REVIEWS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Alger (El Watan) Sofiane Hadjadj
Amsterdam (De Verdieping Trouw) Frans Meulenberg
Anniston (Anniston Star) Bruce Lowry
Aschaffenburg (Ephorie) Holger von Jouanne-Diedrich
Berlin (Berliner Zeitung) Arno Widman
Bonn (Rheinischer Merkur) Herausgeber
Boston (Boston Globe) Edward Tenner
Brisbane (Media Culture Journal) Stephanie Dickinson
Brussel (De Morgen) Bert Bultinck
Brussel (De Morgen) Dirk Leyman
Buenos Aires (Visión) Eduardo Gudiño Kieffer
Caracas (El Universal) Juan Carlos Santaella
Caracas (El Universal) Karl Krispin
Chicago (American Library Association) Donna Seaman
Chicago (American Library Association) Cecile M. Jagodzinski
Chicago (Cornerstone Magazine) Chris Rice
Edinburgh (The Scotsman) Gavin Esler
Erding (Change X) Jürgen Neubauer
Genève (Latitudes) Geneviève Grimm-Gobat
Gipuzkoa (Egunkaria) Garikoitz Berasaluze
Glasgow (The Herald) Rosemary Goring
Ipoh (Dari) Jiwa Rasa
Köln (Monopol Magazin) Nick Hornby
Kuala Lumpur (Berita Harian) Bersama Johan Jaaffar
Kuala Lumpur (Off The Edge) Beth Yahp
Lausanne (Choix des Livres) Pierre Flatt
Lisboa (Diário de Noticias) Pedro Mexia
Ljubljana (Sodobnost) Dusanka Zabukovec
London (Publishing News) Editor
London (Publishing News) David Blow
London (The Bookseller) Caroline Sanderson
London (The Bookseller) Horace Bent
London (The Bookseller) Stephen Torsi
London (The Guardian) Steven Poole
London (The Mail on Sunday) John Koski
London (The Observer) Robert McCrum
London (The Sunday Telegraph) Luke Johnson
London (The Telegraph) James Francken
Los Angeles (Publishing Marketing Association) Jan Nathan
Madison (The Capital Times) Heather Lee Schroeder
Madrid (ABC) Darío Villanueva
Mechelen (De Brakke Hond) Leo de Haes
México (El Financiero) Juan Domingo Argüelles
México (Este País) Germán Dehesa
México (Siempre!) José Emilio Pacheco
Milano (Il Domenicale) Angelo Crespi
Milano (Il Giornale) Luigi Mascheroni
Milano (Radio Tre) Giuliano Vigini
Milwaukee (The Writer Magazine) Jeff Reich
Mission (Blue Ear Daily) Tim Walter
Montréal (Cyberpresse) Stéphanie Bérubé
Muttenz (Anglo-Swis News) Sabine Scherrer
New York (Publishers Weekly) Editor
New York (The New York Observer) Russell Jacoby
New York (The New York Times Book Review) Margo Jefferson
New York (The New Yorker) Leo Carey
Panaji (Navhind Times] Nandkumar Kamat
Panamá (La Prensa) Priscilla Delgado
Paris (Esprit) Cécile Desaunay
Paris (La Presse Littéraire) Eli Flory
Paris (Le Figaro Littéraire) Astrid de Larminat
Paris (Libération) Frédérique Russel
Paris (Lire) Marc Riglet
Philadelphia (The Philadelphia Inquirer) Frank Wilson
Roma (La Discussione) Ferdinando Crespi
Roma (Internazionale) Nick Hornby
Rosario (Didascalia) Néstor Alfredo Noriega
San Francisco (The Believer) Nick Hornby
Santa Barbara (The South Coast Beacon) Lauren Roberts
Sâo Paulo (Amigos do Livro) Felipe Lindoso
Sâo Paulo (Barcarolla) Irineu Ramos e Ivani Cardoso
Sâo Paulo (Entrelinhas) Hélio Consolaro
Sâo Paulo (Folha Ilustrada) Marcelo Pen
Sâo Paulo (Observatório da Imprensa) Gabriel Perissé
Saratoga (Book Browse) Davina Morgan-Witts
Stockholm (Svenska Dagbladet) Niklas Rádström
Stuttgart (SWR Südwestrundfunk) Christine Weiner
Tokyo (Hon to Konpyuta) Chapter translated
Toronto (University of Toronto Book Store) Nicholas Pashley
Utrecht (De Boekenwereld) Marika Keblusek
Wein (Buchkritik) Christel Schweitzer
Zagreb (Trigon) I. Karabaic
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Francfort, la cité de tous les livres Un sésame pour la tour de Babel
Sofiane Hadjadj El Watan Alger 2005/11/17
Francfort, hall des expositions, mercredi 19 octobre, 9h du matin. La journée s’annonce froide et belle, mais au fond, là où je me dirige cela compte très peu. Depuis le métro jusqu’au cœur du grand hall des expositions, on a très peu l’occasion d’affronter le dehors. Dès l’abord, au Centre international, une foule impressionnante stationne là. Le monde est là, et on a immédiatement la sensation de ce même vertige qui nous traverse, le vertige de la présence simultanée et irréelle du monde entier : toutes les langues, toutes les nations, tous les savoirs. [...] Un essai réjouissant du Mexicain Gabriel Zaid permet d’en saisir les enjeux. Dans son livre, Bien trop de livres? Lire et publier à l’ère de l’abondance (éditions Les Belles lettres, 2005), Gabriel Zaid rappelle à ceux qui seraient tentés par la nostalgie, que malgré l’avènement de la télévision et de l’Internet, il n’y a jamais eu autant de livres publiés de par le monde. Non pas seulement en quantité, mais proportionnellement au nombre d’habitants de notre planète. Ainsi, il rappelle qu’en 1450, à l’invention de l’imprimerie, on publiait 100 titres par année, et qu’en 1950, ce chiffre est grimpé à 250 000, alors qu’aujourd’hui, on publie un million de titres annuellement! Gabriel Zaid, dans un trait d’humour typiquement latino-américain, ajoute que « l’humanité publie un livre toutes les 30 secondes. En supposant un coût moyen de 25 euros et une épaisseur de 2 cm, il faudrait 25 millions d’euros et 20 km d’étagères pour agrandir la bibliothèque de Mallarmé, s’il voulait dire aujourd’hui : la chair est triste, hélas! Et j’ai lu tous les livres. » C’est à ce livre que l’on pense en parcourant les allées du Salon du livre de Francfurt, et c’est à notre ignorance que nous sommes ramenés. [...]
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So many books, so little time and so few readers
Bruce Lowry Anniston Star Anniston, AL. 2003/08/15
In fear of facing either the flurry of the back-to-school blitz, or the fury of the August sun, I have found myself retreating more often these days to the coolness of the soft, green chair by the nightstand.[...] Of course the variety of my current stack is nothing compared to what's out there – or what may be coming. Later this month, the avalanche of fall books will begin, and will carry well into the holiday shopping season. According to a recent article in the magazine Poets & Writers, the volume can be staggering. In the article the editor of the Los Angeles Times book section says he receives some 60,000 review copies per year, of which about 1,500 receive reviews. Our take here at The Anniston Star is somewhat less than that. I would say 700 arrivals would be a generous estimation, of which about 200 receive locally-produced, by-lined reviews. (And that's not including the drop-ins, or the vanity press volumes that come my way). I'm not complaining, mind you. It’s just that I cant help but wonder what's to become of the quality of books when its smashed by such unforgiving quantity. This was why I was so intrigued by another new release that crossed my desk, a little trade paperback called So Many Books (Paul Dry Books, 144 pp., $9.95), which articulates the volume of the literary overabundance in its opening paragraph: "The reading of books is growing arithmetically; the writing of books is growing exponentially. If our passion for writing goes unchecked, in the near future there will be more people writing books than reading them." On the surface this seems a daunting and depressing eventuality. Yet author Gabriel Zaid concludes that it's not so bad, that the success of Amazon.com, for instance, which he calls "concentration bolstered by diversity" is proof that there is still room in the industry for all, the small, obscure titles as well as for the blockbuster best-sellers you purchase at Wal-Mart. He also argues convincingly that the regular print-and-bound format is in no immediate danger from electronic assault. As a purist who likes to feel the binding in his hands and who likes to set it aside now and again for its careful cat cleaning, this is refreshing indeed. Bruce Lowry is the commentary editor for The Anniston Star.
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So viele Bücher!
Erstaunliches, Kurioses und Nachdenkliches rund ums Lesen "Wer dieses ansteckende Gefühl von Freiheit und Beglückung erlebt, die das Lesen entzündet, der möchte es nie mehr missen."
Holger von Jouanne-Diedrich Ephorie Aschaffenburg 2005/12/06
Jedes Jahr kommen über eine Million neue Buchtitel auf den Weltmarkt! Nicht nur Star-Kritiker Reich-Ranicki stöhnt: "Wer soll das alles lesen?" Der mexikanische Dichter und Essayist Gabriel Zaid hat dieser Masse nun ein sehr kluges Büchlein hinzugefügt, in der es genau um dieses Thema geht. Er öffnet uns die Augen, das diese Schwemme weniger nachfrage- als vielmehr angebotsgetrieben ist. Nicht umsonst gilt zum Beispiel "Publish or Perish", veröffentliche oder stirb, seit jeher als Leitprinzip in akademischen Kreisen. Besonders deutlich wird dies auch im Bereich der Lyrik: So erhalten Gedichtzeitschriften zwar wäschekörbeweise Gedichte zugesandt, jedoch bleibt die Anzahl der Abonnenten stets sehr übersichtlich. Einige Magazine sind nunmehr dazu übergegangen nur noch Gedichte von Abonnenten zu veröffentlichen. Zaid stellt pointiert fest: "Selbst die Verfasser von Lyrik kaufen Lyrik nur unter vorgehaltener Pistole." Weiter interessante Themen betreffen die Frage, ob die neuen Medien, Bücher verdrängen (Sie befinden sich hier immerhin auf einem Buch-Portel im Internet), warum Sokrates Büchern tief misstraute (er selbst hat ja auch nie eines geschrieben) und die Beziehung von Buch und Kommerz. Alles in allem ein liebevoll geschriebenes Büchlein, welches über die demonstrierte Liebe zum Lesen einen tiefen Humanismus vermittelt - wenn Sie Bücher lieben, kaufen Sie am besten gleich zwei: eines zum Selberlesen und eines zum Verschenken. Alle, die Bücher lieben. Holger von Jouanne-Diedrich, Chefredakteur, Das Management-Portal, http://www.ephoire.de
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Aufbaukost für Buchliebhaber
Arno Widmann Berliner Zeitung Berlin 2005/08/15
So gut wie unbekannt ist in Deutschland der mexikanische Lyriker und Essayist Gabriel Zaid. Der 1934 geborene Autor - gelernter Ingenieur - war lange Jahre im Kampf gegen linken Dogmatismus für eine freie liberale Gesellschaft Kampfgefährte von Octavia Paz. Das kleine Bändchen "So viele Bücher!" ist eine Liebeserklärung an die Literatur und schon darum eine beflügelnde Lektüre für jeden Leser. Wer glaubt, das Fernsehen sei der Tod des Buches, für den hat Zaid Zahlen parat: In den USA stieg der Anteil der Haushalte mit Fernsehgeräten zwischen 1947 und 1960 von 0 auf 88 Prozent. Die Anzahl der alljährlich veröffentlichten Buchtitel stieg im selben Zeitraum in den USA von 7 000 auf 15 000. Die Konzentration im Buchgeschäft führt nicht zum Tod des unabhängigen Buchhandels. 2002 ging der Marktanteil der Kettenbuchhandlungen in den USA von 22,2 auf 21,4 Prozent zurück, der von Buchclubs von 22,1 auf 19,6 und der von Versendern von 3,3 auf 2,8. "Demgegenüber stieg der Anteil der unabhängigen Buchhändler von 13,5 auf 14, Prozent und der der Antiquariate von 3,1 auf 5 Prozent." Zaid ist ein bekennender Gegner jeglichen Katastrophismus. Das macht seine Bücher so wichtig. Auch dieses.
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Handgepäck /So Viele Bücher!
Herausgeber Rheinischer Merkur Bonn 2005/06/16
Unverbesserliche Leser, fanatische Schriftsteller, schrullige Buchhändler, trinkfeste Verleger – die Welt der Bücher ist einfach wunderbar, manchmal auch abseitig und kurios. Der mexikanische Lyriker und Essayist Gabriel Zaid hat nun über diese wie über die kaufmännischen und drucktechnischen Aspekte des Buchwesens, über Kleinauflagen, Bestseller und Flops, ein kleines geist- und gehaltvolles Werk verfasst. Man lernt, dass die Anzahl potenzieller Leser kaum mehr Schritt hält mit der Zahl potenzieller Autoren.
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A decade ago, seers predicted that technology would bury the printed word. So why are there more books than ever?
Edward Tenner Boston Globe Boston 2004/04/25
Ten years ago the printed word seemed a noble anachronism crushed between televised entertainment and burgeoning electronic information resources, from CD-ROMs and audio books to online hypertext.[..] Some writers foresaw the doom of serious reading itself. In 1994, the Boston-based critic Sven Birkerts published "The Gutenberg Elegies," a passionate requiem for a literary culture that seemed to be vanishing in the face of new technology and the indifference of television- and computer-saturated young people.[...] What a change a decade has brought. One of the surprise critical hits of 2003 was "So Many Books" by the Mexican critic Gabriel Zaid. As devoted a book lover as Birkerts, Zaid celebrates rather than mourns. Fifty years after the introduction of television, he writes, the number of titles published worldwide each year has increased fourfold from 250,000 to 1 million -- from 100 books for every million humans to 167. A book is published somewhere in the world every 30 seconds. Where Birkerts and other pessimists detected a shift from the book, Zaid sees the true problem in the hopeless disproportion between the flood of books and the time and physical space of readers already overwhelmed by the larger information deluge. The speed of publication, Zaid writes, makes us "exponentially more ignorant. If a person reads a book a day, he would be neglecting to read 4,000 others, published the same day." What accounts for the shift in mood between these two landmark books about reading? As it turns out, both the optimistic technological prophets and the pessimistic critics of the 1990s overlooked a series of underlying paradoxes about books.[...] Coping with the problems of the new book market will take creative thinking from publishers, librarians, authors, and readers. But it's clear by now that the book needs not last rites but fresh air and exercise.
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So Many Books, So Little Time
Stephanie Dickison Media Culture Journal Brisbane 2005/08
As a writer, researcher and avid book reader, I am drawn to books about books. But ever-so tentatively, as I know they can only mean one thing—more titles in which to add to my ever-growing list of books that I must have, that I must read, and that I will eventually feel compelled to write about. Recently, I finished So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading by Sara Nelson. Ms. Nelson is a librarian and knows whereof she speaks. […] And she is not the only librarian to get in on the action. Ms. Pearl wrote Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Moment, Mood and Reason and the just published More Book Lust. There are many other readers that simply could not help writing about books. Gabriel Zaid, for one, who wrote So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance. It seems we just cannot get enough of great book titles, the people who love them, what people are reading and why. […]
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Amerika, de pijn en de pyrothecniek
Bert Bultinck De Morgen Brussel 2005/08/17
Volgens de Mexicaanse auteur en boekenwatcher Gabriel Zaid publiceert de homo sapiens ur ig seconden. In het jaar 2000 werden er alles samen ongeveer één mil joen nieuwe boeken op de wereldmarkt losgelaten en de laatste jaren is het aantal nieuwe titels ongetwijfeld nog sneller gestegen. Wie de vrijwel ongekende luxe geniet van één boek per dag -te (kunnen) lezen, heeft er meteen een paar duizend verwaarloosd die diezelfde dag nog zijn gepubliceerd. In het verkwikkende essay Los demasiados libros, dat hier vooral bekend is in de Engelse vertaling (So Many Books), verdedigt Zaid de zogenaamde over productie en wordt elke luie lezeren zondagsschhjver - meteen verlostvan zijn schuldcomplex. Waarom zou je je minderwaardig of dom moeten voelen als je nog nooit Ulysses gelezen hebt? Waarom zouden er eigenlijk van elk boek tienduizend exemplaren moeten worden verkocht? En als een alom geprezen roman je al na honderd bladzijden grondig de keel begint uit te hangen, dan schuif je het zogenaamde meesterwerk toch gewoon aan de kant en neem je een ander? In het al even vermakelijke The Polysyllabic Spree brengt bestsellerauteur en Hollywook-lieveling Nich Hornby verslag uit van zijn eigen overdadig koop-en leesgendrag. Het is een gevarieerde verzameling opstellen over onder meer J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Jonathan Lethem en Dennis Lehane, marr ook over eetbare gendichten en hilarisch autismeproza. De korte, wervelende stukken doen watertanden en glimlachen, ook al omdat Hornby in vergelijking met Zaid op een net iets genuanceerdere manier schrijft over het al dan niet bezwarende overschot aan drukwerk. Elk hoofdustukje van zijn leeslogboek begint met twee lijstjes: links de boeken die hij in een bepaalde maand heeft gekocht; rechts de boeken die hij die maand heeft gelezen. En zijn Weight Watchers-me-thode schijnt nog min of meer te weken ook: vaak zijn de lijstjes even lang, al staat er rechts wellens de vermelding ‘abandoned’ bij (‘gestopt’). Grosso modo herkent hij zich toch in een para zinnen van uitgerekend So Many Books van Zaid, een tekst die hij toevallig ook heeft gelezen Zaid schrijft dat "echt geciviliseerde mensen in staat zijn om duizenden ongelezen boeken in hun bezit te hebben zonder daarbij hun zelfverzekerdheid of hun verlangen naar meer te verliezen". Hornby’s commentaar is niet zonder ironie, maar vooral instemmend: "Dat ben ik! En jij, wellicht! Dat zijn wij! ‘Duizenden ongelezen boeken!’ ‘Echt geciviliseerd!’." Hornby’s eigen uitweg uit de culturele overconsumptie is de zelfexpressie: "alle boeken die we in ons bezit hebben, of ze un gelezen of ongelezen zijn, vormen de meest volledige uitdrukking van wie we zijn." Daar zit iets in. Zeker als we toevoegen: "of wie graag zouden willen zijn." […]
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De beste boeken van 2005 (bis)
Dirk Leyman De Morgen Brussel 2005/12/21
Wellicht worden de eindejaarslijstjes meer gelezen dan de boeken die erin vermeld staan: Een Frans leven van Jean-Paul Dubois (De Arbeiderspers) Annie Ernaux en Marc Marie; L’Usage de la photo (Gallimard) Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Fuir (Editions de Minuit) Tommy Wieringa, Joe Speedboot (De Bezige Bij) Stefan Brijs, De engelenmaker (Atlas) Gabriel Zaid, So Many Books (Sort of Books/Penguin)
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La sagrada entelequia
Eduardo Gudiño Kieffer Visión Buenos Aires 1973/07/14
Emprender una tarea demistificadora no es nada fácil, en especial cuando el mito ha perdido sus explicaciones etiológicas, cuando sus elementos genuinos se han convertido en palabrería inútil, moralejas sin contenido o sagas más o menos heroicas. Como sucede con el libro. Porque acerca del libro se dicen muchas cosas. Demasiadas. Que es "un instrumento de cultura", que es "una herramienta del saber", que es (del perro se afirma otro tanto) "el mejor amigo del hombre". Y varias vaguedades más, todas ellas falaces, que solo sirven para transformar a un objeto concreto, real, mensurable, en una entelequia casi sagrada o sagrada del todo (tanto que muchos ni se atreven a tocarla). A pesar de las dificultades de la demistificación, el poeta, crítico y ensayista mexicano Gabriel Zaid (Monterrey, 1934), intenta poner las cosas en claro. Para ello escribe Los demasiados libros, una rotunda desmentida a esa "literatura piadosa que consiste por lo general en decir que el libro es una cosa muy noble y muy importante, aunque desgraciadamente la televisión hace avances terribles, el gobierno no ayuda, etc." (Página 44). Es decir: la literatura que contribuye a oscurecer el panorama a través de una crítica quejosa en lugar de analítica, la que nos convierte en apocalípticos y alienados al mismo tiempo, en lugar de capacitarnos para un estudio objetivo del problema. Método y contenido: El método aplicado por Zaid está determinado por el objeto a investigar (el libro) y por el tipo de proposición que se propone descubrir (su inserción en la realidad, prescindiendo de los convencionalismos habituales). O sea, que se trata de un método especial, que se propone no tomar al mito alegóricamente, sino epistemológica y fenomenológicamente. Para desarrollarlo, el autor parte de un prólogo en el que plantea "la ambigüedad sacramental del libro" y la difusión de absurdos acerca de él. Analiza luego la superación tecnológica del libro, sus posibilidades de uso y de supervivencia en el mundo actual. Esto lleva al costo de la lectura, un problema desmenuzado a conciencia y que se sintetiza en una conclusión donde una punta de ironía contribuye al esclarecimiento: "Háganse cuentas semejantes para un obrero de salario mínimo y se verá que lo más costoso de leer sigue siendo el lector. Lo cual corresponde con la escasez y abundancia relativas del tiempo y de los libros. La vida es corta, los libros infinitos" (página 19). El capítulo tercero lleva el título del volumen. Zaid plantea en él lo que la abundancia de publicaciones librescas (500 mil títulos en el planeta durante 1970) significa en relación con los problemas temporales y espaciales cotidianos. Propone luego el problema de las librerías. ¿Qué es la librería: templo o cueva de ladrones? ¿Qué es el libro: puro espíritu o pura mercadería? ¿Qué es el librero: sacerdote o comerciante? Y temas más concretos todavía: ¿cómo funciona una librería en ciudades que no pueden sostenerla? ¿Cuál es el ideal según la cantidad de habitantes de una zona determinada? Son varias las soluciones que pueden ser atendidas en beneficio de lectores, libreros y editores. Propuesta: El capítulo V es una apasionante sugerencia con respecto a lo que un buen servicio bibliográfico podría hacer por la integración de la América Latina. Esto no es un sueño vano. "La rentabilidad de esos servicios (en términos sociales, intangibles y externos a la contabilidad aislada del servicio) sería enorme (si cumplieran realmente su función) aunque hubiese que subsidiarlos amplísimamente" (página 38). Zaid aporta también sus ideas para la integración bibliográfica latinoamericana, ideas que deberían ser tenidas en cuenta por todos los gobiernos y editores del Continente, si consideran que el término integración es algo más que una palabra con meros alcances demagógicos. Luego de un "Cilicio para autores masoquistas" (clara ubicación del libro en una realidad contundente), Zaid llega a la médula de su investigación: los interrogantes sobre la difusión del libro. Destruye aquí esas "verdades comunes" de la industria del libro, y prueba que éste no es un medio de comunicación de masas, que su influencia directa es muy limitada, que no se difunde más porque las masas con estudios universitarios no leen y que al fin de cuentas las responsables son las universidades "que dan cursos y títulos pero no enseñan a leer" (página 45). La destrucción de estas "verdades comunes" es positiva, porque por sobre ellas Zaid construye lo que podría ser la base para una "verdad verdadera": explica la necesidad del libro, las auténticas razones de su influencia, el real problema de los precios, la responsabilidad de los gobiernos, así como de los privilegiados "que fueron a la universidad y salieron sin saber leer" (pág. 63). De interés: Por último, el capítulo VIII, se refiere a "Precio y tiraje óptimo de libros". Aquí el autor maneja claramente una serie de cálculos que sin duda serán de interés para cualquier editor y para cualquier librero, pero también para el escritor que tantas veces se cree estafado o engañado. Y para un lector, que tendrá una aproximación objetiva a una realidad que hasta ahora se le escapa de las manos, convertida en mito. En suma: Los demasiados libros es un importante aporte del conocimiento de una materia de la que se habla mucho y se sabe poco. Entre esos "demasiados", éste es un libro imprescindible.
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Lección de letra muerta
Juan Carlos Santaella El Universal Caracas 1996/11/06
[…] Recientemente terminé de leer un estudio bastante singular a propósito de esta materia, el cual me resultó revelador por lo audaz y sincero de los aspectos expresados en el mismo. En Los demasiados libros, cuyo autor es el mexicano Gabriel Zaid, se expone un análisis que llama profundamente la atención acerca de ese objeto del placer fetichista que son los libros. Como tal, el estudio de Zaid pone el dedo en la llaga, cuando arriba a la conclusión de que vivimos en una época donde sobran los libros y escasean los lectores. Esta apreciación siempre la he vislumbrado, sobre todo cuando nos percatamos que la industria cultural es un fenómeno terrible que ha logrado convertir al libro en un producto más, igualado al resto de los productos que se ofrecen en la misma sociedad de consumo. Sobre la base de estas elucubraciones del autor mexicano, es oportuno decir algunas verdades al respecto. En primer lugar, creo pertinente enfrentar, de una vez por todas, al mito sagrado del libro como un supuesto elemento de adquisición de conocimiento, prestigio y otras fatuidades más. Aquella vieja sentencia, ridícula después de todo, de 'sembrar un árbol, engendrar un hijo y escribir un libro', resulta francamente bochornosa. Porque al mito soberano del libro también habría que agregarle el mito desquiciado del lector. Sobre la base de estos dos grandes mitos, se ha construido una cultura fundamentada en principios equivocados, narcisistas y megalómanos. Nuestra atorrante cultura libresca, nos ha hecho ver que es imperioso y determinante publicar un libro, lo cual, en consecuencia, se traduce en la búsqueda desesperada de un hipotético lector que jamás aparece. La experiencia cotidiana nos indica, siempre y a cualquier hora, que las sociedades necesitan cada vez menos los libros que imaginamos y deseamos que se publiquen. En el mismo orden, esta semejante experiencia revela que existen, en enorme abundancia, eso que se llama lectores analfabetos funcionales. Los millones de libros que son editados cada año, suelen terminar en oscuros y húmedos depósitos, sin que nadie se tome la molestia de venderlos. Los lectores, por su parte, prefieren, en una exacta minoría, la obsolescencia del título comercial, vale decir, la implacable presencia del Bestseller. Los otros, minúsculos lectores de avisos y noticias periodísticas, se conforman con ostentar una ignorancia desprendida de su habitual falta de tiempo. Ningún profesional llámese abogado, médico, ingeniero, maestro o publicista tiene el tiempo suficiente para leer y, además, tampoco le interesa. ¿Para qué invertir una hora diaria de lectura en libros que no le 'agregan' vitalmente nada a sus tristes vidas? En otro orden de asuntos, tenemos que considerar que, de forma paradójica, la enorme producción de libros que salen todos los meses al mercado, no hacen a un público ni más informado ni mejor culto. Al contrario, esta gran sobreproducción de títulos está formando un nuevo y curioso analfabetismo de signos espectaculares. ¿Por qué echarle la culpa de tales anormalidades a la televisión, al cine, al vídeo casero o a la inoportuna radio? De ninguna manera. Las causas por las cuales hoy en día se lee menos, no radican tan sólo en el poder que ejercen los medios radioeléctricos. Una irritante tradición, nos ha hecho ver que la ausencia de lectores se debe a la omnipresencia doméstica de tales medios. Y no es, en rigor, así. El problema es más complejo de lo que uno pueda suponer. No obstante, pienso que el dogma de la lectura impuesto en tanto principio incuestionable, sumado al mito del libro, pueden ser las causas del profundo aburrimiento de cientos de lectores enfrentados a experiencias de lecturas poco gratificantes y felices. Un libro tiene que ser como un vicio: placentero y reiterativo. Dice Zaid en un determinado momento, en un tono irreverente que me gusta: "¿Qué demonios importa si uno es culto, está al día o ha leído todos los libros? Lo que importa es cómo se anda, cómo se ve, cómo se actúa después de leer. Si la calle y las nubes y la existencia de los otros tienen algo que decirnos. Si leer nos hace, físicamente, más reales." De nada vale, como decía Gracián, el mucho saber y el poco vivir. Cortázar, por su parte, insistía en que los libros debían terminar definitivamente en la vida y no al revés. De modo que son muchas, demasiadas las imposturas que giran alrededor de los libros. Libros malos, insustanciales, pésimos, que únicamente sirven para satisfacer las vanidades curriculares, forman esa enorme montaña de estiércol que guardan las editoriales. A menudo olvidamos que hay demasiada letra muerta en las cosas que se publican. Ningún lector cansado, decepcionado y arruinado por la vida, soporta tanta basura. Los lectores tienen sus derechos y uno de ellos, como lo prescribía Daniel Pennacc, es el derecho irrenunciable a no leer. ¿Hasta cuándo nos vamos a estar preguntando para qué sirven los libros?
