World Book Night: A
book so good they want to give it to you for free |
This
widespread, personalised championing of books couldn't come at a better time, writes Gaby Wood. |
By
Gaby Wood 7:13PM GMT 03 Mar 2011 |
Brian Eno
will be giving out books to mark the first annual World Book Night |
I don’t
know what your usual response is when a stranger thrusts a book into your
hands (“No thank you, I’m already a Jehovah’s Witness”?), but if it happens
tomorrow night, my suggestion would be to accept the gift. March 5 marks
the first annual World Book Night, an insanely bold initiative whereby
a million books will be given away. The people handing them out will be
members of the public who have chosen a particular book they love enough
to recommend to strangers on the street. The tens of thousands of “givers”
include Brian Eno, Tracy Chevalier and Julian Assange, who is giving out
All Quiet on the Western Front; the Duchess of Cornwall, meanwhile, recommends
One Day by David Nicholls. The launch will take the form of a party for
10,000 revellers tonight in Trafalgar Square. Look out for Graham Norton
and Alan Bennett jostling for position on the fourth plinth. |
... |
This widespread, personalised
championing of books couldn’t come at a better time. We are living through
a revolution in the world of words – one literary agent said this week
that in a few years, no author, publisher or agent will be able to make
a living from writing. That might turn out to be true; it has been true
before – the list of day jobs not given up by great authors is long and
varied. Whatever the future for writers, though, the way we read has already
changed enormously: we read on gadgets, we read in groups, books are recommended
to us not by mighty literary critics but by a miscellany of bloggers and
booksellers as well as friends. It has led many to ask whether literary
criticism itself is dead. |
The trouble is not
the democracy of viewpoints (as is often bemoaned) but the ascendancy
of writing over reading. Everyone wants to be a writer – everyone wants
to be seen – but no one values the less visible art of being a good reader
any more. Close reading has been confined to academia, whereas – in the
days when the legendary literary editor Terence Kilmartin saved David
Astor’s life with one hand and translated Proust with the other – it used
to have a place in the sorts of pages you are perusing now. We’re very
proud of our current literary contributors here, and of our history. Nevertheless,
as a matter of general habit, it seems worth emphasising that our best
critics have been readers first and writers second. |
... |
There is one select
group of people who have been upset by World Book Night: those independent
booksellers who believe that by giving away a million books, the WBN organisers
are depriving them of sorely needed income at a time when they are being
undercut by supermarket chains and tortured by Amazon. I should, for accuracy’s
sake, clarify that each of the million books due to be handed out has
been printed especially, so they are not copies these traders could otherwise
sell. The worry is that they will, in the words of one bookseller, “erode
the public’s perception of the value of books”. |
I don’t think that
will happen. I’m as vehemently in favour of WBN as I am of independent
bookshops. I say this not as a charitable nod to some almost-lost cause,
but because I believe small bookshops have developed a new and vital role,
precisely as a result of the changes in our reading habits. |
As reading on electronic
devices becomes more common, and panic over the perceived Kindle Catastrophe
dies down, people who oversee physical books are thinking more creatively
about what they can offer by contrast. So books become more precious as
objects (design becomes more important, clever new formats are invented)
and booksellers are – or should be – turned to as curators of our cultural
lives. |
The article
is available at: |
|