when the big storm came’’, and spent much of the rest of the night bent over a bucket, being sick.
‘‘This was my first intimation of death, and remains the most palpable.’’
‘‘All through the night my dad was solicitous, comforting and, well, fatherly and in control . . .’’
Two holes had been ripped in the hull below the waterline, and the captain said he managed to find safe haven before a third rupture could send the boat the bottom.
What young Bill did realise at the time was that Lake Winnipeg, despite its massive area was actually quite shallow —30 feet or so at its deepest.
‘‘So maybe the worst case was that Keenora would just wind up sitting on the floor, with her superstructure and parts of the top deck poking above water, feeling a bit stupid,’’ the older narrator added.
Mr Noble grew up in Winnipeg, the son of George and Jean Noble (nee Hewitt), first attending Ralph Maybank School, then General Byng School, and Fort Richmond Collegiate, in Winnipeg.
After 34 years as UBS Otago manager and shortly before his retirement at age 60, in 2012, he told the ODT that the previous four decades had been ‘‘one long highlight’’.
He had enjoyed ‘‘seeing the business grow not only financially but in its relationship with the community and the regard people appear to have for it’’.
‘‘The only lowlight is the fierce and predatory competition we're enduring,’’ from some international online booksellers, he said.
On his retirement, friends, staff and industry colleagues gathered to honour the man who had made UBS one of New Zealand's finest bookshops.
In the article, the late Palmerston Northbased veteran publisher Paul Greenberg paid tribute to Mr Noble, who came to Dunedin as ‘‘such a young man and had such a vision’’.
Dunedin bookshop owners and managers had soon invited him to an afternoon tea where it was strongly hinted that UBS should stick to selling textbooks.
But he had always been ‘‘his own person, and searingly intelligent’’, Mr Greenberg said.
He retained textbooks as a core part of the business, but also deepened and broadened the shop’s general books section.
Tandem Press founder Bob Ross also said at the time that Mr Noble was ‘‘one of the most significant figures in New Zealand bookselling’’ and was ‘‘innovative and imaginative’’ in building a bookshop aimed at a broad range of customers.
Mr Noble said he approached bookselling as an exciting chance to ‘‘gamble on new and littleknown authors’’ and on titles ranging ‘‘ from the breathtakingly beautiful to the powerful and disturbing’’.
Reflecting on the rich book heritage of his native Canada, and his father’s role as founder of the country library service in Manitoba, Mr Noble said ‘‘I was pretty much brought up in a library’’.
At 19, his father found him work at Duthie Books, in Vancouver.
He showed natural flair for the job, and saved enough to travel.
One of his father’s employees was from New Zealand and she suggested he go there.
After 18 months working for Whitcoulls predecessor Whitcombe and Tombs, in Auckland's Queen St, he returned to Canada, but quickly emigrated again.
He first worked for an Auckland publishing company and then as buyer for that city's University Book Shop, before becoming manager of UBS Otago.
At that stage the New Zealand book market was dominated by UK publishing, but he found links to supply cheaper, more contemporarylooking books with titles by renowned authors, and published in the United States.
He had always enjoyed ‘‘our surpassingly beautiful language’’ and the many ways it could be used in elegant and effective writing.
He liked ‘‘quality books — those with elegance of prose and design’’ and these days preferred to read mainly crime novels.
‘‘Patricia Highsmith is my favourite writer in any genre.’’
And he praised her ‘‘highly
literate’’ crime novels.
Under his management, the UBS became a literary and counterculture focal point.
The chalk signature of poet and arts patron Charles Brasch could still be seen near the UBS staff room where he and fellow poet Ruth Dallas worked on preparing influential literary journal
Landfall.
Opera remained one of his passions.
It had developed through waking up in the early hours and listening to Radio New Zealand Concert, and was passed on to his daughter Sarah Noble, now of Manchester, who is the producer of the annual UKbased International Opera Awards.
Mr Noble said he had always intended to retire when he was 60, and diabetes had forced him to keep his word.
Ms Noble said her father was hard to describe to people who had never met him, but she had inherited a great deal from him.
‘‘Musical tastes definitely: not just opera, although it was ever present, but 1960s pop music, country and bluegrass, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
‘‘When I was 9 he took me out of school for a day so we could fly to Auckland and see the Stones in concert.
‘‘I knew absolutely that I was the most important thing in his life but that didn't mean he spoilt me or pandered to my bad moods!
‘‘We could argue spectacularly when either of us failed to meet the other's exacting standards.
‘‘He loved telling the story about the time my mother came home to find us fighting — I was a toddler at the time:
‘‘Stop trying to argue with her, Bill, she's 3!’’
‘‘Yes, I know, but she's WRONG!’’
He had trained her to play Scrabble and then Trivial Pursuit against him. In her student years she stayed living at home with him, and they played Trivial Pursuit almost every night.
‘‘He very rarely lost, even when impaired by copious red wine, which was extremely irritating.’’
After retirement, once he was set up in his little flat, he had seemed genuinely content.
As long as he could spend an hour in the supermarket unmolested, and indulge himself with cheese and MSNBC and The
Chase in the evenings, he was happy.
Throughout the 15 years she had lived away from New Zealand, she and her father had remained in close touch by email, phone or Skype.
And living apart ‘‘never once stopped him from wholeheartedly supporting — and glorying in — my various adventures’’.
‘‘Whether that was dramatically quitting my studies, or moving to a new city, or taking up with a surprising romantic partner, he took it all in his stride,’’ she said.
He is survived by his former wife, Annette Campbell, and daughter Sarah Noble. — John Gibb