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Los ignorantes inteligentes y los demasiados libros
Karl Krispin El Universal Caracas 1996/11/22
[…] A estos particulares, especialmente a la reivindicación y naturaleza del libro dedica el intelectual mexicano Gabriel Zaid su ensayo Los demasiados libros (Editorial Anagrama, Barcelona 1996) finalista del XXIV concurso de ensayos de Anagrama. Frente a todo lo anterior, Zaid se pregunta: "¿Y para qué leer? ¿Y para qué escribir? Después de leer cien, mil, diez mil libros en la vida, ¿qué se ha leído? Nada. Decir: Yo sólo sé que no he leído nada, después de leer miles de libros, no es un acto de fingida modestia: es rigurosamente exacto, hasta la primera decimal de cero por ciento. Pero ¿no es quizás eso, exactamente, socráticamente, lo que los muchos libros deberían enseñarnos? Ser ignorantes a sabiendas, con plena aceptación. Dejar de ser simplemente ignorantes, para llegar a ser ignorantes inteligentes." Su defensa de libro la cimenta alrededor del concepto de vicio y felicidad. Leer es un vicio, una felicidad, afirma el autor y en esto último sigue a Borges literalmente. Publicar se ha convertido en un problema y es la contraparte de la lectura. No estamos en capacidad de asimilar ni de leer todo lo que se publica, ni siquiera –lo que es más grave– lo que nos interesa. Pero la virtud del libro, por encima de sus competidores, reside en el hecho de que está allí, es recurrible, podemos ir y venir a él a nuestro antojo: podemos consultarlo en cualquier circunstancia. Los otros medios son menos viables en este sentido. ¿Cambian en algo los libros la vida de los pueblos?, se preguntaría Zaid. Quizás lo hagan respecto a la de los individuos y en esto también cabe la duda. Con gracia, don Gabriel cuestiona si los suicidas wertherianos, de no leer el Werther se habrían suicidado. Quizás lo único salvable es que a mayor número de lectores en un país, mayor grado de civilidad (¡pero también sólo entre ellos!). La relación con el libro es individual y si de algo sirve es para llegar, Zaid dice, a ser ignorantes inteligentes, y sobrellevar mejor estos avatares de la existencia. Con respecto a las ediciones, el autor revela que todo libro tiene su público y en esto no parece estar descubriendo la pólvora, pero que corresponde a los editores establecer el alcance de ese público, y en esto sí la descubre. De modo que hay que precisar los términos de este nexo. Se puede publicar sin temer al fracaso de entender, como apunta Zaid, que con raras excepciones, el mundo del libro no corresponde a los mercados masivos e indiferenciados, sino a las clientelas segmentadas a los nichos especializados, a los miembros de un club de interesados en tal o cual conversación. Hay que respetar, por ende, el derecho de las minorías y entenderlos Oído al tambor, vosotros ignorantes y exclusivos editores de autoayuda y best–sellers.[...]
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So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance
Donna Seaman American Library Association Booklist Chicago 2003/09/01
"The human race publishes a book every thirty seconds," observes Mexico City-based poet and essayist Zaid, and therefore "how is a single book among the millions to find its readers?" This is the conundrum upon which Zaid builds his incisive, wry, ultimately celebratory meditation on the chaotic and wasteful, yet exciting and felicitous world of books. Believing that culture is a conversation conducted on many levels around various foci, of which books constitute a vital and crucial number, Zaid reminds readers that books don't have to reach a huge audience to have impact but, rather, must be read by the right readers. Zaid also considers our ambivalence regarding books: we want them to be readily available--that is, produced and sold as commodities--but we also hold them sacred. He then parses the absurdities inherent in the economics of publishing, notes with stinging wit the frustrating fact that more people want to write than to read, and delights in the fecundity and diversity of book ecology. Lively, cosmopolitan, and piquant, Zaid's treatise will engage every serious reader.
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Book Review
Cecile M. Jagodzinski American Library Association, College and Research Libraries Chicago 2004/11
A bilingual colleague of mine translated the original Spanish title of this book for me: the Los demasiados libros of the original Spanish conveys the notion of "too-muchness," an excess, more than enough. But rather than lamenting the impossibility of reading all the books that are published or decrying the quality of most of it, Mexican poet and critic Gabriel Zaid muses on, then celebrates this phenomenon of the post-television era. Unlike his fifteenth- and sixteenth-century counterparts, who found the ready availability of printed books a disturbing and sometimes dangerous trend, Zaid offers the argument that the more books we have available, the more opportunities there will be for readers to have private conversations with authors and their books. According to Zaid, more books are published in the world today than there are children born every year. This seems surprising in our media-laden culture (in fact, in a National Endowment for the Humanities–sponsored study that was published the week I was writing this review, researchers found that people were, indeed, reading fewer books.) More people want to write books than read them, says Zaid—a fact that seems to be borne out by industry statistics. R. R. Bowker has reported that total book output in the United States rose 19 percent in 2003 and over ten thousand new publishers registered for ISBNs. The business side of books and publishing does not worry Zaid at all; he suggests that manufacturing processes and standardization make books cheap enough for anyone to buy. For readers in the twenty-first century, it’s not the price of the book that is out of reach but, rather, the cost of our time; Zaid claims this is the most expensive part of reading. Books’ relationship to commerce may create a sense of unease among dedicated readers, as though the thought of buying and selling books somehow diminishes their inherent sacredness. But nothing is just a commodity, according to Zaid. Books may be media, but they are not part of the mass media. Unlike television and film, which have the scroll-like characteristics of the texts of antiquity, books can be skimmed; they don’t require electronic help screens and they can be read at the reader’s own pace. Television and movies seem cheap to the consumer, but that’s because they are funded by advertisers; this investment requires that the products of the media industry attract large audiences—appeal to the lowest common denominator—in order to recoup costs. Books, on the other hand, don’t need a mass readership, just their "natural readership." Just a few copies of an important book, read by a few fit readers, can change lives, or change the direction of the conversations members of society have with one another. Zaid does offer a few tongue-in-cheek suggestions on the plethora of books in the marketplace that no one is reading: perhaps authors could insert five-dollar bills in their works to repay readers for their time, or a cadre of literary geishas could attend to authors’ desires to be read, giving them the literary equivalent of tea and pleasant conversation. But this is Zaid just being playful. He is less concerned with the numbers of books and authors than that books find their proper "constellations"; they must have an identity, be part of a coherent collection that orients the reader. An individual book must be part of an assemblage (Zaid’s word) that "rescues books lost in chaos." A good bookseller, a good librarian, will see to it that no book need be orphaned. Book dealers and librarians are the intermediaries who will "filter the chaos and create meaningful constellations, facilitating the writer’s exchange with the reader." This slight, but satisfying, book joins what seems to be a new genre of memoirs and essays on the pleasures of reading (e.g., Alberto Manguel’s A History of Reading, David Denby’s Great Books, Nicholas Basbanes’s Patience and Fortitude). Zaid the author managed to convey to this reader his own passion for books—from his description of learning to read and acquiring the ability to combine individual letters of the alphabet into the "miracle of the full word," to the way mature readers can be liberated, transported from reading the page to reading life itself. Perhaps it takes a person outside the library profession to remind us of the foundations of our work, to challenge the notion that it is thought-filled reading, and not information, that changes the way we think and live in our culture. Not a required purchase for most libraries, but a book every librarian ought to read.
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Reflections on our information saturated society and the drop in the ocean that are my words.
Chris Rice Cornerstone Magazine Chicago 2004/05/28
[…] In So Many Books Gabriel Zaid offers the following startling facts: "The human race publishes a book every 30 seconds.... If not a single book were published from this moment on, it would still take us 250,000 years to acquaint ourselves with those books already written." These facts alone are enough for me to raise the question "if a tree falls in the forest to create another of our books, will anyone notice?" Permit me a rabbit trail here for a second. The web is currently aiming at users to get as much stream of consciousness thought into words or symbols as quickly as possible. I blog, and now in case you haven't noticed, blogspot.com has introduced pictures and audio to the blogging scene! You can send a message from your cell phone straight to the web any time you like. While this must do wonders for lonely isolated people everywhere, it makes me feel lonelier! It makes me want to remain silent longer until I've got something truly meaningful to say! Chris Rice is general manager of Cornerstone Press Chicago and is a senior editor for Cornerstone Magazine.
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Yes - I could just about squeeze Angelina Jolie into my schedule
Gavin Esler The Scotsman Edinburgh 2004/11/30
[…] APART from Angelina Jolie - which, of course, I’m sworn never to mention - the other highlight of the week came from a friend who responded to a recent Scotsman column in which I suggested that most books written nowadays are just too long. He gave me a book which is even more extreme than my attempt at being a Grumpy Old Man. It suggests that there are just too many books being produced in the world, period. It’s called So Many Books, by Gabriel Zaid, and it argues delightfully that so many books are being published that it is impossible to keep up with anything in our culture. "Books are published at such a rapid rate that they make us exponentially more ignorant," Zaid argues. "If a person read a book a day, he would be neglecting to read four thousand others, published the same day. In other words, the books he didn’t read would pile up four thousand times faster than the books he did read, and his ignorance would grow four thousand times faster than his knowledge." That’s not a very comforting thought, is it? I think I’ll give up books and go back to watching Tomb Raider. Anyway, some time - perhaps around the time of Shakespeare or just before - a well-read person (given the times, a well-read man, and there would be very few of them across Europe) could expect to be familiar with all the great developments in literature, science, music and the arts. Nowadays, can any of us say we manage to get through more than a small portion of the day’s newspapers? A tiny fragment of the available magazines? Maybe a book a week if we are lucky? A smidgeon of television - when there are about 90 other channels we are not watching and perhaps rarely watch? I notice, however, that Gabriel Zaid’s title is not Too Many Books, but just So Many Books. And that he chooses to unravel the story of the ludicrous numbers of books published in ... a book. Mercifully, a short one. […] • Gavin Esler is a presenter on BBC2’s Newsnight.
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Der Verleger als Dienstleister und Anarchist
Jürgen Neubauer Change X Erding, Bayern 2004/02/02
So viele Bücher! - das neue Buch von Gabriel Zaid. Wer einen Verlag oder eine Buchhandlung gründet, muss ein Anarchist sein, meint Gabriel Zaid. Vor allem in Zeiten wachsender Macht der Konzernverlage und Buchhandelsketten. Er muss die Menschen genauestens kennen, für die er Bücher verlegt oder verkauft, und den Willen haben, in ein Gespräch mit ihnen zu treten und ihre Bedürfnisse ernst zu nehmen. Was sich liest wie das Manifest eines Jungunternehmers zu Gründerzeiten des Internets, kommt aus dem Mund des Dichters, Essayisten und Verlegers Gabriel Zaid, der im vergangenen Jahr seinen 70. Geburtstag feierte und dessen Titel So viele Bücher! in diesen Tagen in Deutschland erscheint. In seinem Heimatland Mexiko nimmt Zaid eine Sonderrolle im Kulturbetrieb ein, vergleichbar vielleicht mit der von Hans Magnus Enzensberger hierzulande. In seiner Person kommen zwei scheinbar unvereinbare Welten zusammen: Als Publizist und Förderer von Nachwuchsautoren heimst er Literaturpreise ein und als studierter Wirtschaftsingenieur berät er Verlage in handfesten wirtschaftlichen Fragen. Bücher zu verlegen und Ideen unters Volk zu bringen ist für Gabriel Zaid das größte Abenteuer von allen. Dabei stehen Kultur und Kommerz für ihn in keinerlei Widerspruch. Im Gegenteil: Genüsslich mokiert er sich über die Heuchelei der "erlauchten Riege der Cognoscendi", die kommerziellen Erfolg misstrauisch beäugt und freimaurerische Zirkel bildet, in denen Hochkultur von Ohr zu Ohr weitergeraunt wird. Handel - und der Handel mit Büchern besonders - ist für Zaid immer mehr als der Tausch einer Ware gegen Geld: Handel ist ein Dialog zwischen Anbietern und Käufern, ist Kommunikation und Austausch. Der Handel mit Büchern und Wissen ist Voraussetzung für jede demokratische Gesellschaft, er stellt für Zaid eine Befreiung von der Macht der Heiligen Bücher und der Eliten dar, die ihr Geheimwissen an Auserwählte weitergeben. Die Zielgruppe fest im Griff. Zaid verwendet keine modischen Begriffe wie Service- oder Kundenorientierung, doch im Grunde handelt sein Buch von nichts anderem. Aufgabe der Verlage und der Buchhandlungen sei es, ihren Kunden eine Auswahl aus der schier überwältigenden Flut von Wissen und Büchern anzubieten. Die wachsende Macht der Konzernverlage und Buchhandelsketten sieht er gelassen: Sie seien wie Ramschläden, in denen man zwar alles geboten bekommt - aber wer habe schon die Zeit, danach zu suchen? Gesunden Erfolg wird nur der Verleger und der Buchhändler haben, der mit Leidenschaft für seine Zielgruppen Themen setzt. Eine klare Programmstruktur ist dabei eine unschlagbare Dienstleistung. Zaids Ideal ist der Verlag, der seine Zielgruppe gewissermaßen schon im Adressenverteiler hat. Wie das Prinzip funktioniert, zeigt Zaids Verlag IBCON auf ganz besondere Weise. Seit rund 25 Jahren stellt IBCON Adressenverzeichnisse für Anwälte, Bibliotheken oder Außenhandelsfirmen her, zunächst gedruckt, seit einigen Jahren auch auf CD-ROM. Bei IBCON sind Adressenverteiler und Produkt sogar identisch. In anderen Wirtschaftsbereichen haben sich solche Erkenntnisse längst herumgesprochen, doch gerade in Deutschland halten noch viele Verlage und Buchhandlungen gern am Prinzip des Gemischtwarenladens fest. Und gehen dann in Schönheit zugrunde, wie so mancher Buchladen, der sich im Namen des "guten Buches" weigert, die Wünsche seiner Kunden ernst zu nehmen. Oder sie werden von ihrem eigenen Gewicht erdrückt wie ein gestrandeter Wal, wie zurzeit am Bertelsmann Buchclub zu beobachten. Die Krise, von der alle so gern reden, erreicht nur die, die ihre Kunden nicht ernst nehmen. Doch auch in Deutschland muss man nicht weit schauen, um zu sehen, dass Erfolg hat, wer sich auf den Dialog mit seinen Kunden einlässt: Der Mare-Verlag hat mit erstaunlichem Erfolg eine ganz besonders ausgefallene Nische erobert. Der im vergangenen Jahr gegründete Murmann-Verlag hat mit seinen anspruchsvollen Sachbüchern gute Aussichten, eine ernst zu nehmende Größe als Verlag für Wirtschaft und Management zu werden. Und so mancher Buchladen mit Café und einer kleinen, aber an den Interessen seiner Leser orientierten Auswahl von Titeln, hält sich auch in unmittelbarer Nachbarschaft zu den großen Ketten. Das Medium Buch ist für Zaid geradezu ideal, um noch kleinste Interessengruppen zu erreichen. Welches andere Produkt kann man schon mit einer Stückzahl von 3.000 (und mit Printing on Demand sogar schon wenigen Hundert) Exemplaren wirtschaftlich rentabel produzieren? Das Internet, das viele als Tod des Buches fürchteten und feierten, sieht Zaid übrigens keineswegs als Gefahr für den Buchmarkt. Projekte wie Wikipedia oder das Project Gutenberg eröffnen einmalige Möglichkeiten, Wissen im gesellschaftlichen Dialog zu halten. Amazons heftig umstrittenen neuen Service, der Kunden erlaubt, Leseproben herunterzuladen, hält er für genial und glaubt, dass damit eher mehr als weniger Bücher verkauft werden. Überhaupt sei Amazon nicht etwa durch seine riesige Auswahl so erfolgreich, sondern durch Glaubwürdigkeit und Service, und weil er seinen Kunden Möglichkeiten bietet, ihre Meinungen kundzutun und in Dialog miteinander zu treten. Daran, so Zaid, nicht an der Menge der Bücher, müssen sich Buchhandlungen messen lassen. Hang zum Selbstmitleid. Zaids Buch ist ein lehrreicher, manchmal polemischer und immer unterhaltsamer Streifzug durch die Welt der Bücher, in dem praktische Hinweise für Verleger und Buchhändler genauso ihren Platz haben wie provozierende Überlegungen zum Buchmarkt. Als würde er den deutschen Verleger oder Buchhändler kennen, schreibt er, Buchmenschen "haben traditionell einen ausgeprägten Hang zum Selbstmitleid und stimmen selbst dann Klagelieder an, wenn alles zum Besten steht". Wie schön, dass Zaid sich selbst nicht daran hält und ein Buch geschrieben hat, das Lust darauf macht, sich mitten hinein ins Getümmel zu stürzen und selbst einen Verlag zu gründen. Jürgen Neubauer ist Übersetzer von So viele Bücher! und hat Gabriel Zaid in Mexiko Stadt zu einem Gespräch getroffen.
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Je veux écrire un livre (comme tout le monde)
Geneviève Grimm-Gobat Latitudes Genève 2005/11/29
L'humanité publie un nouveau livre toutes les trente secondes. Alors que l'on n'arrête pas d'annoncer leur déclin -- le sociologue MacLuhan avait même prédit leur mort --, les livres affichent une santé éclatante et se multiplient à une vitesse croissante. Plus de cent cinquante millions d'ouvrages ont déjà été publiés. Lire uniquement leurs titres et les noms des auteurs prendrait environ quinze ans. Si la lecture augmente de façon arithmétique, l'écriture de livres croît, elle, de façon exponentielle. Entre les années 1450 et 1500, on avait publié entre dix et quinze mille titres avec un tirage moyen de 500 copies. En 1952, on en publiait déjà 250'000 par an, ce qui implique un rythme de croissance cinq fois supérieur à celui de la population. La télévision n'est pas venue freiner ce rythme. Au cours de la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle, on a publié près de 36 millions de titres. On en est aujourd'hui à un million par an. Par rapport aux films, fabriquer des livres reste bon marché. Ils trouvent une rentabilité avec quelques milliers d'intéressés seulement. Or, qui n'a pas une histoire à raconter? Qui ne désire pas devenir «écrivain»? «Si notre passion pour l'écriture n'est pas maîtrisée, il y aura, dans un futur proche, plus de gens pour écrire les livres que pour les lire», avertit l'écrivain mexicain Gabriel Zaid, qui vient de publier «Bien trop de livres?», un essai incisif et très documenté d'où sont extraites les informations ci-dessus. Une situation anticipée par Kundera également dans «Le livre du rire et de l'oubli». Selon lui, le développement de la société doit réaliser trois conditions pour que la graphomanie (manie d'écrire des livres) prenne les proportions d'une épidémie. Un niveau élevé de bien-être général, qui permet aux gens de se consacrer à une activité inutile. Un haut degré d'atomisation de la vie sociale et, par conséquent, d'isolement général des individus. Le manque radical de grands changements sociaux dans la vie interne de la nation. Ces conditions seraient remplies en Occident. Pour y remédier, Gabriel Zaid propose deux traitements: un gant de chasteté pour les écrivains incapables de se retenir ou, alors, une visite forcée dans une grande bibliothèque, histoire de les décourager en leur montrant la vanité leur entreprise. Pas question, en revanche, d'inciter les lecteurs à l'abstinence. Ceux d'entre eux qui sortent profondément mélancoliques et frustrés des librairies pleines de livres qu'ils ne liront jamais trouveront la consolation dans les pages de l'essai. Ne pas avoir lu tous les «incontournables» de la rentrée ne fait pas d'eux des incultes. La mesure de la lecture n'étant pas le nombre de livres lus mais l'état dans lequel ils nous laissent: «Ce qui importe, c'est notre façon de sentir, de regarder, d'agir, après avoir lu. (...) Si lire nous rend, physiquement, plus réels». Reste la vraie question: comment un ouvrage, parmi des millions, peut-il rencontrer ses lecteurs? Pourquoi, au cours de mes pérégrinations sur les étagères surchargées, «Bien trop de livres?» de Gabriel Zaid, a-t-il retenu mon attention? Cette rencontre-là échappe à la mise en équation.
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Jendeak irakurria izan nahi du
Garikoitz Berasaluze Egunkaria Gipuzkoa 1997/04/26
Aste honetan, asteazkenean, Liburuaren eguna ospatu da Hegoaldean. Gero eta liburu gehiago argitaratzen da, Hegoaldean ezezik mundu osoan ere bai: egunean lau mila inguru. Gehiegi. Kul: turalki aberasgarria dirudi datuak baina okerrena da jende gehienak idazle izan nahi duela eta ez irakurle. Horretaz guztiaz eta liburugintzarl buruzko beste hamaika bitxikeriaz aritu gara solasean Gabriel Zald idazte mexikarrarekin. Gabriel Zaid (Monterrey, 1934), Mexikoko idazlerik ospetsuenetakoak, jenero ezberdinetako hamaika libururen artean, argitalpengintza, literatura eta, batez ere, liburuak hizpide dituzten hainbat lan ditu argitaratuak. Argitaleixeen industriari buruzko tesiarekin graduatu zen idazle honen liburuak Europa aldera iritsi badira ere, bere izenak ez du hemen Ipar zein Hego Amerikan duen ospea. Hala ere, ez du herehala onartzen bere elkarrizketarik argitaratzea. Esaten duenak Mexikon oihartzun handia du eta, azken aldian, ez du gaztelaniaz argitara daitekeen elkarrizketarik eskaintzen. Azaldu diogu Euskal Herritik deitzen diogula, eukarazko egunkari bakarretik; gure hizkuntza ez dela espainola eta gaztelaniaz ez diogula argitaratuko hitz bat bera ere. Hasieran mesfidatl bada ere, azken baldintza baten ostean –haren argazkirik ez dugula erabiliko– luze eta gustura aritu da gurekin solasean. Liburuel buruzko bere liburuen artean, Los demasiados libros (Liburu gehiegtak) izeneko entsegu ezagun bat du Zaidek. Bertan esaten dituenak, eta eskaintzen dituen datuak, harrigarriak dira. Entsegua bera batik bat argitaratzaileentzat bada ere egokia, liburudenda eta liburutegietako arduradunentzat eta idazle zein ohiko irakurleentzat ere liluragarria da. Bertatik hainbat esaldi gogoratu dizkiogu Zaidi eta horien azalpena eskaini digu. Alpatu liburuan, liburu gehiegi argitaratzen dela dio egile mexikarrak. Guk, gainera, hori esateko beste bat gehiago argitaratu duela aipatu diogu. Ironiari barrez erantzun dio: Bai, egia da. Baina, horrelako ugari gertatzen dira. Ez du irtenbiderik-. Ironia alde batera utzita, ordea, liburuen bizitzari buruzko orrialde eta esaldi interesgarri ugari idatzi ditu Zaidek. Liburu gehienek liburudenda gehienetan zer eginik ez dutela, esaterako. «Hala da. Liburudenda batean zenbat liburu dauden ikustea besterik ez dago. Berez, gainera, ezinezkoa da argitaratzen diren liburu guztiak liburudendetan egotea. Gaur egun, zaila da lehen bezalako liburudendak aurkitzea. Lehen, liburudendak liburutegien antzekoak ziren. Orain, berriz, kioskoen antz handiagoa dute. Zaila da ohiko liburudenda batean liburu zaharrak aurkitzea. Azken batean, aurrerapenak basamortuan hitz egiteko aukera eman die hiritar guztlei. Kostu handirik gabe, edonork argitara dezake lau katurentzat bakarrik interesgarria dena» Gabriel Zaidek bere ondorioak atera ditu horretaz guztiaz. «Ondorioz», dio, «hainbeste liburu berri dagoenez. irakurlea ez da guztietara heltzen eta argitalpen gehienak oharkabean pasatzen dira jende gehienarentzat. Krudela da errealitatea baina hala da. Horrela bakarrik uler daitezke poema edota testuak argitaratzeko eskatuz aldizkarl eta egunkariek egunero jasotzen dituzten milaka gutunak. Ulergarria da hori. Jendeak irakurria izan nahi du. Baina, era berean, irakurriak izan nahi duten horiek guztiek ez dute ulertzen ezinezkoa dela denak argitaratzea. Ez da posible denok denoi entzutea. Baina, era berean, ez da inoren kaskezurrean sartzen besteena garrantzitsuagoa dela norberak idatzitakoa baino. Gainera. argitaratzea gero cta errazagoa bihurtu denez. liburu bat idatzi duenak uste du guztiek irakurriko dutela, baina alderantzizkoa gertatzen da. Hots, erraza denez argitaratzea, asko argitaratzen da eta, beraz, kaleratutakoaren zati txiki bat bakarrik lortzen dugu irakurtzea irakurle onak izanik ere. Azken batean, liburuak argitaratzen diren abiaduran, gero cta ezjakinago bihurtzen galtuzte. Klasikoekin alderantziz gertatzen zen. Orduan, oso liburu gutxi argitaratzen zenez, la guztiek irakurtzen zituzten». Gehiengoak irakurria izan nahi du, ez irakurlea. Zaidek ez du zalantzarik arazoa non dagoen zehazterakoan: «Liburuaren arazoa ez dago irakurtzen eta idazten ia ez dakiten milioika behartsuen artean, irakurri nahi ez baina irakurriak izan nahi duten milioika unibertsitarioen artean baizik», azaldu digu. Horri dagokionez, aipatu dugun Zaiden liburuan bada atal interesgarri bat, Poesiaren eskaintza eta eskaera duena izenburutzat. Han esaten denez, literatur aldizkarl jakín batzuetan idatzi nahi dutenen erdiek alpatu aldizkariak erosiko balituzte, haien salmentek hiru aldiz egingo lukete gora. «Jendeak ez du denborarik, dirurik eta gogorik besteek argitaratutakoa irakurtzeko», esan digu Zaidek; «norberak idatzitakoa irakurriko dutenen denbora, dirua cta gogoa nahi du jendeak. Hori da arazoa». Eskaintza cta eskaerarena ezezik, ordea, liburugintzak baditu arazo gehiago ere. Mexikarrak, esaterako, lehen ohikoak ziren liburudendak faltan botatzen ditu: «Irakurketa eta liburuak maite dituen eta era guztietako liburuak dituen saltzailearen liburudenda, lehen hain ohikoa zena, la desagertu egin da. Oraingo zaletasuna dirua da eta, askotan, dendako arduradunek ez dakite zein liburu dituzten eta non dauden. Ordenadorearen laguntzarik gabe galduta daude. Lehengo liburudendak zoragarriak ziren baina, egun, galzorian daude. Jadanik ia inork ez du saltzallearekin eleberri bat komentatzen edota tertultarik izaten. Ez da posible». Liburu saltzaileak, Zaidentzat igarleen antzekoak dira. Erosten duten liuru bakoitza apustu berri bat da. Ezin dituzte argitaratzen dituzten guztiak eduki eta, askotan. salduezin dituzten ugari alferrik dituzte apaletan. Horrelakoetan, denborak aurrera egin ahala, liburuak saldoan jartzera jotzen da. Oso prezio merkean saltzera, alegia. Liburuak saldoan jartzearen aurka asko hitz egin eta idatzi bada ere, Zaiden ustez «saldoaren aurka egoteko arrazoi nagusia da min egiten duela. Saldoan jartzen den liburu bakoitzarekin argitaratzare, idazle eta saltzallearen porrota onartzen da. Horrek, noski, min egiten du, eta are gehiago ia guztiek elkar ezagutzen duten herrietan. Zuenean ere, agian, antzeko zerbait gertatuko da». Bizikletan nora irakurri Bixtia badirdi ere –bitxia da, bai–, irakurketari buruzko liburu serio baten izenburua da: Biziketan nola trakurri. Egilearen izena, nola ez, Gabriel Zaid, Irakurketa eta liburuak aztergai dituen beste zengait entsegu bitxi ere baditu gure artean ezezaguna den egile horrek: Poesia parktikan (1967). Poesia irakurri (1972) eta Liburuetatik boterera (1988) dira nabarmenenak. Literatura ere ugari idatzi du Zaidek. batik bat poesia. Haren poema liburuen artean hautatutako olerkiak. berriz, Reloj de sol (Eguzki-ordularia, 1995) lanean bilduta daude. Zaid, gure artean erabat ezezaguna bada ere. famatua da Mexikon. Hango Eskola Nazionala bere lan guztien bilduma prestatzen ari da, laster batean argitaratzeko. Zalantzarik gabe, guk bera baino gehiago ezagutzen gaitu Zaidek guk «Euskal Herria? Bai, bai. ezagutzen dut», esan eta berehala hasi zaigu hemengo liburugintzari buruzko galderak egiten: zenbat argitaratzen den, liburuen ohiko salmenta zenbatekoa den, argitaletxe kopurua eta antzekoak. Gainera, «euskaldunon artean ia ezezaguna den kontu bat» ere aipatu nahi izan digu: Literatura mexikarraren egile handienetako batek. XVII. mendeko Sor Juana lnes de la Cruz-ek, bere antzerki-lan batean euskarazko bertso batzuk ditu. Ez dakit errara den garai hartako zerbalt aurkitzea euskaraz, baina bertso horiek nahikoa ahaztuak daudela uste dut. Horregatik gogoratu nahi nizueke kontu hau». Bukatzeko, liburuak hainbeste malte dituen horrek «mesedez, EGUNKARIAREN ale bat» bidaltzeko eskatu digu, «ahal izanez gero euskarazko liburu pare batekin batera»
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Devastating factoid: a new book is published every 30 seconds
Rosemary Goring The Herald Glasgow 2004/10/09
When William Smellie wrote (and compiled and edited and published) the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, we were already beginning to lose control of knowledge. That was in 1768 when it was possible for anyone who had the money and time to read everything that was published in a year. They'd have needed a strong stomach for religious tracts and pretentious neo-classical verse, but the task was, technically, achievable. Today, a solitary individual can only read a nano-fraction of what comes out. Seeing some of the titles on offer, there is, at times, a certain comfort in that thought. According to Mexican author Gabriel Zaid, author of So Many Books, which is published here next month (Sort of Books, £8.99), a new book is published every 30 seconds. Although these encompass works in Urdu and Cantonese as well as English and include not only literary epics but treatises on particle physics, it's a statistic that could drive those of us who work with book-s into the sort of frenzy that afflicted Malthus when he heard the rate at which babies were appearing on the planet. I'm not sure who should be more seared by that figure: authors who realize the extent of the competition they face; literary editors who, with the help of a fork-lift truck, have just spring-cleaned the book cupboard of languishing review copies only to lie awake thinking of all the new progeny being born while they sleep; or the forestry and recycling industries, who need to commandeer Douglas Firs and wheelie bins even faster than authors can type. Will future generations of geologists name ours as the era of compressed pulp, when the earth’s crust grew thicker with decomposing books, when bore drills searching for oil first had to penetrate metres of unwanted textbooks and DIY manuals? Will future wars be fought not over oil, or water, but where to dump tonnes of mulched print and the increasingly frantic publishers’ hype that accompanied it? You might think there's an argument here for imposing some form of birth control on the publishing industry; even better, on writers themselves. As an irascible journalist with a finite capacity for excitement at the sight of a new delivery of books, I'd willingly help with the literary equivalent of Indira Gandhi's radios-for-vasectomies programme. As an ordinary reader, however, the idea horrifies me. Gabriel Zaid would be equally appalled at the thought. He is an unabashed apologist for the proliferation of books, giving house room to around 10,000 himself and feeling no qualms at adding to the world’s tally with his own titles. Yet in one respect Zaid fatally undermines his own enthusiasm. It’s his theory that the explosion in books is making us exponentially more ignorant. If a person reads a book a day, he says, he would be neglecting to read 4000 others published the same day. As someone who has spent a lifetime struggling valiantly - many would say triumphantly – against the acquisition of facts, I could not disagree more. Those of us who have not been buried in a nuclear bunker for the past 30 years cannot help being more informed than we either intended or want to be. Absorbing knowledge, even in microbial quantities, is now almost unavoidable. Good manners play a part in this passive imbibement. When scientists such as Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins take the time to explain in idiot-friendly terms, some of the greatest secrets of the universe - the space-time continuum, say, or our genetic inheritance - it would he unbearably rude to ignore them. When faced with a dinky little book explaining how clocks were invented, or the lifecycle of the common cold, or that fascinating period between March 3, 1492 and the afternoon of the day after, as experienced by a Mongolian horseman who left a diary in cunningly-coded compressed tea-leaves, how can we turn our backs and return to a Victorian novel we've already read three times and could recite in our sleep? The answer, in my case, is quite easily if it weren’t for the goad of guilt. A conscience is a terrible thing (although useful in evolutionary terms - I read that somewhere). The compromise, when surrounded by a sea of winningly-written information, is to read the reviews, maybe browse the book blurb, perhaps - at a push - buy it for someone else who might read bits out aloud and save you the effort. For all your indifference, though, some grains of fact will be homeopathically absorbed. What Zaid doesn’t address is those of us who swallow fiction the way others take vitamins. By his reasoning, even if you were reading 10 new novels a day you’d not be any less ignorant. Fortunately, the solace and wisdom found in fiction gives its readers the fortitude to hear such a thought.
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Demasiados livros
Pedro Mexia Diário de Noticias Lisboa 2005/09/23
A rentrée literária francesa 2005 produziu, de uma penada, 663 novos romances. É assim em todo o lado livros, livros e mais livros, numa avalanche que deixa o consumidor mareado e o comprador sem espaço nas estantes. Em Los demasiados libros (2003), que li em tradução inglesa (So Many Books), o mexicano Gabriel Zaid analisa esse fenómeno em chave sociológica e tom irónico e triste. Cito alguns números "Em 1550 foram publicados 500 títulos, 2300 em 1650, 11 000 em 1750, 50 000 em 1850. Em 1550 existiam aproximadamente 35 000 títulos; em 1650, 150 000; em 1750, 700 000; em 1850, 3,3 milhões; em 1960, 16 milhões; em 2000, 52 milhões." A grafomania contemporânea conduziu à publicação continuada de milhões de livros, um a cada 30 segundos. Desses muitos, mesmo as pessoas muitíssimo letradas leram uma ínfima parte. Nenhum de nós pode mais dizer que leu muitos livros. Não lemos certamente noventa e nove vírgula nove por cento dos livros existentes. Uma simples lista com todos os títulos publicados, diz Zaid, levava 15 anos a ler. Comenta o ensaísta "Os livros são publicados a um ritmo tão veloz que nos tornam exponencialmente mais ignorantes. Se uma pessoa lesse um livro por dia, estaria a deixar de lado outros quatro mil, publicados no mesmo dia. Por outras palavras, os livros que não leu amontoavam-se quatro mil vezes mais depressa que os livros que leu, e a sua ignorância crescia quatro mil vezes mais que o seu conhecimento." É uma angústia que nós leitores temos quando entramos numa excelente livraria. Uma angústia sem solução. Zaid sublinha que haver imensa gente que escreve não significa que haja imensa gente que leia. Ou melhor que leia cada um desses livros. Muitos dos milhões de títulos publicados não vendem quase nada, não são lidos por quase ninguém, aparecem para desaparecer de imediato, vogando num oceano imenso, esquecidos em infindáveis bibliotecas poeirentas. A biblioteca de Babel é uma biblioteca fantasma. A existência de muitos livros é um facto inequivocamente feliz. Mas a existência de demasiados livros tem um aspecto melancólico, como Gabriel Zaid aqui nos demonstra, com grande destreza e elegância.
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O branju (in pisanju)
Dusanka Zabukovec Sodobnost Ljubljana 2005/12
Tisti, ki si želijo, da bi jih imeli za kultivirane osebe, zaskrbljeno obiskujejo knjigarne, obupani ob neznanski količini tistega, česar še niso prebrali. Kupijo nekaj, za kar so jim povedali, da je dobro, brez uspeha poskusijo tisto prebrati, in ko se jim nabere pol ducata neprebranih knjig, se počutijo tako slabo, da se bojijo še kaj kupiti. V nasprotju z njimi pa resnično kultivirane osebe zmorejo imeti na tisoče neprebranih knjig, ne da bi zgubile svoj duševni mir ali željo po novih knjigah. "Vsaka zasebna knjižnica je bralni načrt," je nekoč zapisal španski filozof José Gaos. Njegova pripomba je tako točna, da bralec lahko razume njeno ironičnost le v primeru, če sprejme nekakšno splošno neizgovorjeno domnevo: Neprebrana knjiga je nedokončan projekt. Če na policah razkazuješ neprebrane knjige je tako, kot da bi pisal čeke, kadar v banki nimaš denarja: na ta način goljufaš svoje goste. Ernest Dichter v knjigi, lično naslovljeni Priročnik o potrošniški motivaciji, govori o slabi vesti, ki vpliva na člane knjižnega kluba, ki naročajo knjige po pošti. Nekateri se vpišejo z mislijo, da si kupujejo vstop v kulturno razkošje. Ko pa po pošti prihajajo knjige in se čas, ki bi ga potrebovali za branje, daljša, vsako novo pošiljko sprejmejo manj navdušeno, kot bi jih obtoževala, da jim je spodletelo. Obupani člani se nazadnje izpišejo iz kluba, jezni, ker knjige še naprej prihajajo, ne glede na to, da so jih že plačali. To pojasni iznajdbo knjig, ki niso namenjene branju. Z drugimi besedami, knjig, ki jih lahko razkazujemo na policah brez negativnih posledic ali slabe vesti: to so slovarji, enciklopedije, atlasi, knjige o umetnosti, kuharske knjige, priročniki, bibliografije, antologije, zbrana dela. Knjig, ki jih imajo darovalci najraje, ker so drage, kar je znamenje spoštovanja, in ker prejemnika ne obremenjujejo z nalogo, da bi moral odgovoriti na vprašanje: "Ste jo že prebrali? Kako vam je bila všeč?" Najbolj nekomercialno geslo na svetu bi pravzaprav lahko bilo: "Podarite knjigo! Z njo podarite obveznost!" Pisci z bralci niso tako usmiljeni. Celo če izvzamemo skrajne primere (pisce, ki pokličejo in preverijo, na kateri strani ste, kdaj boste knjigo prebrali do konca, predvsem pa, kdaj boste objavili dolgo, pametno in objektivno kritiko), čutijo dolžnost, da podarijo obveznost vsakokrat, ko kaj objavijo. Samo po sebi se razume, da se v takih primerih nalogi lahko elegantno izmaknemo, če nemudoma odgovorimo z vizitko, na kateri piše: "Ravnokar sem prejel vašo knjigo. Kako čudovito presenečenje! Čestitam vam in vnaprej čestitam tudi sebi zaradi užitka, ki ga bom imel pri branju." (Mehiški pisatelj Alfonso Reyes je uporabljal tiskane vizitke s praznim prostorom za datum, ime in naslov.) Sicer pa dolg sčasoma narašča in se množi, dokler ne napoči trenutek, ko se neizpolnjena naloga, da bi knjigo prebrali, napisali pismo (ki ne more biti več tako kratko) in si izmislili pohvalo, ki ne bi bila zlagana ali meglena, sprevrže v pravo moro. Težko je reči, kaj je hujše, to ali vizitka, odposlana s povratno pošto.
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Di Luar Lingkaran: Buku diterbitkan setiap 30 saat
Bersama Johan Jaaffar Berita Harian Kuala Lumpur 2005/07/03
SAYA ingin mencadangkan buku berjudul So Many Books oleh Gabriel Zaid dibaca semua orang kerana ia adalah buku mengenai buku. Buku kecil ini bukan saja mengenai industri buku tetapi mengenai sejarah buku, dunia pembacaan dan sikap kita terhadap buku. Terlalu banyak fakta dan statistik yang boleh mencelikkan mata kita mengenai dunia buku terkandung di dalam buku ini. Banyak orang mengisytiharkan buku sebagai penghasilan ilmu akan pupus. Filem, TV, revolusi komputer dan nilai masyarakat moden yang berubah akan menjadikan buku tidak relevan lagi. Apa perlunya ensiklopedia yang berjilid-jilid banyaknya kalau maklumat terbaru dan tercanggih boleh didapati dari Google.com? Maklumat kini terdapat di hujung jari. Cuba kita singkap sejarah buku. Apabila buku mula diterbitkan secara meluas dengan mesin cetak Gutenberg pada pertengahan Abad ke-15, buku dan sekali gus bahan ilmu bukan lagi menjadi milik eksklusif golongan raja, bangsawan dan bijak pandai. Sehingga kini lebih 50 juta judul buku telah diterbitkan oleh manusia. Menurut Gabriel Zaid, dengan buku sebanyak itu, jikalau seorang manusia boleh menghabiskan membaca empat judul buku seminggu, maka dia memerlukan masa 250,000 tahun untuk membaca semua judul yang telah diterbitkan. Kita memerlukan rak buku sepanjang 24,000 kilometer untuk menempatkan kesemua buku yang pernah diterbitkan setakat ini. Malah jikalau anda sekadar berminat untuk membaca judul dan penulisnya sahaja, anda memerlukan masa 15 tahun untuk berbuat demikian! Begitulah hebatnya dunia buku. Hari ini sebuah buku terbit setiap 30 saat di mana-mana di dunia. Bagi setiap sebuah buku yang anda baca dalam sehari, terdapat 4,000 judul lagi yang perlu anda baca. Malah anda tidak mungkin boleh membaca kesemua judul yang terbit di negara ini sahaja dalam setahun (kira-kira 4,500) apa lagi membaca lebih sejuta judul buku setahun yang diterbitkan di lebih 200 buah negara. Buku bagi banyak orang adalah "bahan orang kaya." Buku semakin mahal. Walaupun industri buku semakin canggih dan sesebuah judul diterbitkan dengan banyaknya, tetapi harga buku tidak menampakkan tanda-tanda akan turun harganya. Dengan banyaknya maklumkat di Internet dan mudahnya anda download e-buku, apa perlunya lagi buku dalam bentuk tradisional? Jawapannya, buku masih dibeli dan dibaca orang. Industri buku merupakan industri besar di dunia. Sebanyak 180,000 judul baru diterbitkan di China setiap tahun, 116,000 judul baru terbit di United Kingdom (UK), 60,000 lagi di Amerika Syarikat (AS) dan 45,000 di India. Kita juga sedar bagi mana-mana penerbit besar, dari 100 judul yang diterbitkan, mereka mengharapkan hanya peratusan yang kecil yang dianggap "buku laris" bagi menampung judul-judul yang lambat terjual. Siri "Harry Potter" dikatakan telah menyebabkan pertumbuhan lebih 25 peratus industri buku kanak-kanak di AS dan di UK. Siri buku JK Rowling yang telah terjual lebih 200 juta naskhah dalam 45 bahasa itu telah "menyelamatkan" industri buku kanak-kanak. Kita harus ingat tidak semua buku laku. Dan banyak buku diterbitkan untuk kemudiannya menjadi bahan kitar semula atau disimpan dalam stor. Sebenarnya menyimpan buku yang tidak laku lebih tinggi kosnya dari menerbitkannya. Banyak penerbit mengeluh kerana bilangan stok yang tinggi. Menurut Guiness Book of World Records buku yang paling lembab "bergerak" dalam sejarah manusia ialah terjemahan dari bahasa Koptik ke Latin yang diterbitkan oleh Oxford University Press yang secara purata terjual 2.6 naskhah setahun dari tahun 1716 hingga 1907. Buku juga nampaknya sukar "dikendalikan." British Library mendapat lima naskhah setiap judul buku yang diterbitkan di UK. Perpustakaan itu membelanjakan secara purata RM350 untuk menyimpan, mengkatalog, memperaga dan membaikpulih setiap naskhah buku yang diterima, dan kos penyelenggaraan setiap tahun bagi satu naskhah ialah RM7. Ini tentulah lebih mahal dari harga pasaran sebuah buku. Tidak hairanlah ada pandangan yang mengatakan buku sudah menjadi beban pada kemanusiaan. Malah banyak orang menganggap masa depan buku akan pupus apabila manusia semakin maju dan hiburan popular menguasai mereka. Tidak benar tulis Gabriel Zaid. Terdapat kira-kira 500 judul buku dicetak pada tahun 1550. Jumlah itu menjadi 2,300 pada tahun 1650. Jikalau dilihat dari jumlah bibliografi yang terkumpul (semua buku yang tersenarai waktu itu) pada tahun 1550 terdapat kira-kira 35,000 judul tetapi 100 tahun kemudian (1650) jumlahnya menjadi 150,000. Pada tahun 1750, jumlahnya meningkat pada 700,000 judul. Jumlah ini menjadi 3.3 juta judul pada tahun 1850 dan 16 juta pada tahun 1950. Dipendekkan cerita, pada abad pertama mesin cetak tercipta (1450-1550), sebanyak 35,000 judul telah diterbitkan tetapi di antara 1950 hingga 2000 jumlah itu meningkat 1,000 kali menjadi 36 juta judul. Ramalan yang mengatakan bahawa TV akan membunuh buku juga ternyata tidak benar. Gabriel Zaid menunjukkan bahawa pada tahun 1450 telah terbit 100 judul buku setahun. Mengambilkira bahawa penduduk dunia ketika itu kira-kira 500 juta orang, maka secara purata terdapat 0.2 judul bagi setiap sejuta manusia. Apabila TV muncul sebagai hiburan massa pada tahun 1950-an, 250,000 judul buku telah terbit. Mengambilkira terdapat 2.5 bilion penghuni Planet Bumi, maka secara purata terdapat 100 judul bagi setiap manusia pada dekad itu. Pada tahun 2000, sejuta judul buku telah terbit dan dengan penghuni dunia menjadi 6 bilion orang, maka secara purata terdapat 167 judul buku bagi setiap sejuta orang. Menurut Gabriel Zaid, pada 1947 hanya ada tujuh saluran TV komersil di AS. Jumlah ini menjadi 50 saluran pada tahun 1949 dan 517 pada tahun 1960. Dari tahun 1947 hingga 1960, peratus isi rumah di AS yang memiliki TV melompat dari 0 hingga 88 peratus. Tetapi pada waktu yang sama, judul buku yang diterbitkan di AS meningkat dari 7,000 judul menjadi 15,000. Dari 1960 hingga 1968, judul buku yang terbit meningkat sekali ganda sedangkan pemilikan set TV bagi isi rumah di AS sudah mencapai maksimum (98 peratus). Secara global, sejak TV dicipta, penduduk dunia bertambah 1.8 peratus setiap tahun tetapi penerbitan buku meningkat 2.8 peratus. Ini bermakna peratusan pertumbuhan buku terbit lebih tinggi dari peratus pertumbuhan manusia di dunia. Apakah masa depan buku dalam bentuk tradisionalnya semakin malap? Hari ini, terutamanya dalam bahasa Inggeris, banyak pengarang yang setiap judul karya mereka tercetak lebih sejuta naskhah. Malah di negara ini, novel popular boleh mencecah angka 100,000 naskhah sedangkan karya "serius" seorang sasterawan besar yang diterbitkan oleh Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) tidak boleh dihabiskan stok cetakan 2,000 naskhah dalam masa tiga tahun. Apakah Internet akan membunuh industri buku? Sebenarnya tidak. Malah jualan langsung melalui Internet turut membantu industri buku. Pasaran buku melalui Amazon.com misalnya menunjukkan peningkatan dramatik di AS. Pada pertengahan tahun 2002, sebanyak 557 juta naskhah buku dewasa telah dibeli melalui laman ini. Malah terdapat penurunan jumlah buku yang dibeli melalui rangkaian kedai buku (dari 22.2 kepada 21.4 peratus) di negara itu. Malah masa depan jualan buku nampaknya akan banyak bergantung pada jualan langsung melalui Internet. Pada waktu yang sama e-buku akan menjadi fenomena yang tidak boleh dielakkan. Buku masih ada harapan sebenarnya. Buku masih belum pupus. Cuma yang patut diingat ialah lebih banyak buku terbit dari buku yang mampu dibaca oleh manusia. Ini sudah cukup untuk mengingatkan kita peri pentingnya kita kembali membaca. Industri buku perlu disokong kerana industri itu memerlukan penaung yakni pembeli dan pembacanya. Tanpa naungan, bahan ilmu yang terhasil tidak akan ada maknanya kepada kemanusiaan.
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Die Hornby-Kolumne
Nick Hornby Monopol Magazin Köln 2004/10/30
Gelesene Bücher: How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff Liars and Saints - Maile Meloy Through a Glass Darkly: The Life of Patrick Hamilton - Nigel Jones Vater und Sohn - Edmund Gosse The Siege of Pleasure - Patrick Hamilton So viele Bücher. Erstaunliches, Kurioses und Nachdenkliches rund ums Lesen - Gabriel Zaid Gekaufte Bücher: Briefe - Anton Čechov The Collected Letters of Dylan Thomas The Letters of Kingsley Amis Soldaten von Salamis - Javier Cercas Timoleon kehrt zurück- Dan Rhodes The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki Liars and Saints - Maile Meloy Stasiland - Anna Funder Seven Types of Ambiguity - Elliot Perlman [...] In So viele Bücher ringt Gabriel Zaid mit einer Frage, die sich in dieser Kolumne auch regelmäßig stellt, nämlich: Was soll der Scheiß? Warum die Biester lesen, und warum die Biester schreiben? Ich bin nicht sicher, ob er bei dieser Frage weiter kommt als ich, aber es gibt ein paar tolle Statistiken: Zaid hat zum Beispiel überschlagen, dass wir allein fünfzehn Jahre brauchen würden, um nur die Liste aller je veröffentlichten Bücher zu lesen. („Autor und Titel" – er ist da sehr präzise. Man kann vermutlich weitere sieben oder acht Jahre dranhängen, wenn man auch noch die Namen der Verlage wissen will.) Ich glaube, er will uns daran verzweifeln lassen, aber ich fühlte mich eher bestärkt: Jetzt weiß ich nicht nur, dass es möglich ist – ich wäre irgendwann Anfang sechzig mit der Liste durch –, ich hätte auch gute Lust, es zu machen. Zu wissen, wer was geschrieben hat, ist schließlich schon die halbe Miete, wenn man als gebildet gelten will: Jemand erwähnt Patrick Hamilton, und Sie nicken weise und sagen Hangover Square, das genügt normalerweise. Wenn ich diese Liste läse, würde vielleicht irgendwas in meinem Gedächtnis hängen bleiben, denn die Bücher selbst tun es weiß Gott nicht. Zaid hat seine Sternstunde jedenfalls im zweiten Absatz, wenn er feststellt, dass die „wahrhaft Kultivierten die Gabe haben, Tausende von ungelesenen Büchern zu besitzen, ohne ihre Gelassenheit oder den Wunsch nach noch mehr Büchern zu verlieren." Das bin ich! So wie Sie wahrscheinlich auch! Das sind wir! “Tausende von ungelesenen Büchern”! “Wahrhaft kultiviert”! Sehen Sie sich nur die Liste für diesen Monat an: Čechovs Briefe, die Briefe von Martin Amis und Dylan Thomas ... Wie hoch ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, das alles zu lesen? Mit Čechov habe ich angefangen, aber Amis und Dylan Thomas bezogen sofort ihren endgültigen Wohnsitz im Regal, ohne den Umweg über einen Stoß noch zu lesender Sachen. Dylan Thomas erspähte ich als Remittende, von fünfzig auf fünfzehn Pfund runtergesetzt, nachdem ich im New Yorker die begeisterte Besprechung einer neuen Dylan-Biographie gelesen hatte; die Amis-Briefe kosteten einen Fünfer. Aber als ich gerade ein Plätzchen für sie in der Abteilung "Kunst und Literatur, non-fiction" gefunden hatte (Ich persönlich finde, für den Hausgebrauch taugt das Trivial-Pursuit-System besser als Dewey), hatte ich plötzlich eine kleine Offenbarung: All die Bücher, die wir besitzen, gelesen oder ungelesen, sind der bestmögliche Ausdruck unseres ureigensten Selbst, den wir zur Verfügung haben. Klar, meine Musik, auch das bin ich, aber da ich eigentlich nur Rock`n´Roll und dessen Mutationen mag, haben große Stücke von mir – wie mein bislang kaum abgefragter Hang zur Oper – keine Entsprechung in meiner CD-Sammlung. Und für die vielen Kunstwerke, die ich gerne besäße, habe ich weder genügend Geld noch Platz an der Wand, und mein Haus ist ein einziges Chaos, verwüstet durch Kinder ... Aber mit jedem Jahr, das verstreicht, und mit jeder Neuanschaffung aus einer Laune heraus, drücken unsere Bibliotheken mehr und besser aus, wer wir sind, ob wir die Bücher lesen oder nicht. Zugegeben, vielleicht ist das die etwas mehr als dreißig Pfund nicht wert, die ich für diese Sammlungen mit Briefen verballert habe, aber irgendwas muss es doch wert sein, oder? Aus dem Englischen von Clara Drechsler und Harald Hellmann
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How big is your bookshop?
Beth Yahp Off The Edge Kuala Lumpur 2005/06/27
Gabriel Zaid’s So Many Books is such a lovely object in itself that this unrepentant reader doesn’t mind it adding to the weight of dead trees multiplying exponentially across our planet. Its wealth of elegant observations and inspiring arguments about books as both cultural texts and commercial products banishes any second thoughts. "The human race publishes a book every thirty seconds," Zaid says, and his is the one for you, if you too have felt that uncomfortable twinge about the pace of our so-called information-hungry society’s prodigious output, our accumulated and ever-expanding "knowledge base". For those who have broken into a cold sweat at the thought of ever keeping up with all that knowledge not only cluttering your bookshelves (read or unread), but jostling for attention in the world’s libraries, book warehouses, bookshops, and publishers’ slush piles waiting to be published, this book says: Don’t worry (though not quite "be happy"). Count the blessings, Zaid advises. Or rather, learn to see them – in spite of the fact that most people nowadays can’t find the time or inclination to read books, let alone read; that "confronted with the choice between having time and having things, we’ve chosen to have things". And the scarier fact that more people want to be read than to read. Malaysians will recognise these phenomena: Our most recent survey on reading habits, in 1996, famously created a furore and scramble for government-sponsored reading programmes by proclaiming that despite adult literacy calculated at 93% of the population, on average Malaysians read two books a year – a marked improvement on our two pages a year in 1982. Once proposing a "chastity glove" as the solution for authors unable to contain themselves, Mexican poet and essayist Zaid goes on to surmise that even "if a person read a book a day, he would be neglecting four thousand others, published the same day". Therefore, in effect, "his ignorance would grow four thousand times faster than his knowledge". Faced with such overwhelming odds, one might be tempted to give up reading altogether – and so be freed from the "embarrassment" of buying and owning books which then come only to symbolise our "ignorance", and our aspiration towards being (or being seen as) "cultured individuals". But Zaid, who admits to living with an artist, her paintings, three cats and 10,000 books, has cast a witty and insightful eye on the situation facing writers, readers, publishers, booksellers and books themselves from Seneca and the Bible through the Gutenberg print revolution to the present "domination" of book chains, multinational publishing conglomerates and Amazon.com. And he’s come up thumbing his nose at the doomsayers and complainers punching their way out from whichever corner – for example, the purists who mourn the demise of the book due to the sweeping ravages of television or the Internet; the bottom-liners who consign a book to failure for selling only a few thousand copies compared to what’s become the benchmark for "success", the international bestseller; as well as all those who lament the commercialisation of "culture" and the "destruction of diversity" by "progress" in the form of market concentration and the transformation of "cultural texts" into "commodities". In So Many Books, Zaid uses statistics and lucid reasoning, coupled with some lovely metaphors, to turn "uncomfortable twinges" onto their heads, allowing us a different, often more optimistic view. That is, that the book is alive and well. Neither CD-ROMs, e-books nor the Internet have managed to kill it off as yet, as neither the invention of the printing press nor television did in the past. In fact, the innovations that seemed to threaten it have actually enriched the book (whose first appearance Socrates denigrated as being "inferior to conversation"). Another blessing is that books are cheap, although it may not seem so to forex-challenged end-users in Asia or Africa, whose English-language market, at least, is flooded with foreign titles. Unlike films or theatrical productions, books don’t need to be bestsellers to be financially viable. They don’t need to chase or carry advertisements. Unlike original artworks, we don’t need to fork out stupendous sums to take home a masterpiece. The majority of books sold in "big" markets such as the US aren’t bestsellers but publications in print-runs of several thousands, or even several hundreds (now that print-on-demand technology exists). That the initial capital outlay to enter the book business is so small encourages the proliferation of publishing ventures producing diverse or specialist titles probably not of great interest to millions of people. These titles, however, provide the staple income for many publishers, who are the first to admit they have no "recipe" for what makes a bestseller. At the same time, these "failures" aren’t stifled before birth. They are allowed to exist, vibrantly so, circulating in and contributing to the universal "conversation" Zaid, like Socrates, says is what culture is all about. Yet another blessing is that "in many areas, progress destroys diversity. Not so with books". While certain forms of market concentration (conglomerates, bestsellers) have not promoted diversity, others such as e-commerce giants like Amazon.com have – by carrying an enormous range of stock, almost immediately available, which no real-world bookshop could ever afford to. As well, Amazon has actively promoted a vigorous secondhand marketplace comprised of other linked booksellers, resulting in a burgeoning of numerous independent, internationally linked sites on which to chase up whatever out-of-print, obscure title you once read in 1976, and have longed to re-read ever since. Good publishers and booksellers, Zaid says, are those who are able to see books from both perspectives: "as texts (around which conversations must be organised and attractive constellations created) and as commercial objects. Every good reader (and author) depends on a good publisher and bookseller, not those blindsided by financial bottom lines or, conversely, by the myopia of "cultural purity". Zaid is brilliant on the ambivalent relationship between culture and commerce, reminding us that Hermes, the god of commerce, was also the inventor of the lyre, and that "the word ‘commerce’ had, and still has, non-economic meanings", including "intercourse or converse with God, with spirits, passions, thoughts, etc." (Now, before we all jump onto our "moral policing" bandwagon, our better-safe-than-sorry sirens screeching to scratch out any possible "bad, inflammatory or insulting" words, let’s all remember that words too are capable of diversity – and "intercourse" has several meanings.) Rather than expostulations that "culture is not a commodity", Zaid muses, perhaps one should really be looking at commodification in general, asking: "What then are oranges, orchids, birds, sunsets?" Thoughtful and provocative, whether you agree with him or not, Zaid’s book couldn’t be better timed for our Malaysian bookselling and reading market, now poised as it is between the recent opening of the (unofficial) Big Mama of book outlets, Berjaya Times Square’s new Borders, and the "return" to native soil of Malaysian expatriate author Tash Aw, the latest hottest new kid off the international publishing market’s bestseller block. Malaysia’s first Borders opened with the usual hype and perhaps more than the usual fanfare and press coverage for a bookshop opening. Its publicity gushed about "plans to take the book industry to greater heights and transform books into a lifestyle product" (Borders press release), while Datin Paduka Seri Endon Mahmood’s opening speech stressed that "Malaysians should have greater access to books in order to bridge the ‘intellectual divide’". She went on to say that "Malaysians should be known as intelligent, capable and forward-thinking. This is only possible through a thirst for information". First things first. The RM20 million Borders is actually only the trumpeted "world’s biggest" in terms of floor space, not content, carrying the same number of books as MPH 1-Utama and fewer than Kinokuniya – unless we conveniently discount 50,000 books in Japanese. These figures, I admit, are taken from a very sweet blog posting by a Borders employee in response to criticisms of the Michigan-owned book chain’s first Malaysian franchise, the opening of which has inspired hot and strong debate for and against on various blogs. Now, the hiring of such staff is good marketing strategy – for moongypsy’s disarming comments, including: "Our staffs may not know everything, but a staff who may not know the diff between sci fi and fantasy may surprise you on his knowledge of nietzsche or sylvia plath", mean that this reader, still unrepentant, will most probably make another trip across the city to get there, as big and empty as KL’s latest "superstore" seemed to me, and as inconveniently located. Secondly, Aw’s book (The Harmony Silk Factory) is well on its way to being an international bestseller, which isn’t surprising, propelled as it is by a good, well-told story and, more importantly, by its hefty £500,000 (RM3.5 million) author’s advance, the result of a much-publicised online auction. As the saying goes, if you owe the bank RM3,000 it’s your problem, but if you owe the bank RM3 million, it becomes the bank’s problem. Such advances are a heavy investment, one that Aw’s publisher is no doubt eager to recoup – thereby directing a major part of its overall production and marketing budget towards the promotion of his title and ensuring a high level of market recognition, with hopefully, the resulting sales. Money makes hype, as we know, and hype makes money – and this is the way of the international bestseller which, Zaid says, has resulted in the creation of market-driven "financial stars" in the constellation of books. Even before its Malaysian launch, Aw’s book has already inspired various interested and interesting blog and e-group postings, ranging from national pride in his achievement as a Malaysian who has "made it" internationally – Malaysia Boleh! – "the likes [of which] at least ‘maybe’ raises the profiles of writers in Malaysia". Whether Aw is actually "Malaysian", having been born in Taiwan, spent his childhood in Kuala Lumpur, and lived in the UK since he was 11 apparently doesn’t trouble us, so eager are Malaysian readers and writers for good books and role models of successful writers. "When does Malaysian literature ever get something like this?" enthuses one blogger, who goes on to say: "Tash Aw has done us proud in the sense that in interviews and portfolio descriptions, he never ever speaks about Taiwan; only Malaysia."One can understand publishers or authors gunning for the "Big One", given that most of a publisher’s profits are made on "just a few titles, and sometimes just one", while large advances free (a few) authors to write more (bestsellers). However, as readers and book-buyers we tend to get carried away by the hype, the "noise and emptiness of bestsellers" (many of which, unfortunately, are like Alexandra Ripley’s sequel to Gone With the Wind which "sold 2.2 million copies in the last hundred days of 1991, thereby becoming ‘the fastest-selling novel in history, as well as, in retrospect, one of the most quickly forgotten’"). Borders is to be lauded for its entrepreneural courage in tackling a market where even an optimistic 300% increase on the 1996 survey would project Malaysians at reading only an average six books a year. As to the question of a market-driven, profit-determined business conglomerate providing greater access to readers, in order to "bridge the intellectual divide", one supposes that to a certain extent Borders by its larger stock alone can be relied upon to do so – as can MPH, Kinokuniya, Popular and Times – but only for those who can pay for it. This is further implied by Borders’ stated goal of promoting books as "lifestyle products", which are by definition exclusive and expensive. Most other Malaysian readers and writers, though, will continue to have to rely upon poorly stocked, poorly accessed, or non-existent local libraries (an efficient, user-friendly network of which is surely the lifeblood of any national effort that is serious about "inculcating good reading habits" among its under-reading population). Or, they will continue to take the "conversation" elsewhere, by surfing and blogging, as evidenced by the hearteningly lively postings any random google of "Malaysia", "reading" or "writing" will show up. Or, our "thirst for information" will lead us back to the big bookstores anyway, to beg an hour’s browsing from a plastic-wrapped book. Or, as revealed by a more recent Straits Times study of reading habits in the Southeast Asian region, "Malaysians [who] now seem increasingly focused about making money" will search out tomes such as Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Retire Young, Retire Rich and The Millionaire Mind (top of the MPH bestseller list for May 2002) – and hopefully make enough money to buy and read more books, of their own initiative. As a "lifestyle product" in itself, Zaid’s book will look good on your real-wood bookshelf, increasing you status as "cultured individual". It is truly portable, unlike blogs or e-groups, that is, completely independent of any external devices or power source for access (except, arguably, a nice hot teh tarik). Best of all, it is tactile. It wears its age and experience on its skin, like us humans – becoming creased at a favourite page, bearing a stain – a tear? Spilt coffee from the heat of an intense encounter? – which immediately transports one back to the moment that created it. And, as all reading does, it "liberates the reader and transports him from his book to a reading of himself and all of life". But in the end, as well as at the beginning, "culture is conversation," remains Zaid’s conviction in So Many Books, and "what is important about culture is how alive it is, not how many tons of dead prose it can claim". Books can be treasure or they can be trash, he says, not worth the price of their recyclable cellulose content. You may have heard this truism before, but Zaid goes on to argue that this happens regardless of a book’s cultural or intellectual content—the fate of countless unread "orphaned" books that have fallen "outside the constellation in which [they] make sense". Since "there are more books to contemplate than stars in a night sky", it is no mean task for "a reader to find his personal constellation, those books that will put his life in communication with the universe". Yet despite the numerous pitfalls and failures of selection, marketing, timing, cataloguing etc that could, and do, prevent a book from reaching its intended reader, "time and again the miracle occurs: a book finds its reader, a reader finds his book". And the conversation continues.
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Bien trop de livres?
Pierre Flatt Choix des Livres Lausanne 2005/12
« L’humanité écrit plus qu’elle n’est capable de lire ». « La lecture de livres croît de façon arithmétique. L’écriture de livres croît de façon exponentielle ». Aujourd’hui, tout le monde a quelque chose à écrire mais qui prend le temps de lire cette production ? Dans un essai plutôt surprenant par son ton optimiste, le poète mexicain Gabriel Zaid aborde successivement la fabrication du livre, son commerce, sa diffusion, la lecture, le lecteur. La fin du livre, tant de fois annoncé, n’est pas pour demain. On n’a jamais autant publié et le coût modeste de la fabrication d’un livre rend possible la publication de textes qui n’intéresseront qu’un millier de lecteurs. Cela n’est évidemment pas possible pour un film par exemple. Ce foisonnement, un million de titres par an, donne l’occasion à l’auteur de faire l’éloge des médiateurs (éditeurs, distributeurs, libraires, bibliothécaires, enseignants, etc.). Car « la culture est conversation et le rôle des médiateurs est d’organiser la conversation, d’agir en sorte que la vie du lecteur ait plus de sens, par le simple fait de trouver le livre qu’il avait besoin de lire. » Une lecture indispensable pour tous les amoureux de la lecture.
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A whole world of crap
David Blow Publishing News London 2004/12/03
[…] My idea of a quirky Christmas bestseller worth promoting is So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid, a compact compendium of book trade related wisdom, a copy of which has seldom strayed far from my desk since it was published in the US in 2003, by Paul Dry Books. It is now available in this country as an elegant hardback from Sort of Books, at a highly competitive £8.99. Most books or the crap variety hover around the tenner mark, and would be expensive at half the price. So Many Books would still be cheap at double the price, and there is even a case to make for giving it away: if there is a better advertisement for reading, or a better demolition of the pessimist’s account of the future of books, I have yet to read it.
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Book of the Month
Editor Publishing News London 2004/08/13
In a world of expensive media options where vast sums of money rule our choice of film or TV programme, the book by its very affordability allows for far greater proliferation of ideas and entertainment. We should celebrate this and enjoy Zaid’s book, described as "A book for everyone with a passion for books". It contains so much wisdom, so much to argue about and so much to enjoy, that it rally ought to be given out to everyone on World Book Day.
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The best non-fiction books for Christmas
Caroline Sanderson The Bookseller London 2004/07/09
[…] Gabriel Zaid, the author of So Many Books (a tittle gem coming from Sort of Books in October), believes that our lack of time to read the thousands of titles now published every year explains "The invention of books that aren’t meant to be read. Books, in other words, that can be displayed without consequences or guilt: dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, art books, cookbooks, reference books, bibliographies, anthologies, complete works. Books that tasteful gift-givers prefer – because they’re expensive, which is a sign of esteem, and because they don’t threaten the recipient with the task of responding to the question: "Have you read it yet?". My trawl through the titles for this feature reveals a majority which fall into the categories above. In particular (and I mean this quite literally) I am falling over miscellanies, anthologies and books of language reference this year. It’s full speed ahead for all of those bandwagons. But, contrary to what Zaid says, books are not expensive. And they are the ultimate gift item, because there really is something for everyone, including plenty of books that are actually meant to be read. It’s a great compliment to receive a well-chosen book as gift, because it shows a deal of thought on the part of the giver. Well, usually.[…]
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Young sends Kent the long way round
Horace Bent The Bookseller London 2004/10/22
[…] One of the gems for this Christmas is Gabriel Zaid's So Many Books (Sort of Books), a subtle and elegant tract on reading, publishing and bookselling. Zaid, a Mexican literary critic, posits that with the growth in printed work, writers could soon outnumber readers. "Books are published at such a rapid rate as they make us exponentially more ignorant." Some books more than others, one suspects. But his conclusion is uplifting for those of us struggling with shelves of proof copies: "Maybe the measure of our reading should be not the number of books we've read, but the state in which they leave us. What matters is how we feel, how we see, what we do after reading; whether the street and the clouds and the existence of others mean anything to us; whether reading makes us, physically, more alive." Zaid's passion for the written word has led him to refuse all interview requests, or even sanction use of an author photo. He wrote to Mark Ellingham and Natania Jansz of Sort Of Books to explain the decision: "I believe in book promotion, but author promotion is another matter. There seems to be more interest in seeing authors than in reading them. Everything in literary life seems to be organised to avoid reading. Even authors may prefer the certainty of being shown publicly than the uncertainty of being read privately. I prefer readers." Don't expect to see him on the "Richard & Judy" sofa soon. […]
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Bookseller’s choice The panel selects the best new titles for November
Stephen Torsi The Bookseller London 2004/08/20
[…] So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid is a gem that will hopefully inspire anyone with an interest in books. Nicely packaged, it is crammed with books trivia and also exposes our modern obsession with publishing them. Did you know that it would take 250,000 years to read all the books that have ever been published? […]
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So Many Books
Steven Poole The Guardian London 2004/10/30
Clearly the title is cunningly designed to endear itself to any book reviewer, who will repeat it with a lugubrious sigh; and in part this is indeed a gleefully provocative complaint that there are simply too many books in the world today. A book is born every 30 seconds; so, Zaid argues playfully, the process of reading actually makes us "exponentially more ignorant", since for every book we could possibly read there are tens of thousands that we never will. But we're not going to read that much anyway, since in the postmodern age everyone is more interested in writing than in reading. (A perfect, concise explanation of the memoir tsunami.) On the other hand, Zaid strenuously argues that the book "industry" should not be thought of as oppositional to "culture" and that new technologies, far from making the book obsolete, are going to perfect it: in particular, print-on-demand technology can ensure that a book is worth publishing even for a tiny audience. Into this minuscule volume are crammed so many more thought-experiments, serene witticisms and ideas that almost all other books look incontinently windy by comparison. Zaid has obeyed strictly his own rules, and not demanded more of his readers’ time than necessary. For that we can easily forgive his having written a book in the first place.
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Book of the week
John Koski The Mail on Sunday London 2004/10/31
It speaks volumes. So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid. With a new book born every 30 seconds, do we really need another? Well, if it's as witty and as zestily entertaining as this, then yes, we absolutely do. Full of thought-provoking facts and quotes, this handbag-sized hardback is perfect for time-pressed bookworms everywhere. In satisfying bite-sized chapters, the author considers everything from books bought simply to have rather than to read, to the fact that even if you were to read one book every day, that would still leave unread around 3,000 other titles published that same day. Make sure that this isn't one of them.
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So many books...
Robert McCrum The Observer London 2004/10/10
If I had a fiver for everyone who said 'There are too many books published today' I would not be writing this column. So many new titles are emerging across the English-speaking world that even the distinguished but reclusive new Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek has a only modest English readership. It's an apt commentary on our culture that gloomy Jelinek is probably best known for the film of her novel The Piano Teacher. Amid this often baffling corncopia, there's now a flourishing sub-genre: the book about books, for example Ann Fadiman's exquisite Ex Libris. As the world's publishers congregate in Frankfurt to trade gossip and authors, two books - one fictional, the other analytical - take their inspiration from the new century's exuberant explosion of the printed word. Ironically, the first of these is published by Jelinek's feisty independent publisher Serpent's Tail. Scriptgenerator, from France, imagines the discovery of some stunning new software that can industrialise the manufacture of narrative in all its forms, from books to DVDs. Scriptgenerator's author Philippe Vasset has worked as a corporate detective in the US. His short dystopian satire is plainly inspired by the darker excesses of American media capitalism Vasset's 'novel' follows a basic formula - a narrator, a sought-after object and what he calls 'relevant events'. Sandwiched betweeen the discovery and gradual elucidation of the revolutionary Scriptgenerator (the death knell of creative originality) is a series of numbered non-fiction notes on the nature of mass culture and the relationship of the literary artist and his raw material to the marketplace. Scriptgenerator is fun: typically French in its self-conceit as highbrow entertainment. By contrast, So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid (Sort Of Books) is not a novel but a series of provocative chapters - mini essays - about our consumption of reading matter. 'The reading of books,' writes Zaid, 'is growing arithmetically; the writing of books is growing expontentially. If our passion for writing goes unchecked, in the near future there will be more people writing books than reading them.' Zaid, a Mexican intellectual, calculates that if you were to read a book a day you would still be failing to read about 4,000 others published the same day. Part philosophy, part polemic, Zaid addresses the contemporary reader's dilemma: how can we cope with the tide of print that threatens to engulf us? How do we navigate our way through that frothing torrent of words to a safe harbour of wisdom and reflection? I plan to return to this subtle little volume at a later date. For the moment, as the book trade migrates to Frankfurt-am-Main it is worth remembering that in 1450, the dawning of the age of Gutenberg, there were about 100 new titles (in all languages) published per annum. In 1950, on the advent of television, that figure was closer to 250,000. Today, that annual figure surpasses a staggering one million. That's 167 new titles per one million inhabitants of the planet, or a new book published every 30 seconds. In 1450, it was possible for the educated person to have a familiarity with all the books ever printed that mattered. Today, only a library catalogue can encompass the potential scope of printed knowledge and sentiment. To which the only answer is Socrates: that we know nothing. I bet Elfriede Jelinek agrees with that.
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Let’s throw the book at publishing
Luke Johnson The Sunday Telegraph London 2005/01/19
They say there are three ways of achieving immortality: rear a child, plant a tree, or write a book. Quite a few of us seem to be having a go at the third category - over 1m titles a year are published around the world, according to the appropriately named book So Many Books by Mexican Gabriel Zaid. This never-end ing volcano of reading master means book publishing is a wonderful service to the literary public, but a poorly paid profession and generally a terrible business. Books are curious things. We publish over 125,000 new titles a year in Britain - more than any other nation of a comparable size - yet books are much less perishable than most other forms of media, be they newspapers, magazines, radio, television, even films. Book publishing can work as a craft trade, such that specialist titles appealing to only 2,000 readers can be economically viable. By contrast, substantial capital investment means computer games, TV shows, theatre productions, music albums and so forth have to appeal to much bigger audiences to get financed. Book publishing really lies somewhere between art and commerce - in some aspects it is a bare rational industry. While the big four publishers have half the British market, the rest is fragmented into hundreds of small players. Few who have much to do with books make a good living out of it - and this despite the fact that books published in English represent 27 per cent of the world's share of titles! Most authors receive pitiful advances which are rarely earned out. Salaries among staff in publishing houses are notoriously low. And owners of imprints must mostly do it for the love, since it is an endemically unprofitable industry. I owned a book publisher for a period and found it a painful experience. I learned that the cashflow characteristics are most unattractive. You pay authors upfront for manuscripts that -might not arrive for years; you then ship finished volumes to booksellers who only accept them on a sale or return basis, and demand at least 55 per cent trade discount, and pay 120 days later. Most titles on a publishers list lose money and sell at most a few thousand copies - editors are perpetually searching feverishly for the elusive bestseller to subsidise all the flops. It is a winner-takes-all business. Occasionally there are, windfalls from foreign or film rights, and backlists provide a degree of long-term income. But even giant trade publishers only make 5 per cent operating margins despite spin-off benefits and global scale at multi-media conglomerates like Bertelsmann, News Corporation, Pearson and Time Warner. Of course, that is one of the reasons book publishing is so tough: it is ferociously competitive because so many participants do it for uneconomic reasons. They understand that books are central to civilization. We do at least buy many more books than we used to -but actually read a lower proportion of them. Sadly for the book trade, persistent price deflation means the production efficiencies of technology advances in pre-press, printing, binding and logistics have all been given away to the reading public. Moreover in Britain, enormous concentration of power among chain retailers like WH Smith, Waterstones, Borders and Ottaker’s means there are now only a handful of powerful customers who demand ever better terms from suppliers. Even the emergence of online sellers like Amazon hasn't really helped: they insist on a wholesaler's discount and undermine the sale of full-price copies. And 20 per cent of Amazons sales are now used books, a huge stimulus to the second-hand trade which doesn't help new book publishers. The internet poses perhaps the greatest threat to the book, and yet the roughly 5 per cent annual growth in the value of the British book market in recent years suggests it is faring better than the music business. Books have advantages: they are portable, collectable, cheap and can be skimmed. Even sales of reference books have risen in the last few years, despite the cornucopia of free information available on the web. For the book trade, progress has meant diversity and that is probably a strength. New titles, formats and imprints help keep the business vigorous - as does originality. Ultimately, British book publishing will only be successful if it is original and creative: be it Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, books can generate ideas and stories that fuel all other forms of entertainment. Derivative content will never grow the industry - fresh talent and imagination are needed to keep it alive. Luke Johnson is chairman of Channel 4 and Signature Restaurants
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How do you pick a good book when 4,000 titles are published each day?
James Francken The Telegraph London 2005/08/01
[…]Given the seemingly limitless number of books that are available, tracking down the title we want often seems like a matter of guesswork, and of luck. In So Many Books, his wonderful study of the sprawling modern-day book market, Gabriel Zaid has a phrase to describe the moment when a good book finds a receptive reader: he calls it "a fortunate encounter". And these encounters are easily missed: there are books that never find their ideal readers, and readers who are unable to find their perfect books. After all, as Zaid writes, publishing a new book is a risky undertaking, as uncertain as "putting a message in a bottle and tossing it into the sea". […]
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Why Write? Why Publish?
Jan Nathan Publishing Marketing Association Newsletter Los Angeles 2004/02
Every so often a book crosses my desk that makes me lose my afternoon. Such is the case with So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid (a chapter appears on page 23). The lead-in to some of the startling data within these page is, "The human race publishes a book every 30 seconds". This small book is crammed with information and statements that make you read a sentence, then reread, then sit and think about it for quite a while. For instance: "Almost all books sell thousands of copies: not dozens or hundreds of thousands, let alone millions" and "To finance almost any book, it is enough to find three thousand readers willing to pay ten hours worth of minimum wage salary." Think about that. How many publishers begin by publishing to answer a specific need and really want to communicate their findings and thoughts to like-minded people? Then somewhere along the way, the publisher begins to think that if this specific group of people would like this information, the whole world would also benefit by reading it. The world rarely responds. In fact, according to this book, "Most of the titles published in rich countries sell no more than a few thousand copies." That last comment made me think and think and think. Looking over the past 20 years and focusing on members who have had successful titles, I realized that most of their success came in the 10,000+ range, although a few have had titles that sold hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of copies. A Book Addict’s Argument for More As I sat in my office and looked at all the books that surrounded me and all the books I have pulled into a special area because they’re the ones I really want to read entirely, and then when I got home and looked at all the books on my shelves (and, yes, every room in my house has a bookcase filled with books I have read and ones I want to read, not to mention the cookbooks and self-help books that I really hope to get around to one of these days), I smiled and agreed with the following statement: "If not a single book were published from this moment on, it would still take us 250,000 years to acquaint ourselves with those books already written." Years ago, I hired my sons to build bookcases throughout my house. As soon as they got the new ones up, somehow, the shelves filled instantly with books. My ability to fill the shelves was definitely on a faster pace than their ability to build. During that time there was an earthquake in the San Diego area, and one of my sons cut an article from a newspaper about a man’s death during this earthquake. Seems that the man was a book addict, as am I (and probably lots of you). He had bookcases everywhere, including above his bed. Well, when the earthquake hit, the books all fell, first knocking him out and then smothering him. Thinking that this would slow my bookcase-building demands, my, son said, "See, Mom, it's not safe." To which I replied, "I can't think of a better way to end my life on this earth!" So, why keep on writing and publishing? Because. Because we know that the information and knowledge we possess are like no other information and knowledge out there on the market today, and if we each have the chance to influence and change the life of just one other person, it will be a major accomplishment in our lives and, hopefully, in the lives of the people we touch. Jan Nathan is Executive Director, Publishing Marketing Association
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No such thing as ‘merely’ a good reader
Heather Lee Schroeder The Capital Times Madison, WI 2003/12/26
[…] Whatever happened to the dedicated reader? I'm talking about the kind of reader who eagerly awaits a new book and who doesn't imagine he or she will ever write his or her own. Maybe it's just because I live in Madison, an epicenter of writers, but I think that sort of reader must be the single most endangered species in the world. All of this carne to mind because I met a lovely woman at a holiday party earlier this month. She introduced herself, and then apologetically glanced around, leaned in, and whispered, "I'm just a reader, not a writer." I wanted to hug her. […] Ultimately, the writer is waiting for a good reader. We're supplicants, hoping for some praise, a bit of attention, a smidgen of respect. Readers, they hold the power to love or hate our books, to read or ignore what we've written. I have just finished reading "So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance" by Gabriel Zaid (Paul Dry Books, $9.95). In it, Zaid writes, "The human race publishes a book every 30 seconds. ... Books are published at such a rapid rate that they make us exponentially more ignorant. If a person read a book a day, he would be neglecting to read 4,000 others, published the same day. In other words, the books he didn't read would pile up 4,000 times faster than the books he did read, and his ignorance would grow 4,000 times faster than his knowledge." […] When did we come to the conclusion a culture that we have to be writers in order to enjoy good writing? So my message to all of you who are "just readers" is that you should never embarrassed if what you are is a good reader. Notice that there is no "mere front of "a good reader." What you are is a gift to writers because you can give them the feedback the desire, and you are probably a better-than-average citizen. Your contribution the ongoing dialogue should be celebrated - by other readers and writers all.
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Los demasiados libros
Darío Villanueva ABC Madrid 1996/07/12
[…]Gabriel Zaid, que fue discípulo predilecto de nuestro Rafael Dieste allá por 1952 y 1953 en el Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, sostiene también que «la cultura es una conversación cuyo centro no está en ninguna parte» (pág. 26), tesis que le pone de la parte de Umberto Eco, así como su visión esperanzada del futuro de los libros que el autor de «La búsqueda de la lengua perfecta» defendió en su intervención con motivo del XXV Congreso de la Unión internacional de editores celebrado en Barcelona en abril pasado. Las tesis de Eco a favor de la pervivencia de la Galaxia Gutenberg están implícitas en el capítulo de Zaid «La superación tecnológica del libro», que pertenecía ya a su volumen de ensayos de 1982, y contrasta notablemente con las últimas opiniones expresadas a este respecto apocalípticamente por George Steiner, quien duda de la continuidad en el próximo siglo de los autores, lectores y editores tal y como los concebimos todavía. Por el contrario, Zaid destaca en los libros una serie de ventajas difícilmente superables: pueden ser hojeados, son portátiles, se usan al ritmo que marca su propietario, no requieren cita previa –«si no siempre entendidos, siempre abiertos», había escrito ya Quevedo–, son todavía baratos y, por publicarse tantos, ofrecen una variedad de registros, asuntos y posibilidades impensables para otros medios de comunicación. La televisión, lejos de acabar con el libro, ha convivido desde hace sesenta años con el crecimiento editorial más espectacular de toda la historia, que Zaid, autor de una tesis de doctorado en ingeniería sobre la industria de la edición, documenta cabalmente. «Los demasiados libros» no es un texto estructurado conforme a un plan riguroso, sino la suma de doce ensayos de desigual extensión a los que da unidad una misma idea obsesiva: la de que el problema mayor que hoy aqueja al libro es su excesiva proliferación, causante de que, al publicarse uno cada medio minuto, las personas lectoras lejos de ser cada vez más cultas lo seamos menos, por haber mayor diferencia entre lo que leemos y lo que podríamos leer. De este riesgo ya advirtiera Sócrates en el «Fedro» de Platón, y similares denuncias están asimismo en el Eclesiastés, en Séneca, en Po Chu Yi, en Ibn Jaldun, Lutero, Cervantes, Descartes o Samuel Johnson. Sobre todo ello vuelve Gabriel Zaid con páginas casi siempre desenfadadas e irónicas –apreciase por caso el tono paródico de «La oferta y la demanda de la poesía»– que con frecuencia formulan tesis peregrinas pero en modo alguno carentes de fundamento, como cuando se afirma que «el problema del libro no está en los millones de pobres que apenas saben leer y escribir, sino en los millones de universitarios que no quieren leer, sino escribir» (pág. 52), o se propone que el «welfare state» debería instituir un servicio de «geishas» literarias encargadas de leer, elogiar y consolar a esa legión de escritores frustrados por falta de público. Por el contrario, otros textos no menos imaginativos pero más rigurosos, parecen obedecer directamente a la mentalidad ingenieril y la experiencia como empresario del autor. Así, en sus últimos capítulos Zaid demuestra cómo el futuro de la edición pasará por un ajuste casi exacto entre la tirada de los libros y su público real de modo que se descarte para siempre el tópico de que a más ejemplares tirados, menor coste de edición. Y no faltan palabras de encendida admiración hacia el librero que navega por las aguas procelosas de nuestra posmodernidad en la que la cultura es ante todo industria, pertrechado de su «sabia mezcla de adivino, maestro y comerciante» (pág. 103).
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Het teveel
Leo de Haes De Brakke Hond Mechelen, België 2003/11/12
[…] In So Many Books - Reading and Publishing in the Age of Abundance (2003) schrijft Gabriel Zaid: ‘Als er vanaf vandaag geen enkel boek meer zou verschijnen, dan zou het een lezer nog 2.550.000 jaar kosten om alles te lezen, wat er tot nu is gepubliceerd.’ Die overvloed blijft niet zonder gevolgen, zowel voor de consument, de boekhandelaar als voor de uitgever. Het zorgt op z’n minst voor onbehagen. Geen lezer, ook de professionele recensent niet, kan de huidige boekenproductie bijbenen, gesteld dat hij dat al zou willen. Ik noem geen namen, maar ik ken meer dan één criticus die depressief geworden is door het onverwerkbare aanbod of zich daar behoorlijk slecht bij voelt. Zoals de moderne mens op alle gebieden moet keizen, moet ook de lezer keuzes maken, niet alleen wat genre betreft, - literatuur, crime, .loso.e, sociologie, fantasy, biologie, gezondheid, tuininrichting, SF, strips, geschiedschrijving, …maar ook binnen de diverse genres. Dé literatuurkenner bestaat niet meer. Hij is hooguit expert in de Nederlandse letteren van de negentiende eeuw of in de hedendaagse literatuur van het Paaseiland. Hij is Boon-specialist of exegeet van Het Gilgamesj-epos. Is dat erg? Ja en nee. […]
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Los demasiados libros
Juan Domingo Argüelles El Financiero México, D.F. 1993/09/14
Homenaje a Gabriel Zaid En vano construí este mausoleo de demasiados libros insufribles. Son pocos los que toco y los que leo; muy pocos los, en suma, apetecibles. Reuní libro tras libro, con codicia, hasta que las paredes se cubrieron con la culta intención de la avaricia de los locos y cuerdos que escribieron. Unos cuantos, no más, llenan mi alma y caben en mis manos sin esfuerzo. Unos cuantos, no más, me dan la calma y me conceden la existencia en verso. Los demás son materia de la usura, simple acumulación que año con año mezcló lo mismo el oro y la basura en un arte más torpe que tacaño. Si pudiera volver a aquel pasado, cuando los libros eran mi pobreza, pondría en mi existencia más cuidado y en las paredes algo de limpieza. Libre sería el aire en esta estancia, blanca la soledad entre los muros, y leería los libros sin más ansia que el saborear los frutos ya maduros. Pero el lugar común ya nos advierte que no vuelve la vida ya vivida; lo que fue ya no es vida sino muerte, desilusión de la actitud vencida. Pasado el desencanto, volveremos al pasatiempo diario del avaro: palpar el libro aquel que ya no vemos y otro más adquirir porque es muy raro. Cuando por fin perdamos los sentidos y no tengamos ya ni la memoria, los libros pasarán a ser olvidos y así terminará toda esta historia. Los demasiados libros, olvidados, serán la herencia de un analfabeto, que habrá de comerciarlos, regalados, sin reverencia alguna ni respeto.
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Los demasiados libros
Germán Dehesa Este País México, D.F. 1996/10
Editorial Océano acaba de publicar una edición revisada y puesta al día de Los demasiados libros de Gabriel Zaid. Don Gabriel, con su lucidez plena y con su agradecible ironía, nos advierte del muy cercano riesgo que corremos los ateridos habitantes de este final de milenio de perecer ahogados en papel. El propio Zaid reconoce, no sin cierta melancolía, la contradicción implícita en el hecho de que para denunciar el exceso de libros, él tenga que publicar un libro más. A mi juicio, tal contradicción queda resuelta y absuelta con el mero hecho de leerlo; son tan pertinentes sus observaciones, tan nutritivas y deleitosas sus reflexiones, que al lector sólo le queda reconocer que el libro de Zaid no puede formar parte de la turbamulta de los demasiados libros, sino que pertenece al selecto grupo de los libros necesarios. Hay en este libro un capítulo que me fascina particularmente; se titula "La conversación y los libros" que es, a mi juicio, un ensayo perfecto. Comienza con una sutil reflexión sobre Sócrates y la absoluta falta de aprecio que el pensador ateniense tenía por los libros (en la inteligencia de que, en tiempos de Sócrates, un libro era un objeto infinitamente más raro y precioso que nuestros libros actuales). Lo que a Sócrates le gustaba era la conversación; es decir, reunirse con tal o cual amigo y realizar un amable ejercicio que no requiere más que de la palabra para conseguir que los pensamientos confluyan, se opongan, se reúnan y se enriquezcan. Esta es (o debería ser) la conversación que es quizá uno de los más altos placeres que se le brindan al ser humano. Sin embargo, conversar –advierte Zaid- requiere tiempo. Sócrates y sus cuates podían tranquilamente echarse a caminar y consumir en la plática una tarde entera; privilegio tristemente imposible para el hombre moderno cuyo deshumanizado tiempo le suele negar el sosiego interior y la disponibilidad necesaria para una conversación digna de tal nombre. Volvamos a Sócrates: él descreía de los libros (pensamiento muerto) y creía en el diálogo (el vivaz fluir y confluir de los espíritus). Zaid y yo estamos, en principio, de acuerdo con Sócrates; pero en este punto se hace inevitable un cuestionamiento. Si Platón, discípulo de Sócrates, no hubiese rescatado en un libro las enseñanzas de su maestro, ¿cómo podríamos los conversadores de hoy conocer sus opiniones? De nuevo una contradicción que Zaid resuelve con serena elegancia; todo libro necesario (y éstos son bastante más escasos que los innecesarios) no es más qué la continuación por otros medios de una conversación. A poco que lo pensemos, esta afirmación vendría a ser una civilizada variante del violento aserto de Von Clausewitz (la guerra es la continuación de la política por otros medios). Como yo lo que creo es que la guerra es una pura imbecilidad, prefiero adherirme a las buenas maneras de Zaid y aceptar que, en efecto, leer un buen libro es incorporarme a esa conversación universal que, salvando tiempos y distancias, permite la confluencia de los variados pensamientos de la humanidad. Convendrás conmigo, lector querido, en que no es poca cosa incorporarse, gracias a Platón, a la animada e inteligente charla del cártel de Atenas (Sócrates y sus cuates) y beneficiarse –por vía del acuerdo o del desacuerdo– de todo lo que ahí se dice; entrar a la apartada torre donde Montaigne está pensando y ensayando y como si fuéramos modernos sustitutos de Esteban de Boecio (su llorado amigo del alma) asomarnos por encima de su hombro y asistir a la plasmación gráfica de uno de los pensamientos más agudos y corteses de occidente; subir a la otra torre, llamada de Juan Abad, y topar con el afligido Quevedo de la última época que ahí se ha refugiado para olvidar agravios, lances, duelos, amoríos, enemistades y cárceles, y dedicar sus últimos años a escribir su poesía más exquisita (habla en silencio Quevedo: "Retirado en la paz de estos desiertos, con pocos, pero doctos, libros juntos, vivo en conversación con los difuntos y escucho con mis ojos a los muertos. Si no siempre entendidos, siempre abiertos, o enmiendan o fecundan mis asuntos; y en músicos callados contrapuntos al sueño de la vida hablan despiertos...". Miren por dónde viene a resultar que ya Quevedo había, con poesía insuperable, enunciado la tesis de Zaid que es también la mía: si el libro es docto, nos incorpora a una conversación con los difuntos (o los distantes, o los desconocidos, o los ausentes) y nos permite escuchar con los ojos y componer con el autor "músicos callados contrapuntos". Esto es leer y, aunque es incontrovertiblemente cierto que se publican demasiados libros (a pesar de las apocalípticas profecías de McLuhan y cibernautas que lo acompañan) también es cierto que el libro (por lo menos, ciertos libros) constituye uno de los instrumentos más poderosos, más gratos y más benéficos que la humanidad ha creado. Digo estas cosas en México, donde ––según me avisan las estadísticas– sus habitantes leen un promedio de medio libro al año. Tristísima e ilustrativa noticia. Para nosotros (para nuestro apetito intelectual) no hay demasiados libros y esto nos segrega de la conversación humana y nos confina a nuestro actual y angustioso estado. Todos tenemos que hacer algo para que este país sea interlocutor del mundo y su diversidad, su belleza, sus vertiginosas y provisionales verdades. Lo que hasta aquí has leído es el resultado de mi callada conversación con Gabriel Zaid. Desearía, lector querido, que la silenciosa lectura de estos renglones te haya permitido conversar conmigo. Ésa y no otra era la intención de estas palabras. Leamos; conversemos.
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Los demasiados libros
José Emilio Pacheco Siempre! México, D.F. 1973/02/21
Gabriel Zaid es un caso insólito: un poeta y un ensayista que es también un ingeniero industrial experto en mercadotecnia y en problemas de eficiencia, capaz por consiguiente de observar el mundo de las letras desde la perspectiva otorgada por otras disciplinas. Hace unos meses, en Leer poesía, Zaid desacralizó nuestras costumbres de lectura. Hoy, en Los demasiados libros (Cuadernos Latinoamericanos, Ediciones Carlos Lohlé, Buenos Aires México), comete otra herejía liberadora: introduce el sentido práctico en un recinto que, se quiera o no, es parte del mercado más que zona sagrada de la cultura. Su nueva obra podría tener el subtítulo balzaciano de "Las ilusiones perdidas", pero con el tiempo se verá que fue la mejor contribución de México al 1972 como Año Internacional del Libro. La vida es corta, los libros infinitos. El propósito de Zaid es curarnos de varios convencionalismos ampliamente aceptados, entre ellos: –Que los medios audiovisuales han superado tecnológicamente al libro. –Que el libro es bueno y la televisión es mala. –Que la TV ha crecido a costa del libro. –Que los libros son caros y por eso no llegan a las masas. –Que para bajar los precios es necesario aumentar tirajes. –Que la única manera de ser culto es leerlo todo. El hecho central para entender las realidades económicas, sociales y operacionales del libro es que cada minuto se publica uno en algún lugar de la Tierra. Medio millón de títulos al año: cerca de veinte mil en Hispanoamérica. El exceso de libros oprime a la humanidad y puede encender la cólera divina, pero más allá de este fin apocalíptico nada justifica a los falsos profetas que anuncian la desaparición del libro: sus ventajas tecnológicas son abrumadoras:
(1)	A diferencia de las pianolas, fonógrafos, grabadoras, proyectores de cine, aparatos de radio, televisión, videocintas, terminales de computadora, télex, teléfonos, telégrafos, que exigen una "lectura líneal" para seguir lo que sale de ellos, un libro puede ser hojeado, adelantado, retrocedido o detenido sin ningún problema. En él se busca y se encuentra más fácilmente.
(2)	Todas estas operaciones –volver atrás, releer, detenerse, saltar sobre lo que no interesa– son mecánicamente imposibles en los nuevos medios que imponen su paso al "lector", mientras el libro se lee al ritmo que éste le marca.
(3)	Los libros son portátiles. No requieren de una fuente alimentadora. No invaden la esfera perceptiva del vecino. Podemos leerlos dondequiera, de pie, sentados, acostados.
(4)	El espectador de cine o de TV tiene que someter su agenda a la programación. El libro se pliega a la agenda del lector. No pide cita previa. Está disponible donde y cuando quiera.
(5)	Los libros son baratos: es relativamente fácil su propiedad y hasta su edición privadas. No tienen anuncios ni subsidios. Pueden usarse mil veces. Aun los países pobres son culpables de miopía al no contemplar más horizonte que su propiedad privada. Hay cines de barrio, pero a nadie se le ha ocurrido instalar bibliotecas "de piojito".
(6)	Precisamente por ser más baratos y justificarse para públicos restringidos, los libros permiten mayor variedad. No se puede tener un canal de televisión para tres mil personas, sí hacer un libro para ellas. Todo esto origina la infinidad de libros que nos cercan por todas partes.
El gran acierto de Zaid es la virtud del poeta: decir, lo que oscuramente hablamos intuido sin alcanzar a formularlo en palabras. Zaid nos instruye también sobre el costo de leer, hecho de tres factores: el libro, el espacio necesario, el tiempo invertido. De donde concluye que la lectura es un lujo de pobres: a medida que aumentan los ingresos se justifica más y más ser inculto. Hay un desperdicio monstruoso en gastar miles de millones en enseñarnos a leer y luego ahorrar en el dinero que se debe invertir en bibliotecas públicas. La explosión bibliográfica. El ensayo que da título al volumen resulta a un tiempo el más grave y el más leve de todos, el planteamiento humorístico de lo que podemos llamar el laberinto de los libros. Una vez adquiridos, lo mejor que podemos hacer con ellos es leerlos. Sin embargo. como decía José Gaos "Toda biblioteca personal es un proyecto de lectura". Y Zaid añade: tener a la vista libros no leídos es un fraude a las visitas. Toda biblioteca privada es hoy una sala de trofeos: La montaña mágica hace las veces de una pata de elefante. Ni siquiera queda el consuelo de legarla a nuestros hijos: no les servirá de nada porque los libros envejecen vertiginosamente; sus gustos serán distintos, sus espacios mucho más reducidos. Ahora, cuando casi todo mundo en los países avanzados puede no solamente leer y escribir sino incluso publicar aun antes de aprender a leer y a escribir, se editan 500,000 títulos contra 250,000 en 1950, el libro crece cuatro o cinco veces más que la televisión, la explosión bibliográfica es más fuerte que la demográfica, a pesar de las grandes esperanzas puestas en la TV para acabar con ambas. A libro por semana, se requieren treinta años para leer lo que se publica en un solo día. ¿Qué remedio nos queda? Ser ignorantes a sabiendas, ignorantes inteligentes: hacer que la medida de la lectura no sea el número de libros leídos sino el estado en que nos deja: "¿Qué demonios importa si uno es culto, está al día o ha leído todos los libros? Lo que importa es cómo se anda, cómo se ve, cómo se actúa, después de leer. Si la calle y las nubes y la existencia de los otros tienen algo que decirnos. Si leer nos hace, físicamente, más reales". Librerías y difusión. Ante la importancia y la novedad de las ideas que maneja Zaid, uno quisiera resumirlas todas para que llegaran a ser discutidas y aprovechadas por un público más amplio. Cuando menos hay que citar algunas otras. Zaid considera que la multiplicación de títulos, el. desarrollo del especialismo, el cambio de escala urbana, no pueden ser atendidos con el modelo único de la librería general. Para organizarlas en función del lector, propone:
(1)		La librería enciclopédica con más de cien mil títulos: una por cada ciudad de varios millones de habitantes
(2)		La librería monográfica, exhaustiva pero con respecto a un solo tema: leyes, medicina, literatura, etc.
(3)		La librería periódico dotada de unos cuántos libros de interés general publicados en los últimos seis meses.
Zaid pasa a enfrentarse polémicamente a las "verdades comunes" de la industria editorial, según las cuales el libro es el primero y el más noble de los medios de comunicación que surge en la historia; su influencia es enorme porque en él se extiende y comunica la cultura; no se difunde más porque es caro, un lujo para las masas subalimentadas, analfabetas o sin estudios de nuestros países; de todo ello son responsables los gobiernos que no apoyan decididamente a la industria del libro. Zaid, por el contrario piensa que:
(I)		El libro no es un medio de masas, debido al crecimiento "explosivo" de la especialización de temas y tratamientos que permite.
(II)		No se difunde más porque las masas con estudios universitarios no leen.
(III)		De lo cual son principales responsables las universidades que dan cursos y títulos pero no enseñan a leer.
Que publicar en cualquier ciudad de habla española no sea como publicar simultáneamente en todas, no sólo es un absurdo en el orden de la comunicación cultural: es un absurdo industrial y un desperdicio de oportunidades de integración económica. No puede hablarse de comunicación de masas cuando los tirajes normales –que tardan años en agotarse o se quedan en bodega– son de dos o tres mil ejemplares en una de las zonas lingüísticas más pobladas del planeta. Vender decenas de miles sería multiplicar por diez el presente mercado normal. En el mundo de habla española hay un millón de personas económicamente activas con estudios universitarios –cifra escalofriante si se considera que lo pueblan cerca de trescientos millones. Por mal pagados que estén, pertenecen en términos económicos a la capa superior de la población. Y si esta gente no compra libros, si sólo da mercado para tres mil ejemplares de cada título ¿para qué hablar de masas, analfabetismo, escaso poder adquisitivo, etc.? El verdadero problema es que el estrato privilegiado que ha hecho estudios universitarios no lee: nunca le ha dado el golpe a la lectura, nunca ha llegado a saber realmente lo que es leer. Tales "masas" de privilegiados forman la gran barrera contra la difusión del libro. Esto, que sepamos, nadie lo había hecho antes de Zaid. Mortificación de la soberbia. Este libro suscitado por el exceso de libros termina con un estudio técnico que difundido privadamente revolucionó a la industria editorial mexicana: "Precio y tiraje óptimo de libros". Zaid demuestra en términos irrefutables que vale más para todos hacer una primera edición de pocos ejemplares y reimprimirla fotoeléctricamente que exponerse a grandes costos de almacenaje. Para bajar los precios, no hay que empezar tirando miles de copias de más a la bodega: hay que empezar precisamente por bajar los precios... Esta es la parte de Los demasiados libros que se vuelve el peor cilicio para los autores (quienes pese a todo seguirán escribiendo). La invendibilidad de los libros es muy grande. Su mortalidad muy aguda: los libros suelen tener un cielo de vida de apenas unos cuantos años. Llegará un día en que todos los habitantes de este planeta sólo cabrán de pie. Sin embargo, el aumento no llega a cien millones de hombres por año: diez veces menos que la producción mundial de ejemplares de libros: "¿Qué sobrepoblación amenaza más a la humanidad? ¿Qué paternidad es más irresponsable? ¿La del que quiere perpetuar su nombre en hijos o en libros? Hasta la más altiva y justificada de las soberbias literarias queda hecha polvo ante esta admonición bíblica de un autor a todos los autores: "Tu libro es una brizna del papel que se arremolina en las calles, que contamina las ciudades, que sopla sobre el planeta. Es celulosa y en celulosa se convertirá".
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Troppi libri Come sopravvivere all'invasione degli scritti e degli scrittori
Angelo Crespi Il Domenicale Milano 2006/01/06
Francamente oggi i libri pubblicati sono troppi. Belli i tempi in cui gli amanuensi faticavano lenti, spesso incappando in grandiosi strafalcioni e busillis, e gli incunaboli erano preziosità da difendere con la vita. Lo diciamo senza timore di apparire inutilmente snob. D’altronde sulla scorta di grandi del passato, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Flaubert, Kraus, siamo convinti che i giornali e la stampa non siano elementi così imprescindibili per la democrazia, come molti tendono a enfatizzare: Schopenhauer definiva i giornalisti "noleggiatori di opinioni", Kierkegaard diceva che i giornali «sono e saranno il principio del male moderno: nella loro sofistica essi non conoscono limiti, perché possono scendere sempre più in basso nella scelta dei lettori. Con questo essi dragano la fanghiglia degli uomini che nessun governo potrà più dominare. Saranno sempre pochi quelli che in verità vedono la falsità che c’è nell’esistenza dei giornali e, di questi, pochi, solo pochissimi avranno il coraggio di esprimerlo: perché per un uomo è addirittura un martirio di rompere con la maggioranza e la diffusione, che poi lo perseguiterà e lo maltratterà senza posa». E così come i giornali e la stampa non sono vessilli di democrazia, a maggior ragione non lo sono i libri, specie se frutti esagerati e velenosi dell’industria massmediatica. Francamente i libri pubblicati oggi sono troppi. Non è snob dirlo. Secondo i dati riportati da Giuliano Vigini in una sua ricerca (questa sì, utile), L’editoria in tasca (Editrice Bibliografica, Milano 2004), tra novità, nuove edizioni, ristampe, nel 2003 solo in Italia sono stati stampati 60mila titoli, il che equivale a più di 160 nuovi titoli al giorno. Titoli: non libri, sia chiaro. Attualmente nel nostro Paese sono sul mercato oltre 500mila titoli, di cui – tragicamente – 127mila di letteratura, perché un romanzo e una raccolta di poesie non si nega proprio a nessuno. Nella prima pagina di un saggio (questo sì, illuminante) del messicano Gabriel Zaid (I troppi libri, Jaca Book 2005) che sarà la nostra guida spirituale in questo naufragio, l’autore chiosa con realismo: «La lettura di libri aumenta in modo aritmetico: la scrittura di libri aumenta in modo esponenziale. Se la nostra passione per la scrittura ci sfuggirà di controllo, in un prossimo futuro ci saranno più scrittori che lettori». Ecco, ci saranno solo scrittori. I lettori sono già una specie in via di estinzione. Ma per far questo devono anche esistere editori così pazzi da investire in questa enorme (spesso poco redditizia) produzione cartacea. E ci sono: in questo senso ci soccorre ancora Vigini, uno dei massimi esperti di editoria, quando analizzando il mercato editoriale nel nostro Paese, ci conferma l’insano trend. Dal 1998 al 2003 sono nate ben 1.593 nuove case editrici, con un aumento oltre il 42%. Solo tra il 2002 e il 2003 il numero è cresciuto di 626 unità, portando il totale degli editori o comunque di tutte quelle entità che, a vario titolo, producono libri a 5.281. Poco importa poi sapere che questi editori sono soprattutto concentrati in Lombardia (1.218), Lazio (907), Emilia Romagna salita al terzo posto (457), Toscana (448), Piemonte (418); cinque regioni che rappresentano il 65% di tutte le case editrici italiane. Più interessante capire che i numeri poi li fanno solo i grandi gruppi editoriali che hanno di fatto monopolizzato il settore. In sostanza, Mondadori, Rcs, De Agostini, Messaggerie Italiane e una cinquantina di case editrici indipendenti più piccole (Giunti, Feltrinelli, Motta, Laterza, Il Mulino, Il Saggiatore...) realizzano circa il 90% del giro d’affari del libro in tutti i canali distributivi. Il 4-5% va ad un altro centinaio di case editrici, e solo il misero 4-5% restante va a tutte le altre migliaia di sigle. Si aggiunga che le 150-200 librerie più importanti d’Italia, su un totale di 1.827, realizzano oltre il 50% del fatturato nazionale, che questo fatturato vien fatto sostanzialmente per il 30% tra Milano e Roma, che queste due città in termini di vendita e fatturato valgono quanto la Sicilia o la progressista e illuminata Toscana. E il quadro è fatto. Eppure eppure si continua a creare nuove case editrici e a sfornare libri. Una tendenza internazionale, visto che nel mondo ogni anno vengono immessi su un modesto mercato, in mano a pochi gruppi, circa un milione di nuovi titoli con tirature ciascuno di migliaia di copie. Miliardi di libri che il genere umano non potrà mai neppure sfogliare; l’unica fortuna, ironizza Zaid, è che «molti autori non scrivono per i loro lettori, ma per gonfiare il proprio curriculum». E gli fanno eco le statistiche se è vero che solo un 10% dei libri stampati incontra effettivamente un mercato, mentre il restante 90% resterà pressoché invenduto. Tanti libri servono? Sembrerebbe di no: Socrate nel Fedro critica la feticizzazione del libro, d’altronde lui non ne scrisse mai e se non fosse stato per Platone non avremmo niente della sua geniale maieutica. Ma anche la Bibbia, il libro dei libri per antonomasia, ci va giù dura nel Qohelet: «I libri si moltiplicano senza fine e il molto studio affatica il corpo». Seneca ha lo stesso pensiero quando deve consigliare Lucilio: «La moltitudine dei libri dissipa lo spirito». Tempo dopo, sul finire del 1300, in Medio Oriente, lo storico arabo Ibn Khaldun scriveva che «troppi libri su un argomento lo rendono più difficile da studiare». E non poteva mancare il misantropo per eccellenza Montaigne: «Il nostro dovere è comporre il nostro personaggio, non comporre libri». Per finire, attorno al 1750, prima ancora che il delirio gutemberghiano stravolgesse l’orbe definitivamente, con Samuel Johnson che aveva già capito come «nessun luogo offre una testimonianza più palese della vanità delle speranze umane delle biblioteche pubbliche; lì, infatti, le pareti sono completamente stipate di possenti volumi, opera di laboriose meditazioni e di analisi approfondite, che in definitiva non conosce nessuno se non perché compaiono a catalogo». A volerla dire tutta, i libri non ci dispiacciono in generale. Ma ci fanno schifo nel particolare. Il problema messo in luce anche da Giuliano Vigini è il seguente: più della meta del mercato editoriale italiano è costituito da novità. Perciò gli editori, soprattutto quelli grandi, sono costretti a sfornare novità a tambur battente. E per sfornare novità e venderle, molte volte si punta solo sui best seller internazionali, oppure si fa diventare best seller quello che non è, magari sfruttando la fama conquistata dall’autore in altro campo: politici, attori, cantastorie, presentatrici, calciatori, comici. Così saremmo felici di questa iperproduzione libraria se i più venduti continuassero a essere Thomas Mann ed Hermann Broch, oppure Proust e Melville, Eschilo e Sofocle, Rilke ed Eliot, Diderot e Tocqueville, perfino Manzoni e Dante, perfino Campana e Corazzini, perfino Liala e Mura. Invece ci dobbiamo sorbire la Clerici e Totti, Melissa P. e Ligabue, Faletti e Francesco Alberoni, Volo e la Littizzetto. A guardare la classifica dei dieci libri più venduti negli ultimi anni viene da piangere: nel 2003, tra gli altri, il calciatore Francesco Totti, Melissa P., i comici Oreglio e Annamaria Barbera "Sconsy"; nel 2002 addirittura tre tomi della saga di Harry Potter, nel 2001 Il diario di Bridget Jones, e poi i soliti noti Allende, Baricco, Eco, Coelho, Follet, Grisham, Tamaro, Smith, e al culmine del merito mediatico il comico-filosofo Giobbe Covatta e il filosofo-ingegnere Luciano De Crescenzo, col quale almeno non rimpiangiamo i pochi oscuri frammenti di Eraclito. Il grande poeta russo esiliato, Iosif Broskij, Nobel giovanissimo e ormai morto da una decina d’anni, sosteneva però una cosa che ci conforta non poco, noi che amiamo l’eternità. I grandi poeti latini furono letti nella loro epoca da un ristretto numero di persone, e da poche persone anche nei seguenti duemila anni, ma sono duemila anni che li leggono; in pratica il tempo ha restituito il giusto numero di lettori che lo spazio aveva loro negato. Da un lato dunque ci stanno i libri, tanti libri, troppi libri. E le case editrici, troppe. Ma i lettori? Dove stanno? Ancora Zaid scrive: «La razza umana pubblica un libro ogni trenta secondi. Supponendo un prezzo medio di 30 dollari per libro e uno spessore medio di 2 centimetri ci vorrebbero 30 milioni di dollari e quasi 25 chilometri di mensole per l’aggiornamento annuale della biblioteca di Mallarmé, se oggi il poeta desiderasse poter dire ancora, come faceva: La carne è triste, ahimè! E ho letto tutti i libri». È ovvio che nessuno ha tempo né voglia di seguire questa piena di libri. E le statistiche confermano: il 54,5% degli italiani dai 6 anni in su, tanto per dire, non ha letto nemmeno un libro nell’ultimo anno. E poi c’è un altro fatto da tenere in conto: secondo le statistiche pubblicate dall’Unesco, l’esplosione numerica dei libri pubblicati nel XX secolo è parallela alla proliferazione di titoli di studio. Tuttavia l’esplosione rivela più l’offerta che la domanda. I laureati quasi sempre sono più interessati a pubblicare libri che a leggerli. «Pubblicare – scrive Zaid – è un fattore standard necessario in una carriera accademica o burocratica. È come scrivere delle relazioni o compilare debitamente i formulari necessari per partecipare a un concorso. Non ha nulla a che vedere con la lettura o la scrittura. Leggere è difficile, sottrae tempo alla carriera e non fa guadagnare punti tranne che negli elenchi delle opere citate. Pubblicare è un mezzo per un fine. Leggere è inutile: è un vizio, un puro piacere». A proposito: come i laureati, anche i poeti sono più interessati a pubblicare che a leggere poesia. Secondo i dati, su 127mila titoli di letteratura oggi in commercio in Italia, 12mila sarebbero quelli di poesia. Ma se potessimo analizzare ancora meglio il mercato, ci accorgeremmo che molte piccole case editrici, che sfuggono ai controlli poiché non distribuiscono in libreria, vivono solo pubblicando florilegi poetici pagati dall’autore stesso. E se potessimo dare una sbirciatina ai famosi "cassetti" di ciascun italiano ci accorgeremmo che essi nascondono almeno una raccolta di poesie pronta da essere stampata. Il bello è che a fronte di questo popolo immenso di poetastri, rarissimi sono i lettori di poesia. Raramente i libri di liriche superano le centinaia di copie vendute, spesso si attestano su nessuna copia venduta. La società moderna di fatto produce una ipertrofia dell’ego che si sublima nel voler a tutti costi eternizzare la propria misera esistenza soprattutto attraverso la poesia. Tutte le riviste specializzate, a fronte di poche copie vendute e di pochi abbonamenti, ricevono in redazione centinaia di manoscritti di aspiranti poeti, e mai compiuti lettori. Se tutti quelli che desiderano essere letti leggessero a loro volta, assisteremmo a un boom senza precedenti, in quanto mai prima d’ora ci sono stati così tanti milioni di persone che sognano di essere pubblicate. E invece ciò non avviene, tutti quanti scrivono, ma non amano leggere. Zaid a tal proposito suggerisce un paio di soluzioni. Per esempio: se gli scrittori fossero realmente riguardosi, inserirebbero una banconota da 5 euro in ogni loro libro in circolazione, come riconoscimento simbolico del tempo che hanno chiesto ai loro lettori e amici. Ovvio che trattasi di soluzione conforme ad una economia di mercato: se l’offerta supera la domanda, come avviene, i prezzi diminuiranno sino a scendere sotto zero e gli scrittori dovranno per forza pagare anziché farsi pagare per essere letti. Oppure se ci trovassimo in uno Stato assistenzialista verrebbe proposta la creazione di un Corpo nazionale di geishe letterarie, laureate in letteratura e in psicologia degli scrittori, che dovrebbe lavorare a tempo pieno con gli stessi scrittori che nessuno legge, ascoltandoli, leggendone le opere, elogiandoli o consolandoli. Infine, la più sensata, sarebbe costituire un CROD (Comitato Regolatore dell’Offerta e della Domanda), visto che non basta la celeberrima "mano invisibile", per organizzare un sistema in virtù del quale chi desideri far leggere i propri scritti deve provare di aver fatto, a sua volta, un certo numero di letture. Ogni tot libri letti, per esempio 1.000 poesie, il richiedente avrebbe il diritto di pubblicarne una. A questo si aggiunga il lavoro svolto da qualche tempo a questa parte dai quotidiani, che, presenti in ben 37mila punti vendita, sono riusciti a smerciare un centinaio di milioni di copie di libri. All’apparenza, un ottimo risultato visto che si trattava di bei tomi, ben rilegati, spesso classici del pensiero, imprescindibili nella casa di ogni persona che si rispetti. Almeno per fare arredamento. Proprio sull’arredamento sembra puntare l’editoria del domani. Già Mondadori, precorrendo i tempi, quest’anno omaggiava insieme ai Meridiani venduti sottocosto insieme a tutte le riviste del gruppo, un espositore, in cui raccogliere l’intera collezione, degno dal punto di vista del design del miglior Aiazzone anni Ottanta. Non è un caso: Gian Arturo Ferrari, direttore generale della divisione libri Mondadori, in una recente intervista pubblicata da Panorama, ha detto testuale: «che la gente si sia abituata ad avere libri in casa e uno spazio in cui metterli, e che l’Ikea abbia previsto uno scaffale nel soggiorno di ogni famiglia, tutto ciò nel giro di qualche decennio provocherà inevitabilmente un allargamento del bacino culturale». Proprio così: un allargamento del bacino culturale. Dovremmo dunque ringraziare l’Ikea per meriti culturali. Il problema semmai è un altro. La gente ha comprato libri con i quotidiani, spinta dal delirio del collezionista (la stessa cosa vale per le macchinine, le tazzine, gli orologi finti d’epoca, le bamboline...) convinta che un libro in casa fa pur sempre piacere, spesso sorbendosi a fianco dei classici, sonore stupidate, spesso non scellofanandoli neppure, e soprattutto privandosi della libertà di scelta, di scegliersi e costruirsi col tempo una propria bibliotechina, fatta di scelte azzeccate ed errori, di libri belli e brutti, di libri impagabili e troppo pagati, poco alla volta, invece che affidarsi alle scialbe mani degli uomini del marketing. In verità, ci sarebbe ancora da leggere e comprare, selezionando e centellinando i libri che ci sommergono. Il lettore forse avrebbe pure bisogno di un aiuto, per capire cosa scegliere. E invece i centri culturali a ciò deputati, innanzitutto le pagine culturali dei quotidiani hanno abdicato al loro ruolo. Recensiscono tutto, soprattutto quello che non dovrebbero, e sempre bene. Il fatto è che anche le Terze Pagine sono diventate ancelle di un’industria culturale che deve produrre novità e poi venderle. Un’industria culturale, vale la pena ridirlo, che spesso è proprietaria diretta delle Terze Pagine. Per questo motivo non c’è critico che tenga, e la stroncatura è diventata un genere d’antan, di un tempo glorioso nel quale il meccanismo di produzione, comunicazione, vendita del libro non era ancora così oliato. Nella redazione del Domenicale piovono libri a catinelle, poi si formano pozzanghere di libri, botri, specchi, torrenti e fiumi. I libri si insinuano con i trucchi più assurdi. Le grandi case editrici inviano enormi scatoloni: una volta aperti, i volumi esplodono sulle scrivanie e sotto le sedie. Le piccole case editrici preferiscono buste anonime, leggere, che magari tu pensi a un assegno di una vecchia zia, a un regalino, un cadeau natalizio, e invece un libro, il solito, scontato libro. Gli autori, quando decidono di spedirti il tomo in prima persona, allegano pietose missive, lunghe lettere circostanziate, epistole degne dell’Ottocento. Molte volte vengono di persona con volti speranzosi, facce lunghe, sorrisi di circostanza, vecchi cappotti, riporti ingestibili tenuti con la lacca della vecchia madre, e ti parlano di altro, salvo allungarti quasi di soppiatto l’opera, con fare allusivo, quasi dandoti di gomito, «Eh Eh, è il mio nuovo libro», e tu non sai come guardarli, li guardi come quando devi per forza scartare un regalo davanti a chi te lo ha donato, e tu ti aspetti una magnifica cravatta di lana e ti arriva un libro, oppure scuoti la scatola sperando in uno champagne millesimato, e dentro c’è invece un fossile di trota, che ha lo stesso peso e volume, ma sapore assai diverso. I libri s’ammonticchiano sulle scrivanie, formano muri e muraglie, torri in perenne bilico, poi cadono, invadono il pavimento, giacciono esausti, s’insinuano sugli scaffali, negli armadi, ti guardano impolverati e sono la tua coscienza sporca, di giornalista che, nonostante il lavoro quotidiano, è inerme davanti a questa schiera che ogni giorno si rinforza, la recensione di quel volume l’avevi promessa all’autore, quell’altro alla casa editrice, quello ancora con il cellofan ti piaceva davvero, lo avresti letto, ne avresti parlato, se non fosse per quelle 1.700 pagine, e non ti decidi mai a buttarne uno, subito senza nemmeno scartarlo, benché solo guardando la sigla editoriale sai già che sarà un libro mai letto, perché dai sempre credito a ogni volume, speri che in esso sia contenuto quel frammento di verità che vai cercando, e sai che non sarà possibile, ma ti illudi, lo rimiri, lo sfogli, lo poni sulla pila accanto al computer, una pila che si fa sempre più alta e di notte, negli incubi, crolla sonoramente, poi ti giri, ti guardi attorno e i libri sono già migliaia, migliaia di libri persi. Il libro arriva in redazione, lo scarti, lo guardi, lo sfogli, lo lasci accanto a te, nella tua pila dei libri imprescindibili, poi, arrivandone altri, lo sposti nelle pile che hai davanti sulla scrivania, una sorta di cinta di difesa, poi arrivandone altri, li accatasti sulle sedie di fianco, pire votive pronte per il rogo, poi arrivandone altri, ti decidi, smonti le torri in bilico, e li accumuli sugli scaffali già pieni fuori dall’ufficio, devi stringerli, comprimerli, devi pensare come il più attento magazziniere, ogni spazio deve essere riempito col tomo delle proporzioni giuste, qualcuno vecchio di anni, ti decidi a porlo sul tavolo all’ingresso, confezioni pure il cartello "libri in regalo", ma nessuno li vuole, non gli amici, gli altri redattori, neppure la famiglia di filippini addetta alle pulizie, così fai delle borse, pesanti che a trasportarle tagliano le mani, e ti avvii come al funerale, verso la bancarella dell’amico remainder, davanti a lui, col sorriso mesto di chi deve compiangere un familiare, cerchi di spacciare le borse ponderose, e lui in contraccambio di trentadue libri nuovi dell’anno in corso, ti concede di sottrargli un unico libricino, smilzo, esile, del 1923, questo sì imprescindibile, e tu te ne vai più pesante di prima, felice, per aver scambiato tante inutili leggerezze con una sola cosa pesante. Franco Sciardelli, l’editore, mi ha detto che si pubblicano troppi libri e inutilmente. Servirebbe, a suo dire, una macchina a ciclo continuo che una volta stampati sia in grado direttamente di macerare i tomi. Senza neppure passare dalle librerie. Sembrerebbe un controsenso, anche lui pubblica libri, anche lui viene di soppiatto in redazione col suo fare di milanese che nasconde l’aristocratica indole di un siciliano trapiantato, col suo cappello, le sue belle giacche, viene di soppiatto ti dà il libricino, ridendo, ma non vuole la recensione, non vuole nemmeno venderli i suoi libricini così preziosi, in tirature limitate con le xilografie di un tempo, come quello su Longanesi, l’ultimo che uscirà domani 1° gennaio 2006, ma non ha senso dire che uscirà, perché non verrà distribuito in libreria, anzi le trecento numeratissime copie Sciardelli le ha già date di persona agli amici, solo a quegli amici che per difendersi dall’invasione dei libri, non leggono e collezionano che i suoi di libri, smilzi e levigati, senza prezzo, senza codice a barre, spesso senza numero di pagine, cuciti e non incollati, con la passione di un tempo. Sfogli quello di Longanesi, che Sciardelli ha intitolato, Così parlò Leopoldo, cinquanta aforismi, e leggi: L’intellettuale è un signore che fa rilegare i libri che non ha letto.
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I troppi libri? A volte è meglio un reality show
Luigi Mascheroni Il Giornale Milano 2005/10/17
Per iniziare, qualche cifra: la razza umana, oggi, pubblica un libro ogni trenta secondi. Supponendo un prezzo medio di 30 dollari a libro e uno spessore di due centimetri a volume, occorrerebbero 30 milioni di dollari e 25 chilometri di mensole solo per aggiornare annualmente la propria biblioteca. Ancora: si calcola che per scorrere l’elenco di tutti i libri stampati, dalla Bibbia di Gutenberg alle ultime novità, ci vogliono 15 anni. E per finire: anche se a partire da questo momento non venisse pubblicato più alcun libro, e ipotizzando che una persona possa leggere quattro libri la settimana (duecento l’anno, diecimila in mezzo secolo), ci vorrebbero comunque 250mila anni per arrivare a conoscere i libri già scritti. Aveva già capito tutto, 2200 anni fa, l’anonimo autore del Qoèlet: «...i libri si moltiplicano senza fine, ma il molto studio affatica il corpo». A prima vista, il pamphlet del messicano Gabriel Zaid I troppi libri. Leggere e pubblicare in un’epoca di «abbondanza» (Jaca Book) sembrerebbe o un controsenso (perché a nessuno sfugge la contraddizione di scrivere un libro sull’eccessiva presenza di libri nelle nostre vite) o un fastidioso déjà-vu (perché a tutti è già capitato per le mani un libro che deplora una situazione nella quale le parole scritte superano - e di troppo - quelle lette). In realtà il saggio di Zaid - che consigliamo a tutti coloro i quali appena entrati in una libreria avvertono un sudore diaccio lungo la schiena - è un libro utile. È vero, da una parte non è che l’ulteriore analisi dell’esorbitante produzione editoriale, della trasformazione del libro in una merce il cui obiettivo non è più trasmettere un orizzonte di pensiero ma produrre profitto, dei mega-store pieni di novità ma con pochissimi titoli «di catalogo», dei best seller ammazzatutto... Ma il libro di Zaid è qualcosa di più, qualcosa di consolante. Nient’altro che buon senso comune, dirà qualcuno, ma consolante. Innanzitutto perché ci tranquillizza, ancora una volta, sul futuro dell’oggetto libro: nonostante la diffusione di cd, dvd, e-book, sistemi print-on-demand... la tecnologia digitale è destinata a integrare, ma non a sostituire, il libro stampato. Al pari del fuoco, della ruota e dell’alfabeto, il libro è un’«invenzione» insuperabile, come dimostra l’incremento esponenziale delle pubblicazioni dalla metà del Cinquecento (500 titoli) al periodo 1950-2000 (36 milioni): l’uomo non ha mai prodotto uno strumento più economico per rivolgersi a così tante persone nello spazio e nel tempo. Poi, perché Zaid ci allevia la coscienza ogni volta che acquistiamo un libro destinato a rimanere intonso sugli scaffali di casa: «La vera persona colta è in grado di possedere migliaia di libri non letti senza perdere la propria compostezza e il desiderio di averne altri ancora \. Forse la misura della nostra lettura dovrebbe essere non il numero di libri che abbiamo letto, bensì lo stato in cui ci lasciano». Infine, perché questo anomalo intellettuale riesce a convincerci, ancora una volta, che la cultura è una conversazione e che scrivere, leggere, stampare, recensire «alimentano questa conversazione e la tengono viva». Pubblicare un libro equivale a inserirlo in questo circolo virtuoso: «Una conversazione che sorge, come dovrebbe essere, dal dibattito locale, ma che si apre, come dovrebbe essere, a ogni luogo e a ogni tempo». Se c’è un punto, invece, su cui rimane qualche dubbio, è l’implicita bontà che l’autore sembra attribuire a ogni libro. A noi invece sembra che ormai molti, troppi libri, entrano in questa comunicazione come una chiacchiera inutile, fastidiosa e fuori luogo. E non ci sentiamo di affermare (come a volte accade di sentire) che un libro mediocre è sempre meglio di un reality show o di un rave party. Per la cronaca, Gabriel Zaid - poeta e saggista di critica culturale - vive a Città del Messico con l’artista Basia Batorska, tre gatti e 10 mila volumi.
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Affogare tra i libri
Giuliano Vigini Radio Tre Milano 2005/11/17
Giulano Vigini, direttore di Editrice Bibliografica, aiuta a riflettere su letture e pubblicazioni in un ‘epoca di "abbondanza" commentando I troppi libri edito da Jaca Book, ultimo libro dello scrittore messicano Gabriel Zaid Ascolta
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Where is that threat coming from?
Jeff Reich The Writer Magazine Milwaukee 2004/02/29
In his recently translated (and if I may say so, fabulous) collection of essays, So Many Books, author Gabriel Zaid argues that the greatest threat to our reading is not too few books, but a superabundance of them. "The human race," he notes, "publishes a book every thirty seconds ...Books are published at such a rapid rate that they make us exponentially more ignorant. If a person read a book a day, he would be neglecting to read four thousand others, published the same day. In other words, the books he didn't read would pile up four thousand times faster than the books he did read, and his ignorance would grow four thousand times faster than his knowledge." With So Many Books competiting for attention, what does this means for us as writers? Let's talk about it.
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So Many Books
Tim Walker Blue Ear Daily Mission, KS., USA 2003/10/28
This lovely little book says much of worth for the overburdened reader. We live amid a wealth, an embarrassment, of books and yet also amid a choking smog of bad books, and of books that simply were not written for us. Gabriel Zaid has peered deep inside this smog, and with this book he channels cool breezes into it. The book offers up by turns practical advice for keeping the air clear, and philosophical musings on what we might see or imagine in the clear skies that result. The book doesn't purport to be a Grand Unified Theory of reading or the book business, though it gives more than just a dollop of insight into each. Lacking, thank goodness, an overarching pedagogical theme, the book serves as a useful accessory to Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book, and (maybe), an antidote to the dicta of Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why. (I confess I did not read Bloom's book. I looked it over; I shuddered. So Many Books will make no one shudder.) Zaid draws the reader along gently, not pedantically, through subjects including books' role in the culture, the mechanical and mercantile means of their circulation, their costs in terms of money and time, and the great need for books to find their natural audience. "Culture is conversation." Zaid makes this point after discussing Socrates' assessment of print as inferior to speech. Zaid rightly asserts that "The inertness of the printed word is not a failing of print but a failing of life. There is much dead text in conversation, in the university, in sermons, in speeches, in the words and acts of everyday life." When we realize this, we can get past the notion that we are to receive books (or whatever else) passively; instead, we choose to engage. As an aside, I would point out that the medium and nature of Blue Ear not only -allow- for this conversation to take place (letters to the editor serve the same function, after all), but also actively -invite- this conversation. Any book review, or any other entry into the Blue Ear conversation, invites further conversation in turn. Without wanting to make any too grandiose claims for this community, I point out the reality that it does aid the construction of a global culture. Blue Ear also serves as an example of a vehicle for attaining a book's "natural readership". Zaid discusses this concept in the context of the strengths and weaknesses of the publishing industry. The bad news is that many large publishing houses are looking for one bestseller after another; the good news is that a traditionally published book needs an audience of only a few thousand to survive. (Print-on-demand technology, which Zaid also thinks through, offers the chance to build this audience up over an even longer period than traditional print runs allow.) As Zaid makes clear, there are many impediments to assembling even this small audience, given the extant structure of the publishing business. But a future, ideal publishing world would allow each book to reach what he calls its "natural readership", made up of those who will most enjoy and profit from it. I'll leave it to Zaid to go into specifics - he has an admirable grasp of the business world for a bibliomane –but I have the idea that Paul Dry's house and our own Blue Ear community will find happy roles in that fervently-to-be-wished-for Cockaigne of books.Books continue to be so valuable to those of us who use them in no small part because they can afford to be narrow but deep in their appeal. As Zaid points out, television (or network television, anyway) is stuck with the mug's game of needing everything to be a bestseller. His verdict - "Television must produce bestsellers: good, bad, or excellent" - demonstrates his own degree of insight at the same time it underscores my own learned revulsion to the world's favorite mass medium. The author's insight carries through when he discusses the costs of books. As elsewhere, he shows his grasp of the business elements of book production, but gets to the heart of the matter when he declares, "Time is by far the most expensive aspect of reading." He goes on: "In a wealthy economy, time is worth more than things, and it is easier to buy things than to find the time to enjoy them. To purchase books that one will never read is understandable: we think we might read them one day, and in the meantime, they can be shown off to visitors or mentioned in conversation. Reading is a luxury of the poor, the sick, prisoners, retirees, students. As students become young executives with overcrowded schedules, and as their salaries rise, reading (if it is not required) becomes a luxury for them, too." This reality that Zaid so aptly conveys is part of the reason I have chosen my career path. Love something so much that you make it your livelihood. To me, books certainly merit that investment. In another place in the book, the author writes, "We must take joy in fate, embrace it, celebrate it, explore bookstores in hope of a miracle." Like many of you bibliophiles reading this, I've experienced this miracle many times. The most compelling instance that comes to mind happened not in a bookstore or library, but in my in-laws' living room. My wife's aunt had lent my mother-in-law a copy of Madeleine L'Engle's A Circle of Quiet; there it sat on a side table. I can't imagine that L'Engle had a broad audience of men in mind when she wrote the book, and I don't think that her publisher put a delicate watercolor of flowers on the cover in hopes of drawing a large male readership for the book. But the book delighted this reader, half a continent away and fifty years younger than its author, especially with its insights into the writer's lot. It became some small part of me. Zaid's book is shorter and less personal than L'Engie's, but likewise contains much in the way of good instruction - readerly rather than writerly. I was particularly struck by this assessment: "Beyond the alphabet, the paragraph, and the short article which may still be taken in all at once, there are functional illiteracies of the book. The great barrier to the free circulation of books is the mass of privileged citizens who have college degrees but never learned to read properly, despite the excellent guides that exist, for example Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book and Daniel Pennac's Better than Life." One of the "illiteracies of the book" he had just discussed is the inability of many readers "to see the whole at a glance" -a skill exemplified by those voracious readers who finish a book per day. This hits home to me because I have enjoyed a few short spells reading at this pace, but have yet to make it a lifetime habit. I'm poorer for it. The same passage just quoted also reminds me to reread Adler's book, a favorite of mine, and to track down Pennac's, which I had never heard of before. Thank goodness that Zaid didn't drop too many titles; So Many Books didn't balloon my reading list the way some books about books do. (Larry McMurtry's Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, for one, loaded me down with many new authors to read.) It did, however, offer plenty of substance to chew on, and I have returned to the book's pages again and again since I first read it. The book is not immune to repetition, and I didn't walk away from it with any grand, overarching point in mind. On second thought, I did: I recalled warmly how much I have loved books all my life, and how much I look forward to living among them for the rest of my life. That is a powerful enough point for any book about books - especially when the book has better outfitted me for life among the volumes that populate my shelves and my mind. Tim Walker, Austin, Texas, U.S.A. Books Advisory Editor, Blue Ear Daily
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Bien trop de livres? : belle contradiction?
Stéphanie Bérubé Cyberpresse Montréal 2005/11/27
Pourquoi publier un livre pour dire qu'il y en a trop? N'est-ce pas là une belle contradiction? Apparemment pas aux yeux de l'auteur mexicain Gabriel Zaid qui présente son analyse à coup de chiffres impressionnants sur le monde de l'impression et de l'édition. Si l'humanité publie plus d'un million de titres par année, la question se pose. La force de Zaid, toutefois, ne tient pas tant dans ses calculs vertigineux, mais dans ses analyses joliment tordues et la façon pleine d'ironie de les présenter. «Les livres se publient à une telle vitesse que nous en devenons chaque jour plus incultes.» Ce n'est pas faux! La lecture est devenue un luxe aujourd'hui, déclare-t-il aussi. Non pas parce que les livres coûtent cher, mais parce que plus personne n'a le temps de les lire. Charmante réflexion.
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So Many Books
Sabine Scherrer Anglo-Swiss News Muttenz 2005/05
Are you one of those passionate readers who fight ever more desperately against an increasing surplus of titles? Then this small book will comfort and help you. Books are published so fast that they make us more ignorant exponentially, also when we’ve read thousands of them. Wouldn’t it be better to accept this ignorance, so that we can become consciously ignorant, and armed with this awareness we can enjoy reading again? Should the measure of our reading not be the state which the books leave us in, rather than the number we’ve read? Reading should make us more alive – that’s what is really important. Today it is easier to acquire book treasures than it is to give them the time they deserve. Moreover, to avoid the situation of books remaining lonely monologues, we should discuss them, and bring them into conversation. Here again, we’ll probably start complaining about lack of time. But you had better read this book, which offers you a delightful conversation about books and reading, full of proposals and arguments and debate about books, from the age of Socrates to our own!
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So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance
Editor Publishers Weekly New York 2003/07/28
"The human race publishes a book every thirty seconds," writes Mexican author and consultant Gabriel Zaid. How can the average reader keep up with even a fraction of the latest new releases, let alone the multitude of classics stretching all the way back to Homer and Plato? The prospect is daunting to even the greatest bibliophile; furthermore, Zaid argues, people seem more interested in writing books than reading them (a recent survey shows 81% of Americans feel they should write a book). Though frustrated by this state of affairs, Zaid takes a philosophical perspective on the state of book publishing today, claiming that the industry doesn’t always recognize one of its greatest strengths: its overwhelming diversity. In the publishing industry, a book that appeals to just a few thousand readers stands a good chance of getting published, whereas the commercial film industry and other mass media must function almost exclusively on a mega-budget scale. He celebrates the small printings that appeal to segmented clienteles, specialized niches, and members of different clubs of enthusiasts because "just a few thousand copies, read by the right people, are enough to change the course of conversation, the boundaries of literature, and our intellectual life." Not a groundbreaking book, but an appealing, meditative collection of thoughts and observations on the book industry and the state of literature in the early 21st century. Forecast: Book lovers of all stripes will enjoy this light piece of cultural criticism.
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Whatcha Reading’?
Russell Jacoby The New York Observer New York 2005/08/08
For a bleak period like ours, I find little more bracing than Lewis Mumford’s The Story of Utopias (1922), a spirited defense of utopian thinking against, well, everyone. Insofar as we have pinned our hopes to current movements for reconstruction or revolution, our plans are sickly and debilitated. For something more recent—and a wonderful read, and completely appropriate for a list of recommended books that only spreads guilt inasmuch as few of us will obtain the bruited books—pick up the slender So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance, by the Mexican writer Gabriel Zaid. This is worth the price of admission, if only because he eases our guilt in acquiring books and not reading them, and he eases the pain of those of us who write books that find few readers. But it is more than that—a meditation on why we love books even as we love our laptops. Next to Zaid, I am looking at Yuri Slezkine’s The Jewish Century, which is a perfect match—bigger and denser, but also provocative and thoughtful: "Modernization is about everyone becoming Jewish," and guess what? "No one is better at being Jewish than the Jews themselves." With Mumford, Zaid and Slezkine, I am set. So will you be.
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Overcoming Graphomania
Margo Jefferson The New York Times Book Review New York 2003/11/23
Can we really keep blaming television and our image-driven culture for the decline of reading? In "So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance" (Paul Dry Books), Gabriel Zaid observes that since 1950, when television arrived on the culture scene, the world population has grown by 1.8 percent a year and the publication of books has grown by 2.8 percent a year. "Our universal graphomania produces a million titles a year, in printings of several thousand copies," writes Zaid, a Mexican poet, critic and business writer. He adds that technology already gives us access to whatever book we want, though -publishing and bookselling conglomerates tend to ensure that like the rich, best sellers get benefits denied to others - to struggling midlist books. But Zaid doesn't waste time being sanctimonious about a more refined gentlemanly past. What matters most to him (and us) is how technology and business can better serve readers and how readers can help define culture in fluid, inventive ways. "Just like writers, who make things out of words that are not their own, inventive publishers, booksellers, librarians, anthologizers and critics gather texts that are not theirs into meaningful and appealing assemblages," he says. (The poet in Zaid describes a true assemblage as one in which "noise becomes music; scattered stars acquire an outline, names and even legends, and become recognizable constellations that guide navigation.") I like his approach to our more predictable snobberies too. How often do we scan best-seller lists, lamenting the debased level of mass taste? But for Zaid, "the great barrier to the free circulation of books is the mass of privileged citizens who have college degrees but never learned to read properly." Too often, universities teach students to labor over books rather than devour and glory in them, and "college graduates are more interested in publishing books than reading them." One of the pleasures of "So Many Books" is that its content and form are perfectly synchronized. Zaid makes his points in a vivid, concise way; his text is a compactly designed 144 pages. Each chapter could be a separate essay, but there is a clear overview; "So Many Books" is a whole with an air of improvisation. Zaid writes, "What matters is how we feel, how we see, what we do after reading; whether the street and the clouds and the existence of others mean anything to us; whether the street and the clouds and the existence of others mean anything to us; whether reading makes us, physically, more alive." True, and since the mind is a muscle, what matters is also how one book leads us to another. I have been leery of books about New York; the events of 9/11 have generated so many. But after "So Many Books" I wanted that gave me a sense of plenty: a world with momentum and eccentricity, and with factual boundaries but no imaginative ones. […] In this New York no one myth claims us; we know them all. "Talking about New York is a way of talking about the world," Whitehead writes. I found the talk very artful and somewhat disembodied. But, like the rueful, ebullient "Gangsters and Gold Diggers," this book belongs to what Zaid calls "the true universal culture" —not our old utopian Global Village, but "the Babel like multitude of villages, each the center of the world," where "the universality accessible to us is the finite, limited concrete universality of diverse and disparate conversations."
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Book Currents
Leo Carey The New Yorker New York 2003/10/26
So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading, by Sara Nelson, takes as its title the exasperated cry of literary professionals everywhere, a cry that is echoed by the nearly simultaneous publication of the almost identically titled So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer (Paul Dry Books). Nelson describes herself as an insomniac who is "ravenous for books," and she structures her own book as a record of a single year’s reading, during which time she devours everything from J. M. Coetzee to Somerset Maugham to Mary Higgins Clark to a dictionary of hipster slang. From this starting point, Nelson examines phenomena that will make many readers smile with recognition: the false importance of an overhyped book, the recommendation from a friend that makes you think less of your friend, and, most dreaded of all, the book you feel guilty for not having read. Where Nelson’s approach is personal, Zaid traces the preoccupation with reading back through Dr. Johnson, Seneca, and even the Bible ("Of making many books there is no end"). He emerges as a playful celebrant of literary proliferation, noting that there is a new book published every thirty seconds, and optimistically points out that publishers who moan about low sales "see as a failure what is actually a blessing: The book business, unlike newspapers, films, or television, is viable on a small scale." Zaid, who claims to own more than ten thousand books, says he has sometimes thought that "a chastity glove for authors who can’t contain themselves" would be a good idea. Nonetheless, he cheerfully opines that "the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more."
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Books, Creative Icons of Human Culture Nandkumar Kamat Navhind Times Panaji, Goa, India 2006/04/24 […] The Mexican poet and essayist Gabriel Zaid wrote an interesting book -Reading and publishing in an age of abundance. Zaid mentions that a new book is published in the world every 30 seconds. He writes that just to read the list of authors and titles of all the books available in the world would take us 15 years. It is impossible for anyone to read 99.9 percent of all the books published in the world. Even if no new title is published Zaid says that it would take us a quarter of million years to read every book published. The University of California maintains a database on the information explosion in the world. It reports that an estimated 65 million titles have been published so far. The US library of Congress has 26 million books. UNESCO estimates that every year 10 million new titles are published. But Zaid says that as compared to 100 million children born every year this number is still small. […] What's the situation in India? We're a country of 1050 millions. But it takes years for an edition of just 5,000 copies to be sold. Very few people keep aside a share of their domestic budget for purchasing good books. The library movement has not really reached the grass roots level where people are hungry for information and knowledge. The Marathi book publishers happily report that more books are sold in rural Maharashtra than in the urban areas. To those who can't afford the books the government should purchase large number of copies of good books in vernacular languages. Library movement is a mockery in Goa. Let us take the case of a two years old village library building built from the Rajyasabha MP, Mr Eduardo Faleiro's MPLADS funds at Santa Cruz. It stays locked without having a single book. On the other side people from Pernem, Sattari, Canacona are demanding library premises and funds for books. We need a vibrant book culture in Goa if we intend to invest in the future of the new generation. Let our politicians read and discuss good books in public. Let us aim to deserve "World book city'' honour for Goa someday in future. Hopefully! http://www.navhindtimes.com/articles.php?Story_ID=042411
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¿Hacia dónde van los libros?
Priscilla Delgado La Prensa Panamá 2001/02/11
La gente que quisiera ser culta va con temor a las librerías, se marea ante la inmensidad de todo lo que no ha leído, compra algo que le han dicho que es bueno, hace el intento de leerlo, sin éxito, y cuando tiene ya media docena de libros sin leer, se siente tan mal que no se atreve a comprar otros. (Gabriel Zaid, Los demasiados libros). Así inicia este ensayo que trata sobre el libro, y nos corresponde como libreros por vocación reflexionar sobre este tema: ¿Hacia donde van los libros? Recientemente, la Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara, presentó cerca de 100 mil títulos nuevos en español. Nos preguntamos: ¿Todos estos libros se venden? ¿Cuánto escribe el autor para satisfacer su ego personal y cumplir con el decálogo: siembra un árbol y escribe un libro? ¿Y cuántos escritores tienen la verdadera vocación de escribir y lo hacen para que estas "masas" lectoras disfruten de la interlocución entre el autor y el lector, se remonten a la historia, lloren con una poesía, o se enloquezcan con una maravillosa novela? [...] Creo que la industria del libro deberá decrecer en número de títulos y valores netos, y hablo de decrecer en todas las formas de edición, ya sea en formato de papel o electrónico. [...] (La autora es Presidente de la Cámara Panameña del Libro).
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Bien Trop de Livres
Cécile Desaunay Esprit Paris 2005/11
Les premières phrases du livre de Gabriel Zaid, Bien trop de livres, résument à elles seules I'inquiétude de l'auteur : La lecture de livres croît de façon aritmétique. L’écriture de livres croît de façon exponentielle. Si notre passion pour l’écriture n’est pas maîtrisée, il aura, dans un futur proche. plus de gens pour écrire les livres que pour les lire. […] Avec un humour acerbe. Zaid détaille, la passion des hommes (et en particulier des universitaires) pour I'écrit et constate que I'humanité est arrivée à un record: la publication d'un livre toutes les trente secondes, nous plongeant ainsi chaque jour un peu plus dans I'incapacité totale de lire ne serait-ce que le millième de ces publications. Tout le monde veut écrire, mais personne n'a le temps de lire. En se plaçant du point de vue des éditeurs, Zaid compare la production de livres à celle des films, en expliquant que, contrairement au cinéma, I'industrie du livre peut se permettre d'éditer des textes qui ne seront lus que par 300 personnes. D'ailleurs, préciset-il, ces ouvrages constituent la grande majorité des publications actuelles des maisons d'édition, ce qui permet de maintenir la diversité des titres disponibles. Ainsi, le paradoxe est que les sociétés les plus riches et les plus développées sont celles qui publient le plus de livres de faibles ventes. La majorité des livres n'est donc pas écrite pour le grand public, mais pour des personnes prêtes à payer pour lire des ouvrages spécialisés. D'où la conclusion de l'auteur selon laquelle I'édition est un domaine dont la diversité n'a pas été affectée par le progrés, bien au contraire. Ainsi, alors que la télévision fontionne grâce á un nombre très élevé de téléspectateurs auxquels elle offre un même contenu indifférencié et décevant, le livre, lui, adresse à un public Iimité un message personnalisé. Et, ironiquement, beaucoup de bestsellers n'étaient à I'origine que des représentants de ces livres «á petit tirage». En attendant Godot s'est ainsi vendu à 125 exemplaires la première année de sa parution. Zaid rappelle également trois lieux communs concernant le livre, à savoir qu'il constitue le premier des moyens de communication apparu dails I'histoire et qu'il est, aujourd'hui encore, le plus noble, d'autre part que I'influence des livres est énorme sur le plan culturel, enfin que les livres sont chers, ce qui eimpêche leur diffitsion. Ce coût des livres est ressenti à la fois par les lecteurs, les auteurs et les éditeurs. Ainsi, le lecteur d'un journal ou d'un livre doit-il payer un prix plus élevé que le public de la télévision ou de la radio. En outre, lire est coûteux dans une société moderne oú le temps est pour beaucoup trop précieux pour être perdu en recherche et/ou en lecture de livres: On justifie l'achat de livres qu'on ne lira jamais parce qu'ils sont à portée de main, telle une possibilité, et qu'ils peu-vent être montrés aux visiteurs ou cités dans une conversation. Lire est un luxe de pauvres, de prisonniers, de retraités, de malades, d’étudiants oisif. Pour les écrivains eux-mêmes, consacrer trop de temps à un livre peut se, révéler n'être qu’une perte de temps si l’auteur exerce une profession par ailleurs et ne dispose pas d'un temps libre illimité. Enfin, le prix du livre est élevé pour les éditeurs et pour les libraires, qui doivent prédire le succès des livres et courir le risque de pertes économiques importantes s'ils investissent beaucoup de temps et d'argent dans un ouvrage qui ne se vend pas. Ainsi, Zaid explique que les bons éditeurs et libraires voient les livres sous deux perspectives : celle du texte et celle du commerce. Ce qui implique nécessairement des titres perdants que ce soit par erreur ou par nécessité. L’objectif est alors de faire en sorte que les bénéfices issus des titres gagnants soient supérieurs à ces pertes. D'autre part, pour limiter ces risques, les maisons d'édition disposent désormais de systèmes numériques d'impression à la demande appelés printing on demand (Pod), qui permettent de photocopier ou d'imprimer un seul exemplaire d'un ouvrage, évitant ainsi de stocker des exemplaires dont la vente est incertaine. De même, Zaid rappelle que le site internet Amazon.com, qui propose des e-books et des livres d'occasion, a connu beaucoup plus de succès avec ces derniers, la grande majorité des ventes se faisant entre tiers, c'est-à-dire que des libraires vendent par I'intemédiare du site et livrent directement leurs clients. Toutes ces difficultés rencontrées par le livre et le monde de I'édition ont donné lieu à d'innombrables prophéties annonçant la fin du livre, qui ne résisterait plus à l'attrait et à la facilité des nouvelles technologies. Pourtant, rappelle l'auteur, «seul un tableau est supérieur à un livre» dans le sens où un livre permet de chercher et de trouver facilement, en quelques instants, alors que pour aceéder au contenu d'un programme de télévision ou d'un film enregistré sur cassette ou Dvd, il faut se plier aux contraintes de la technologie et savoir exactement ce que I'on cherche, ou chercher longtemps. D’ailleurs, I'échec des e-books, les livres électroniques, s'explique avant tout parce qu'ils sont beaucoup moins pratiques à lire qu’un livre traditionnel. Les personnes qui découvrent une œuvre dans sa version électronique ont donc souvent tendance à l'acheter dans sa version papier. Par ailleurs, la baisse continue du prix du livre et l’augmentation du nombre d'étudiants permettent l'augmentation des publications par la spécialisation croissante des thèmes. Gabriel Zaid conclut avee I'idée que «la tendance à la concentration a ses limites dans I'édition. La tendance à la diversité, non». Bien trop de livres s'ajoute donc peut-être à I'infini des publications humaines, mais il constitue un manuel instructif et actualisé du monde de I'édition et de ses défis.
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Hermès, saint patron des éditeurs
Eli Flory La Presse Littéraire 2005/12 Paris
Gabriel Zaid, dans son essai paru récemment aux Belles-Lettres, Bien trop de livres?, n'est pas dupe: «La grande partie des bénéfices d'une maison d'édition sont produits par très peu de titres et parfois par un seul» Que les éditeurs n'ont-ils alors pas encore mis au point un «Hit Book Science» renifleur de best-sellers, comme il existe dans l'industrie du disque le «Hit Song Science»? Ce programme informatique, acheté par Sony et Universal, décide des tubes de demain à partir de la vingtaine de critères qui entrent dans la composition d'un succès. Un tel système permettrait aux éditeurs frileux de ne pas laisser filer les Dan Brown, Gavalda, et autres Harry Potter, refusés d'abord par beaucoup d'entre eux, comme l'ont été Lautréamont, Proust et consorts. Car, il faut bien l'avouer, cette étiquette de «best-seller» recouvrent des réalités très différentes, qu'Umberto Eco avait résumées de la manière suivante: Les best-sellers regroupent d'un côté les «best sold», comme la Bible et la Divine Comédie, et de l'autre les «best to sell» vite faits, vite vendus, vites oubliés. Ainsi Zaid rappelle que Le Labyrinthe de la solitude d'Octavio Paz s'est vendu à plus d'un million d'exemplaires. Mais la vente des mille premiers avait pris des années et I'ouvrage n'avait été réédité que neuf ans pIus tard. Quant à Jérôme Lindon, patron des Éditions de Minuit, il avait vendu 125 exemplaires d'En attendant Godot la première année de sa parution. Aujourd'hui, il s'en écoule 35000 volumes par an. Une telle distinction permet d'en finir avec le mythe romantique de l'écrivain, errant seul dans la cité, incompris de tous à l'exception de quelques «happy few». Parce qu'on suppose que le commerce est sale et sans noblesse, Zaid souligne «l'ambivalence ou, la duplicité avec lesquelles les cercles culturels désirent et craignent à la fois le succès (exotérique, externe, commercial): Il est pIus important de gagner le respect de la fraternité ésotérique que d'avoir du public. Ne pas atteindre le public c'est, en fin de compte, la négation de Ia culture: l'absence de communication. Mais c'est aussi se sauver de la perdition commerciale et du succès. Une garantie de pureté. Le succès commercial peut être contre-productif et amener à la perte de crédit auprès des meilleurs cercles. Nous voulons que les livres se démocratisent, qu'ils puissent être lus par tous, qu'ils soient accessibles partout, mais qu'ils ne cessent pas d'être sacrés.» On ne saurait mieux dire! On se rappelle, par exemple, de la condamnation sans appel d'un Pierre Marcelle, dans les colonnes de Libération, au moment du transfer de Michel Houellebecq de Flammarion à Fayard: «Houellebecq le révolté, dont les livres se promouvront désormais comme une paire de Nike, fait à l'affaire un amusant alibi. Mais il est mort.» Face à ce dilemme, quelle posture l'éditeur doitil adopter? «Les bons éditeurs et libraires, écrit Zaid, voient les livres sous deux perspectives: celle du texte (organiser une conversation, créer une constellation attrayante pour le lecteur) et celle du commerce. Ce qui implique nécessairement des titres perdants que ce soit par erreur ou par nécessité (quand un titre de vente faible améliore le sens de la constellation). Le jeu consiste à faire en sorte que la plupart de titres ne soient pas perdants et que certains aient suffisamment de succès pour que l'opération soit rentable.» Teresa Cremisi, éditrice charismatique de Gallimard, passé récemment chez Flammarion, résume ainsi la gageure du métier de l'édition: «Trop culturelle et raffinnée, elle devient caricaturale. Trop attentive aux chiffres, elle s'affaiblit. Le métier d'éditeur est un métier hybride, fils de la culture et du commerce.» S'il fallait donner un saint patron aux éditeurs, Hermès ferait bonne figure, lui l'inventeur de la lyre et le dieu du commerce. En digne représentant de la tradition alchimique, il pourrait même rétorquer à certains écrivaillons, très plébiscités pourtant: «Vous m'avez donné de la boue et j'en ai fait de l'or.» Du côlé du lecteur, avoir tout lu et surtout lu ce dont tout le monde parle, n'est que vanité... L'essentiel est ailleurs. Zaid nous le confirme: «Peut-être toute expérience d'infinité est-elle illusoire si elle-n'est pas, précisément, une expérience de finitude. Peut-être pour cela, la mesure de la lecture n'est-elle pas le nombre de livres lus mais l'état dans lequel ils, nous laissent. Que nous importe d'être cultivé, à la page, et d'avoir lu tous les livres? Ce qui importe c'est notre façon de sentir, de regarder, d'agir-, aprés avoir lu. Si la rue, les nuages et I'existence des autres ont quelque chose à nous dire. Si lire nous rend, physiquement, plus réels.»
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Bien trop de livres
Astrid de Larminat Le Figaro Littéraire Paris 2005/12/22
Il se publie un livre toutes les trente secondes! Surproduction? Gabriel Zaïd, essayiste et poéte mexicain, préfère se réjouir de cette profusion. Elle prouve, en effet, que les petites maisons d'édition et les tirages confidentiels, qui constituent le meilleur antidote à la pensée unique, sont économiquement viables. Avec humour et brio, l'auteur, convoquant Socrate, Sénèque, l'Ecclésiaste, Montaigne, lbn Kaldoun, compare la culture universelle à une chaîne de conversations, celles qu'engage chaque auteur avec son public, fût-il restreint. L'essentiel n'étant pas d'avoir «lu tous les livres» mais que chacun trouve celui qui le «libère et le transporte vers une lecture de lui-même et de sa vie». A cet égard, l'intercession des éditeurs, libraires et critiques littéraires est cruciale. Le revers de ce morcellement de la littérature: que disparaissent les références communes, notamment classiques, sans lesquelles la conversation se tarit.
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Graphomanie universelle
Frédérique Roussel Libération Paris 2005/10/06
L'humanité écrit plus qu'elle n’est capable de lire.» La prolifération des livres est l’objet de cet essai aux accents de pamphlet du poète mexicain GabrieI Zaid. Les chiffires écrasent même le lecteur impénitent. Entre 1450 et 1550 premier siècle d'existence de l’imprimerie, on a publié environ 35000 titres. La seule seconde moitié du XXe siècle en a produit 36 millions. L’humanité publie un livre toutes les 30 secondes. Ce n’est plus la multiplication des pains et des poissons, mais des livres par l’opération d’une industrie florissante. Pour affirmer aujourd’hui: «La chair est triste, hélas! et j’ai lu tous les livres.» Mallarmé devrait rallonger les étagères de sa bibliothèque d’au moins 20 kilomètres. Et même si demain, on arrêtait la fabrication de livres, il faudrait 250,000 ans pour prendre connaissance de ceux déjà écrits. De nos jours, tout le monde a une histoire á raconter, mais peu ont du temps pour lire. La «graphomanie universelle», engendre un million de titres par an dont la majorité ne seront jamais commentés, ni traduits ni réédités. «Ils sont vendus (s'ils se vendent) comme nouveauté mais, aprés la courte vente de lancement, il n'y a pas de réédition. Ils restent (s'ils restent) dans les bibliothèques des amis, dans quelques solderies, dans l’un.ou l’autre index bibliographique, pas dans l'histoire universelle.» Dans ces piles à rotation infernale, on trouve une immense majorité qui ne s’écrit pas pour le grand public et à l’opposé «des livres lamentables qui atteignent des publics massifs». Même les classiques sont recyclés, fin du fin des techniques de marketing qui ont trouvé le moyen d’en rayer la transmission d’une génération à la suivante. Car fabriquer des livres reste bon marché, remarque Gabriel Zaid, par rapport aux films en tout cas. Ils nécessitent pas de publicité et peuvent trouver une rentabilité sur quelques milliers d'intéressés, á la différence de la presse, de la radio et de la télévision. Ils ne sont pas obligés d'être des best-sellers. Les Editions de Minuit ont écoulé 125 exemplaires d’ En attendat Godot la première année, alors qu’il s’en vend 35 000 par an. Des pythies ont annoncé la fin de l’imprimé à plusieurs reprises et il n’a jamais été si prospère. Entreprise en ligne, Amazon a finalement trouvé un marché dans la revente d’occasion, plutôt que dans l’e-book. Et l’utopie d’une bibliotheque virtuelle universelle ne pourra se passer de médiateurs (éditeurs, bibliothécaires, critiques, enseignants...) qui «continueront à faire la diférence entre le chaos qui inhibe et la diversité qui dialogue». Bien trop de livres? contient aussi d’espiègles propositions destinées à rester sur le papier: «Un gant de chasteté pour les écrivains incapables de se retenir», «un service national de geishas littéraires, docteurs en littérature et en psychologie de l’ecrivain» pour consoler les écrivains ignorés ou le rationnement, qui exigerait de tout auteur potentiel d’attester de ce qu’il a lu auparavant. Mais la vraie question demeure: comment un livre, parmi des millions, peutil recontrer ses lecteurs? Collection de pensées et d’observation sur l’industrie du livre au début du XXIe siècle, Bien trop de livres? se veut aussi une ode à la lecture, plaisir pur dont la mesure «n’est pas le nombre de livres lus mais l’état dans lequel ils nous laissent».
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Production littéraire: une santé ébloussante L’offre pléthorique de l’édition ne nuit pas à la qualité. Un constat positif de Gabriel Zaid.
Marc Riglet Lire Paris 2005/09
Qui aime lire et n’est pas inquiet pour le livre? Car il y a, d’abord, la terrible prophétie du sociologue MacLuhan qui ne promet rien de moins que sa fin. Il y a, ensuite, et en vrac, l’idée que les best-sellers sont la ruine des bons livres, que, de toute façon, nos enfants lisent moins, quand ce n’est pas l’illetrisme qui gagne, que, d’ailleurs, l’édition court à sa perte en publiant n'importe quoi et en croyant se sativer par I'inflation des titres... On pourrait continuer et même conclure ce lamento par une cuistrerie en rappelant que Socrate avait sans doute de bonnes raisons de préférer la conversation aux livres tant leur fréquentation expose aus interrogations les plus déprimantes! Et pourtat, comme le fait remarquer Gabriel Zaid: «C’est grâce aus livres que nous savons que Socrate se méfiait d’eux.» Il faut donc remercier Platon d’avoir pris des libertés avec l’enseignement de son maître et constater que, de quelque côté que l’on se tourne, le livre manifeste une santé éblouissante. Quantitativement, c'en est même indécent: «L’humanité publie un livre toutes les trente secondes» et Mallarmé se haussait du col en soutenant que la chair est triste et qu'il avait lit tous les livres! Encore échappe-t-on aux neuf manuscrits refusés sur dix qui sont le ratio ordinaire des éditeurs. Mais c'est surtout qualitativement qu’il y a lieu de se réjouir car I'édition est bien le seul secteur où la production de masse ne réduit pas la diversité. Ainsi, «I'économie du cinéma exige d'éliminer 99% des films possibles. Celle du livre, non: si le titre est destiné au grand public, mais s’il ne l’est pas, il peut être viable malgré tout. Il suffit qu’il présente un intérêt pour quelques millies de lecteurs.» Loin d’être un symptôme d’une industrie précaire, l’inflation des titres est le luxe d’une société riche et cultivée. Vous n’êtes pas convaincu? Cédez alors au vertige des premiers mots du brillant essai de Gabriel Zaid: «La lecture de livres croît de façon arithmétique. L’écriture de livres croît de façon exponentielle.» si on ne fait rien, il y aura bientôt plus de gens pour écrire des livres que pour les lire». Mais pourquoi faudrait-il faire quelque chose?
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The indestructible book, subject of an illuminating volume
Frank Wilson The Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia, PA 2003/10/12
The title of this book is the daily lament of every book-review editor on the planet. Naturally, much of what Mexican poet and essayist Gabriel Zaid has to say in this often witty and always elegantly turned meditation about the ever-rising tide of books -one is published every 30 seconds- will have those same editors shouting hosannas as they read. But some of it will only add to their dismay. No less a figure than Socrates was down on books. He thought them a poor substitute for conversation. We know this, Zaid notes dryly, thanks to books. Moreover, Socrates appears to have been wrong. Books have in fact enabled conversations begun in Athens 2 1/2 millennia ago -and many others since then- to proceed right up to the present day. "The true role of books," Zaid writes, "is to continue our conversation by other means." Zaid’s book is certainly informative. Take, for instance, the matter of books versus television. "From 1947 to 1960, the percentage of households with television sets jumped from almost nil to 88 percent," Zaid observes. "Nevertheless, the number of titles published each year in the same period more than doubled. Even more surprising: from 1960 to 1968, the number of titles doubled again... whereas the number of homes with television sets could naturally only rise to the saturation point: 98 percent (Statistical Abstract of the United States)." As Zaid makes plain, repeated predictions of the book's demise have proved to be not only premature, but grossly wrong: "About 100 million children are born each year -far fewer than the number of books printed!" There are plenty of reasons for the book's continuing appeal. One, interestingly enough, is that books can be skimmed. "In this sense, only paintings are superior to books... A film or a television show although it is visual, cannot be taken in at a glance... Nor can it be skimmed." Another point in the book's favor is that it can be read at whatever pace one chooses. One can speed-read or savor each phrase. Books are easy to carry around, and you don't need to schedule your time to read them - the TV show is on at a particular time; you either have to watch it then or record it. Books are cheap, not only to buy, but also, comparatively, to publish. And so books can be almost infinitely various. "Books can be best-sellers, but they don't have to be." Which is why there are so many of them: "If not a single book were published from this moment on, it would still take 250,000 years for us to acquaint ourselves with those books already written. Simply reading a list of them (author and title) would take some fifteen years... Our simple physical limitations make it impossible for us to read 99.9 percent of the books that are written." And yet - writing is an essentially disappointing undertaking. Honest writers are never completely satisfied with what they have done. As T.S. Eliot put it, "Between the idea / And the reality... Falls the Shadow." Reading, on the other hand, when done properly, is essentially satisfying because it fully engages our intelligence. "Learning to read is the integration of units of ever-more-complex meaning." Consider word recognition. "The difference between spelling a word out and seeing it at a glance is enormous, and the latter skill isn’t acquired without practice." And that's only the beginning. "Next, all the words in a sentence must be integrated. The whole process is repeated on a second level... And so on, until it is possible to read a paragraph, which is as far as many literate people get." For there is yet another level, which is "to grasp a book all at once, in its entirety." Unfortunately, this skill, Zaid notes, is possessed by very few. "Statistics published by UNESCO make it evident that the explosion in the number of books published in the 20th century parallels the proliferation of academic degrees. But the explosion says more about supply than demand. College graduates are more interested in publishing books than reading them." So true readers remain a distinct minority. This is because "reading is difficult, it takes time away from the pursuit of a career, and it doesn't gain anyone points... Publishing is a means to an end. Reading is useless..." So why do some people take to it so? The answer to that question may be quite simple. Perhaps it's because, as Zaid says, "it's a vice, pure pleasure."
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Il marketing sforna libri da essibire Un brillante saggio di Gabriel Zaid sui "troppi libri" spiega alcune contraddizioni del mercato editoriale internazionale e italiano
Ferdinando Crespi La Discussione Roma 2005/11/23
È da poco arrivato nelle librerie un volume intelligente come pochi altri, ricco di dati, considerazioni e per nulla privo, quando necessario, di sense of humour. Stiamo parlando de "I troppi libri. Leggere e pubblicare in un'epoca di abbondanza", di Gabriel Zaid, ed. Jaca Book. L'apertura è una formula matematica incontrovertibile: la lettura dei libri au-menta in modo aritmetico, mentre la scrittura lo fa in modo esponenziale. Il genere umano, insomma, scrive più di quanto non riesca a leggere. L'anonimo autore del Qoèlet, 2200 anni fa, aveva capito tutto: "…i libri si molti-plicano senza fine, ma il molto studio affatica il corpo". Facciamo due conti: l'uomo produce un libro ogni trenta secondi. Se leggessimo un libro al giorno, ci perderemmo gli altri 4 mila freschi di stampa nello stesso giorno. Se calcoliamo il prezzo medio di un volume in 30 dollari, e lo spessore medio in due centimetri, ci vorrebbero 30 milioni di dollari e 25 chilometri di mensole per l'aggiornamento annuale della propria biblioteca. Per chi avesse tempo e denaro, c'è di più: per percorrere l'elenco di tutti i libri pubblicati fino a oggi, ci vorrebbero 15 anni. Per leggere invece tutti questi libri, ma supponendo - sbagliandosi - che nel frattempo non se ne stampino più, ci vorrebbero 250 mila anni (al ritmo di quattro libri la settimana). Un lettore forte, a tempo pieno, potrebbe leggere 200 libri all'anno: sarebbe una media eccezionale, ma insufficiente: leggerebbe un libro ogni dieci o quindici-mila. Ma il libro non doveva morire, anzi esser già morto? No. Il libro è come il fuoco, l'alfabeto, la ruota: non è sostituibile, è un'invenzione formidabile. Basta guardare l'aumento esponenziale delle pubblicazioni: nel 1550 furono pubblicati 500 titoli; 50 mila nel 1850; nel primo secolo di vita della stampa (1450-1550) furono pubblicati 35000 titoli; nell'ultimo cinquantennio del Novecento 36 milioni. Tuttavia, sempre più autori si sentono in dovere di far sentire in obbligo il prossimo ogni volta che scrivono qualcosa. Il problema è dolorosamente chiaro: col progressivo aumento della scolarizzazione, non aumentano i lettori, ma quelli che vogliono essere letti. Soluzioni? Il poeta Judson Jerome sostiene che se gli scrittori fossero realmente riguardo-si, inserirebbero una banconota da 5 dollari in ogni loro libro in circolazione, come riconoscimento simbolico del tempo che hanno chiesto ai loro lettori e ami-ci. "La moltitudine dei libri dissipa lo spirito", scriveva Seneca, mentre Don Chisciotte diceva: "c'è chi scrive libri e li sforna come se fossero pane". Karl Popper ipotizza che la cultura democratica occidentale sia nata con la creazione del libro ad Atene, nel V secolo a.C.: il libro come prodotto commerciale ha sostituito il libro come oggetto sacro. Ma davvero? Forse sì, forse no. Il libro è diventato un feticcio (fenomeno già deplorato da Socrate nel Fedro), un simulacro post-moderno da esibire nella propria biblioteca: ogni collezione di libri privata è un programma di lettura. Ma esibire libri non letti, far bella mostra di collane, antologie, anche enciclopedie è come emettere assegni senza copertura: è un inganno. È colpa della non editoria, dell'invenzione di libri non destinati alla lettura, quelli da esibire: libri d'arte, collane di cucina, atlanti, enciclopedie… ingannando tutti, a partire da se stessi. L'editoria senza editori, fatta dalle holding che comprano sigle per occupare il mercato, porta al totem editoriale, al feticcio casereccio. Il marketing sostituisce l'editore e il libraio, presentan-do il prodotto accompagna-to non più dalla scheda tecnica e dal sunto, ma dal budget investito e da investire in pubblicità. In questo modo la non-editoria non vive a lungo (tant'è che il loro capitale è periodicamente ricomposto), trascinando con sé la filiera del libro; e, inoltre, occupa e manipola lo spazio, limitando o impedendo l'accesso a chi ha da dire qualcosa che valga la pena. L'interdizione avviene attraverso la gestione distributiva, di acquisto e vendita dei prodotti: le holding e le grandi catene stanno soffocando le librerie indipendenti. Col paradossale effetto di riempire con sempre meno titoli (rispetto a qualsiasi libreria di provincia) preselezionati (i best seller annunciati e imposti) spazi di vendita sempre più grandi e attraenti, ma uccidendo la spina dorsale dell'editoria, ossia il catalogo.
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I libri del mese di Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby Internazionale Roma 2004/11/07
Per leggere un elenco (autore e titolo) di tutti i libri pubblicati non basterebbero quindici anni. A che serve? Comprati •Vivere attraverso le lettere, Anton Cechov •The collected letters of Dylan Thomas •The letters of Kingsley Amis •I guerrieri di Salamina, Jarvis Cercas •Timoleon torna a casa, Dan Rhodes •The wisdom of crowds, James Surowiecki •Stasiland: stories from behind the Berlin wall, Anna Funder •Seven types of ambiguity, Elliot Perlman Letti •How I live now, Meg Rosoff •Santi e bugiardi, Maile Meloy •Through a glass darkly: the life of Patrick Hamilton, Nigel Jones •Padre e figlio. Studio di due temperamenti, Edmund Gosse •The siege of pleasure, Patrick Hamilton •So many books, Gabriel Zaid [...] In So many books Gabriel Zaid tenta di affrontare la questione che sembra spuntare fuori in questa rubrica: a che cavolo serve? A che cavolo serve leggere questi bastardi, e a che cavolo serve scriverli? Non sono certo che Zaid riesca ad andare molto più lontano di me, ma qui ci sono delle grandi statistiche: Zaid calcola, per esempio, che ci vorrebbero quindici anni solo per leggere un elenco di tutti i libri mai pubblicati (solo "autore e titolo" – è molto preciso. Presumibilmente, aggiungendo altri sette o otto anni si possono conoscere i nomi degli editori). Credo che Zaid voglia farci disperare, ma io mi sono piuttosto rincuorato: non solo adesso so che è possibile – finirei intorno ai 60-65 anni – ma sono seriamente tentato. Una buona fetta dell'apparire colto, dopo tutto, consiste nel sapere chi ha scritto cosa: qualcuno cita Patrick Hamilton, tu annuisci saggiamente e dici: Hangover square. E questo di solito è abbastanza. Il momento migliore di Zaid, tuttavia, arriva nel secondo paragrafo, quando dice che "i veri colti sono capaci di possedere migliaia di libri non letti senza perdere la calma o il desiderio di averne di più". Sono io! E voi, probabilmente! Siamo noi! "Migliaia di libri non letti"! "I veri colti"! Guardate l'elenco di questo mese: le lettere di Cechov, le lettere di Amis, le lettere di Dylan Thomas… Che probabilità ci sono di riuscire a leggerle tutte? Ho cominciato con Cechov, ma Amis e Dylan Thomas sono finiti dritti al loro posto definitivo sullo scaffale, piuttosto che su una qualsiasi pila temporanea di prossime letture. Ho visto il volume di Dylan Thomas in vendita a 15 sterline (da 50 che era) proprio dopo aver letto sul New Yorker la splendida recensione di una nuova biografia su di lui; le lettere di Amis costavano cinque sterline. Ma mentre stavo trovando per loro una collocazione nella sezione "arte e letteratura non narrativa" (personalmente trovo che, per scopi domestici, il sistema Trivial Pursuit funzioni meglio del Dewey), all'improvviso ho avuto una piccola rivelazione: tutti i libri che possediamo, quelli letti come quelli non letti, sono la più piena espressione di noi stessi che abbiamo a disposizione. Anche la mia musica mi rappresenta, ovviamente; ma visto che mi piace davvero solo il rock'n'roll e le sue variazioni, enormi parti di me – la mia vena lirica raramente presa in esame, per esempio – non sono rappresentate nella mia raccolta di cd. E non ho lo spazio sui muri o i soldi per tutte le opere d'arte che vorrei, e la mia casa è un gran casino, rovinato dai bambini… Ma con ogni anno che passa, e con ogni acquisto capriccioso, le nostre biblioteche diventano sempre più in grado di esprimere chi siamo, che i libri vengano letti oppure no. Forse questo non vale le trenta sterline che ho scialacquato in quelle raccolte di lettere, lo ammetto, ma deve pur valere qualcosa, no?
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Los demasiados libros
Néstor Alfredo Noriega
Didascalia Rosario 1973/04
En las postrimerías del año pasado y como homenaje al Año Internacional del Libro, propiciado por la Unesco, las Ediciones Lohlé lanzaron este interesante y oportuno ensayo sobre el problema actual del libro, su lectura, su costo, su impresión, su promoción, su modo de llegar a las masas. Gabriel Zaid es mejicano (Monterrey 1934) y ha incursionado ya con éxito los caminos de la poesía, de la crítica y del ensayo. Justamente, una mejor comprensión de Los demasiados libros demandaría la lectura del logrado ensayo anterior de Zaid La máquina de cantar (Editorial Siglo XXI, México, 1970, 2ª. edición.). El breve Prólogo que inaugura el libro comienza diciendo: "Cada minuto se publica un libro en algún lugar del planeta. Esto hace medio millón al año. (Cerca de 40,000 en español; de los cuales la mitad en América). ¿No hay aquí un hecho central, para entender algunas realidades económicas, sociales y operacionales del libro?" (pág. 7). Y agrega enseguida: "La ambigüedad sacramental del libro ("material/espiritual"), cierta inocencia tecnológica en darlo por superado, una idea incoherente de salvar a las masas, algunas prácticas gremiales equivocadas, favorecen la difusión de absurdos, ampliamente aceptados. Por ejemplo: Que el libro ha sido superado tecnológicamente por los medios audiovisuales; que el libro es bueno y la televisión mala; que el crecimiento de la televisión ha sido a costa del libro; que no se puede ser culto sin haber leído tal" (pág. 7-8). Estos son los conceptos axiales que el autor desarrolla en este original ensayo y en que da un margen más amplio a los interrogantes sobre la difusión del libro (capítulo VII) y al precio y tiraje óptimo del libro (capítulo VIII). En estos dos últimos extensos capítulos muestra el autor una competencia poco común, avalada por consultas que él realizara a algunas editoriales latinoamericanas, entre otras la que edita este libro. En un momento en que el libro abunda cada día más y en que los problemas económicos y sociales relativos a su publicación y divulgación proliferan en forma ininterrumpida, la lectura de Los demasiados libros —escrito con claridad, con discreta elegancia— vienen de perlas a cuantos, directa o indirectamente, tienen algo que ver con el viejo e instituible arte de editar y de leer libros.
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October 2004
Nick Hornby The Believer San Francisco, CA 2004
Books bought: Chekhov: A Life in Letters Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters The Letters of Kingsley Amis Soldiers of Salamis —Javier Cercas Timoleon Vieta Come Home — Dan Rhodes The Wisdom of Crowds —James Surowiecki Liars and Saints —Maile Meloy Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall —Anna Funder Seven Types of Ambiguity —Elliot Perlman				Books Read: How I Live Now —Meg Rosoff Liars and Saints —Maile Meloy Through a Glass Darkly: Life of Patrick Hamilton —Nigel Jones Father and Son —Edmund The Siege of Pleasure —Patrick Hamilton So Many Books —Gabriel Zaid
[...] In So Many Books, Gabriel Zaid attempts to grapple with the question that seems constantly to arise in this column, namely, Why bloody bother? Why bother reading the bastards, and why bother writing them? I'm not sure he gets a lot further than I've ever managed, but there are some great stats here: Zaid estimates, for example, that it would take us fifteen years simply to read a list of all the books ever published. ("Author and title" -he's very precise. You can, presumably, add on another seven or eight years if you want to know the names of the publishers.) I think he intends to make us despair, but I was actually rather heartened: not only can I now see that it's possible —I’d be finished some time in my early sixties— but I'm seriously tempted. A good chunk of coming across as educated, after all, is just a matter of knowing who wrote what: someone mentions Patrick Hamilton, and you nod sagely and say, Hangover Square, and that's usually enough. If I read the list, something might stick in the memory, because God knows that the books themselves don't. Zaid's finest moment, however, comes in his second paragraph, when he says that "the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more." That's me! And you, probably! That's us! "Thousands of unread books"! "Truly cultured"! Look at this months list: Chekhov’s letters, Amis's letters, Dylan Thomas’s letters... What are the chances of getting through that lot? I've started on the Chekhov, but the Amis and the Dylan Thomas have been put straight into their permanent home on the shelves, rather than onto any sort of temporary pending pile. The Dylan Thomas I saw remaindered for fifteen quid (down from fifty) just after I'd read a terrific review of a new Thomas biography in the New Yorker; the Amis letters were a fiver. But as I was finding a home for them in the Arts and Lit nonfiction section (I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey), I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. My music is me, too, of course- but as I only really like rock and roll and its mutations, huge chunks of me- my rarely examined operatic streak, for example —are unrepresented in my CD collection. And I don't have the wall space or the money for all the art I would want, and my house is a shabby mess, ruined by children... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not. Maybe that's not worth the thirty–odd quid I blew on those collections of letters, admittedly, but it's got to be worth something, right? ˜
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The Joys of Reading
Lauren Roberts The South Coast Beacon Santa Barbara, CA 2003/11/06
[…] So Many Books (Paul Dry Books) is a small volume with large ideas. Author Gabriel Zaid, well known throughout the Spanish–speaking world, has now, with this translation, been brought to the attention of the English–speaking one. And how fortunate we are to have this original mind sharing its distinctive observations in a compilation of superb essays that explore the relationships among reading, writing and publishing and the outcomes of those relationships for readers.
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Livros Demais!
Felipe Lindoso Amigos do Livro Sâo Paulo, Brasil 2004
[...] Várias coisas me fascinam no livro de Gabriel Zaid, a começar pela prosa provocadora e bem-humorada com que trata de assuntos que são preocupações comuns a tantos que procuram pensar as questões da produção, distribuição e venda dos livros: editores e livreiros. E aos autores, querendo compreender o mistério da venda ou do encalhe de suas obras. E, certamente, também aos leitores interessados em saber como é possível encontrar, no mar de títulos, aquele livro que lhe interessa ler naquela ocasião específica. Somos – editores e livreiros – personagens essenciais para que as idéias dos autores deixem de ser simples manuscritos (ou datiloscritos, ou arquivos digitais) e se transformem nos livros que caem na vida. Pois os livros, como os filhos, caem na vida sem controle dos pais e seguem sua trajetória sem que os autores, como os pais, possam controlá-los. Sem a certeza de que chegarão ou não às mãos dos leitores para os quais foram escritos. Zaid demonstra um paradoxo: existem livros demais no mundo. Tantos que é impossível para um leitor – mesmo o mais voraz e impenitente – conhecer até mesmo a lista de títulos publicados; entretanto, isso não apenas é bom como, assinala Zaid, o fenômeno vai aumentar, graças aos progressos tecnológicos que a cada dia facilitam o trabalho de edição. Qual o "ardil 22" da questão? O problema não é editar. O complicado é fazer que cada livro alcance o número ideal de seus leitores, de forma que haja um "encontro feliz" entre o que o autor quis dizer e o que determinados leitores precisam ler. Aí entram em jogo os complicados mecanismos que envolvem editores, distribuidores e livreiros, além de gráficos e distribuidores. [...] Gabriel Zaid não apresenta receitas. Mostra os problemas e dá indicações das estratégias para enfrentá-los. Indicações que são preciosas neste país sem política específica que facilite o acesso da população aos bens culturais; sem bibliotecas; com livrarias que têm que concorrer com o governo federal para vender livros. O que resta esperar é que este livro chegue precisamente às mãos daqueles que podem tomar atitudes para que o caminho entre o livro e seu leitor seja mais suave. Uma coisa, porém, é certa: leitores ideais ou não, todos os que mergulharem em Livros demais! vão aprender e se divertir muito. Felipe Lindoso é antropólogo, jornalista, editor, foi assessor político da CBL, é consultor do CERLALC para o Brasil e autor do livro O Brasil pode ser um país de leitores?
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Os caminhos do livro, em obras da Summus Editorial
Irineu Ramos e Ivani Cardoso Barcarolla Sâo Paulo 2004/05/08
"O Brasil pode ser um país de leitores?", de Felipe Lindoso e prefácio assinado pelo presidente da Record e ex-presidente do Sindicato Nacional de Editores de Livros, Sérgio Machado, e Livros demais! -Sobre ler, escrever e publicar, do crítico e ensaísta mexicano, Gabriel Zaid, traçam um perfil dos caminhos do livro no Brasil e no mundo e procuram desvendar os mistérios dos sucessos e fracassos do mundo editorial. As novidades são da Summus Editorial. As duas obras são imperdíveis para autores, editores, livreiros, distribuidores, educadores, profissionais e estudantes de comunicação e leitores. [...]Complementares, ambas traçam um retrato dos caminhos do livro - e seus desafios - até o encontro (ou desencontro) com o leitor e procuram desvendar os mistérios e dificuldades do intrincado mundo editorial, em cada uma de suas etapas. Obrigatória para os profissionais do mercado do livro e da área cultural, "O Brasil pode ser um país de leitores?" e Livros demais! respondem também à dúvidas e angústias dos leitores, sobretudo a parcela cada vez maior de atormentados com a certeza de que jamais conseguirão ler uma ínfima parcela dos livros que gostariam. [...] Felipe Lindoso assina também a tradução de Livros demais! - Sobre ler, escrever e publicar, de Gabriel Zaid, um sucesso de vendas nos Estados Unidos e México. Com uma linguagem provocativa e bem-humorada, a obra faz uma "ode" ao livro, com dados que vão encantar todos os amantes da literatura e, paradoxalmente, incutir o realismo do negócio em autores e editores interessados em alcançar o que Gabriel Zaid chama de "encontro feliz" com o leitor. O livro é repleto de achados de linguagem como "genoma intelectual", sinônimo atribuído por Zaid às bibliotecas individuais, e detalhes que enterram todas as profecias que ao longo dos séculos anunciaram os males da palavra escrita e o fim do livro. De Sócrates a Marshall MacLuhan. "O que poderia dar fim à proliferação de livros? Por algum tempo parecia que a televisão poderia. Mas a explosão das publicações deixou MacLuhan pregando no deserto", ironiza o autor, demonstrando que desde o advento da televisão a população mundial cresceu quase duas vezes (1.8), enquanto o número de títulos publicados praticamente triplicou ( 2.8). Com 112 páginas de leitura leve e intrigante, o livro se detêm em cada personagem envolvido no processo do livro - autor, editor, distribuidor, livreiro, leitor -, insiste na importância da comunicação (conversação) para o sucesso de um título e tranqüiliza potenciais autores e leitores frustrados por se verem impedidos de dedicar ao livro o produto que Gabriel Zaid considera hoje mais raro: o tempo.
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Livros demais!
Hélio Consolaro Entrelinhas Sâo Paulo 2005/03/01
Escrever, publicar livros. Sonhar com um volume, tendo o próprio nome no dorso aparecendo na estante da biblioteca pública. Nem que toda edição seja paga pelo autor. É assim a vaidade do escritor; dessa maneira que se publicam romances, livros de poesias, de contos, de crônicas. O escritor mexicano Gabriel Zaid aborda isso no seu livro Livros demais. - Sobre ler, escrever e publicar", Summus Editorial (111 páginas, R$ 20,00). A apresentação da edição brasileira, feita por Felipe Lindoso, afirma que de 1994 a 2002 foram publicados 392.785 títulos no Brasil, como se em cada grupo de 427 brasileiros, houvesse um escritor. O computador facilitou a publicação de livros. Andam derrubando muitas árvores para publicar livros, caro leitor. E Sêneca dizia que na multidão de livros está a distração. Nenhum leitor que tenha a sua biblioteca particular pode dizer que leu todos os volumes de suas prateleiras, porque ela é um mero projeto de leitura de seu proprietário. Morrerá sem completá-lo. Seria o mesmo que desejar todas as mulheres do mundo, mas... [...]
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Obras discutem "excesso" de títulos
Marcelo Pen Folha Iilustrada Sâo Paulo 2004/04/24
A leitura de livros está crescendo aritmeticamente; a escrita de livros está crescendo exponencialmente." É com essa frase de impacto que o poeta e ensaísta mexicano Gabriel Zaid, 70, inicia o seu "Livros demais!". O autor lança por terra a profecia do canadense Marshal McLuhan (1911-80) sobre o fim da era do livro diante das novas tecnologías eletrônicas. Desde a invenção da TV, por exemplo, enquanto a popuação mundial aumenta num passo de 1,8% ao ano, a produção livresca avança na velocidade de 2,8%. No período quatrocentista de Gutenberg, lançavam-se cem obras por ano. Em 1952, já com o advento da TV, a soma girava em torno de 250 mil lançamentos. Em 2000, o total foi de 1 milhão de títulos. Temos quase um livro publicado a quase 30 segundos. Mas qual a pertinência dessas considerações num país como o Brasil? Para o editor Felipe Undoso, 54, que traduziu o ensaio do mexicano e acaba de lançar "O Brasil Pode Ser um País de Leitores?", a tese de Zaid constitui um paradoxo. Embora Lindoso concorde que se lancem livros demais, esse conjunto ainda representaria "Iivros de menos". Em entrevista à Folha, o autor diz que "a questão é fazer que cada livro ache seus leitores, promovendo o que Zaid chama de "encontros felizes". Assim, livros demais serão sempre livros de menos nesse mundo de infinitos interesses". No Brasil, o caso complica. A produção de livros de 2002 foi 320 milhões, o que resulta em menos de dois exemplares per capita. Para Lindoso, "no setor dos livros, se replica a desigualdade de acesso que marca a sociedade brasileira em outras áreas". Ou seja, aqui náo faltam somente os "encontros felizes" de Zaid. Falta o motor para que os próprios encontros possam ocorrer. "Precisamos entender que a imensa maioria da população não tem meios de acesso ao que se produz", explica Lindoso. Para solucionar esse problema, o autor propõe que a política cultural brasileira, que em termos gerais não se alterou desde a época de D. João 6° (basta trocarmos a figura do rel pela dos "incentivadores"), em vez de favorecer somente os artistas e produtores, também garanta "o acesso da população aos bens culturais". Uma forma de conseguir esse acesso seria investindo nas bibliotecas públicas, ausentes em 25% das cidades brasileiros. Outra se dá pela educação. "Descobrir o prazer da leitura pode ser ensinado. Se criarmos as condições para isso, na família e na escola, e dermos acesso ao livro, o Brasil pode realmente se tornar um país dos leitores", aposta Lindoso. A afirmação do brasileiro encontra esteio na obra de Zaid, que alega que a cultura só tem sentido se estiver inserida na prática da vida. "Cultura é conversação", diz o mexicano, "escrever, ler, editar, imprimir, distribuir, catalogar, resenhar podem ser o combustível para essa conversação, modos de mantê-la viva". E conclui: "Se os livros não nos encorajam a viver plenamente, estão mortos".
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Não fui à Bienal este ano
Gabriel Perissé Observatório da Imprensa Sâo Paulo 2004/04/27
Podem me censurar à vontade, mas este ano eu não fui à (18 ª) Bienal Internacional do Livro de São Paulo. Sei que é uma ocasião única, reconheço o imenso esforço organizacional das entidades e empresas envolvidas, em particular a dedicação dos funcionários das editoras e distribuidoras, que ficam lá dias inteiros, atendendo ao público. Meus aplausos a todos. Mas agora que a Bienal se tornou uma referência cultural popular (graças a Deus e à mídia), decidi não ir. Preferi, entre os dias 15 e 25 de abril, freqüentar os sebos de sempre, visitar as livrarias que sempre visito, e comprar meus livros sem enfrentar multidões, que, espero, continuarão a prestigiar esta e outras feiras do livro. E para demonstrar minha boa vontade, embora terminado o evento, divulgo deste meu estande pessoal, virtual, dois lançamentos recentes, sem cobrar ingresso ou comissão. Pela Summus Editorial: O Brasil pode ser um país de leitores?, de Felipe Lindoso, e Livros demais!, do mexicano Gabriel Zaid. O trabalho de Lindoso é um belo elogio ao livro, e um forte apelo para que sejam tomadas iniciativas públicas para divulgá-lo e distribuí-lo. Como na distribuição de renda, também o Brasil é injusto quanto aos livros. Produzimos 320 milhões de exemplares anualmente. Tendo em vista a nossa população de 170 milhões, são dois exemplares per capita por ano. Isto significa que inúmeros brasileiros não lêem exemplar nenhum, e estão culturalmente decapitados. Precisamos ser um país de leitores. O que supõe, entre outras coisas, mais bibliotecas públicas. Mas... que bibliotecas públicas? Precisamos de bibliotecas, de acervos nessas bibliotecas, e, o mais difícil, inculcar a idéia de que faz bem à saúde entrar numa biblioteca e ler horas a fio... E temos o segundo lançamento. O livro de Gabriel Zaid. Um livro (mais um!) que fala da abundância de livros. Dessa mercadoria que envaidece e frustra o autor, que se torna sinal de status, que vira presente inteligente, dessa mercadoria cujo preço mais alto não é o que se traduz em reais, dólares ou euros, mas o tempo que temos de investir na sua leitura. Por isso a leitura torna-se (ou deveria ser) o luxo dos pobres, doentes, prisioneiros, aposentados e estudantes. Muitos livros e pouco tempo. Livros demais e leitores de menos. Se me pedissem um slogan: "Faça sua bienal todos os dias".
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Book Summary
Davina Morgan-Witts Book Browse Saratoga, CA. 2003/09
This is a gem of a book - an absolute must read for anyone in the publishing industry, all book lovers and most importantly, for anyone who aspires to be a writer; and considering that according to a 2000 survey, 81% of Americans feel they should write a book, and 6 million have written manuscripts, that makes for a very broad potential readership - which is ironic considering that one of Zaid's main themes is to argue that the fact that the average book sells copies in the low thousands is a cause for celebration, not dismay! So Many Books is packed with lots of useful statistics about books (not boring tables of data but those wonderful nuggets of information that are so useful to store away for use in conversations to come!), but that's not the key reason to read it. The real reason is to share Zaid's enlightening and enthusiastic perspective of the world of books - all the way from Socrates (who favored conversation over books) to the current day.
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So viele Bücher. Erstaunliches, Kurioses und Nachdenkliches rund ums Lesen
Christine Weiner SWR Südwestrundfunk Stuttgart 2005/05/13
Was für amüsantes und erleichterndes Buch rund um Bücher. Wann bekommt man schon mal so direkt gesagt, dass der wahrhaft kultivierte Mensch Bücher nicht zum lesen kauft, sondern hortet und in Reihen stellt. Sammler dieser Art halten es gelassen in Räumen mit tausenden von ungelesenen Büchern aus. Hauptsache, die Bücher sind da. Oder haben Sie schon mal darüber nachgedacht, dass es unhöflich sein könnte dicke Romane zu schenken, um sich dann immer wieder zu erkundigen: "Na, wie fandest du das Buch?" und der arme Beschenkte hatte noch gar keine Zeit, auch nur einen Blick reinzuwerfen. Welch ein Druck? Lexika und Bildbände, auch Kochbücher entbinden von diesem Leistungszwang. Deswegen werden sie gedruckt und gerne verschenkt. Sie sehen hübsch aus, man kann in ihnen blättern, aber von Anfang bis Ende lesen muss man sie nicht. Diese Gedanken und viel mehr, finden sich in diesem handlichen Bändchen. Man braucht es nicht lesen ... nicht von Anfang bis Ende ... aber man will es!
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Hon to Konpyuta Summer 2004 translation of chapter 3
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The Editor Speaks
Nicholas Pashley University of Toronto Bookstore Review 2004/04/01
[…] It’s easier for film people to enjoy both art and trash. Movies last only a couple of hours. Watching something dopey doesn't keep you from seeing the latest Guatemalan art film. It's not, so easy with books. In So Many Books, Mexican poet Gabriel Zaid observes that somewhere in the world a new book is published every thirty seconds (two or three new ones since you started reading this). So any time spent reading, say, Jackie Collins (to use an example 'Michael' cites) is t me that you won't spend on Umberto Eco. Zaid estimates that if one read four books a week it would take 250,000 years to get through what has already been published, ignoring everything else that comes along in the meantime. We can’t keep up. We have to make choices, so most of us pass on Jackie Collins (though a lot more people pass on Eco). Last year Stephen King was given a lifetime achievement award by the National Book Foundation, provoking outrage among literary folk, who presumably felt that King was getting reward enough of the filthy lucre variety not to need prestige on top of ¡t. King used the occasion to defend popular writing and lambaste the people who take phds in never having read John Grisham, Tom Clancy, or Mary Higgins Clark. I've seen Stephen King twice in an authors' rock band, and I found him more entertaining in that context than my one attempt to read one of his books, which I found surprisingly ponderous. I expected it to be at least fast-paced. I'll admit I haven't read Grisham, Clancy, or Clark, of which I'm neither proud nor ashamed. But I haven't read Proust either. Like all of us, I have a stack of books I'm saving for when I get tuberculosis and have to spent a couple of years resting on Thomas Mann's magic mountain. Even then I'm not sure I'll get to Tom Clancy. […]
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So Many Books
Christel Schweitzer Buchkritik Wein 2004
Gabriel Zaid aus Mexiko erfreut sich als Dichter und Essayist im spanischsprachigen Raum großer Beliebtheit, aber auch für seine Kulturkritiken ist er wohlbekannt. Zusammen mit seiner Frau, der Künstlerin Basia Batorska lebt er mit drei Katzen inmitten von 10.000 Büchern (nachgezählt?). Das vorliegende Buch ist eine geistreiche, kompakte und pointierte Kulturkritik über das "Medium" Buch. Die Wandlungsfähigkeit des Buches im Laufe der Jahrhunderte wird thematisiert. Gabriel Zaid wagt einige äußerst triviale Nebenerscheinungen des Lesens aufzuwerfen, über die sich der lesende Konsument - im Allgemeinen - keine allzu großen Gedanken macht, aber künftig vielleicht machen sollte. Die gewählte Erzählform ist das Essay, welches in 13 Kapitel unterteilt ist, die, jedes Kapitel für sich, wiederum als eigenständige Essays gelesen werden könn(t)en. Die Feststellung, dass mehr Bücher geschrieben, als gelesen werden, bildet den Anfang der Einleitung von Zaids kleinem, feinem Essay: "The reading of books is growing arithmetically; writing of books is growing exponentially. (S.9)" Im ersten Augenblick mutet der Inhalt des Satzes vielleicht kurios an, aber an hand statistischer Daten lässt sich dies belegen und verifizieren. Die Ausmaße des heutigen Buchmarktes der westlichen Hemisphäre (Angebot versus Nachfrage) haben sich proportional zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Buches entwickelt, früher kamen auf wenige Leser, wenige Bücher, heute stehen vielen Lesern eine schier ausufernde Menge an Büchern zur Verfügung. ("After Gutenberg, mass market journalism, film, television, computing, satellite communications, and the Internet have all appeared. With each new development, the end of the book was prophesied, and each time more books were published, with greater ease and on more subjects..." (S. 29)" Mit der Einleitung "To the Unrepentant Reader (An den Leser ohne Reue)" beginnt Zaid seinen Diskurs und entführt den Leser auf eine Reise "im Zeitraffer" von der Entstehung der ersten gekritzelten Buchstaben, (siehe auch S. 112) über die kunstvolle und langwierige Herstellung der ersten Abschriften der Bibel, bis hin zur Gutenbergpresse, über den kommerziellen, manchmal auch propagandistisch missbrauchten, Umgang mit dem gebundenen Wissen, bis hin zur Computergesellschaft: "When the book first appeared, Socrates rejected it as inferior to conversation. When the printing press first appeared, some stubborn readers refused to permit industrial products in their libraries... (S. 10)" Warum wir überhaupt lesen? Vielleicht, weil "reading liberates the reader and transports him from his book to a reading of himself and all of life. It leads him to participate in conversations, and in some cases to arrange them, as so many active readers do: parents, teachers, friends, writers, translators, critics, publishers, booksellers, librarians. (S. 11)" Das klingt hehr, keine Frage! "All commerce is conversation: in other words, it is culture, always at the risk of becoming blah-blah-blah. It's all very well to feel that books are not a commodity, but dialogue and revelation;...(S. 56)" Aber... wie viel schnöder gestaltet sich da die Frage, was man denn nun mit dem gelesenen, geliehenen, ungelesenen, geschenkten oder gekauften Buchexemplar als Ding machen soll. Die Worte im Buch haben in ihrer gedruckten Form erst dann ein Gewicht, wenn es zu einer Interaktion mit dem Leser kommt, wenn nicht schlummern sie passiv dahin. Das tatsächliche Gewicht des Buches aber, aus Pappe und Papier, oder Leder und Papier, ist "verkörperlicht" vorhanden und als solches messbar. "Your book is a scrap of paper that blows about in the streets, litters cities, piles up in rubbish dumps of the planet. It is cellulose, and cellulose it will become. (S. 97)" Zwei Fragen stellen sich nun: Erstens, wie viele Menschen können tatsächlich all das lesen, was sie interessiert, haben die Zeit und die intellektuelle Befähigung dazu? Und zweitens, wie viele Menschen haben denn tatsächlich genug Platz zur Lagerung all dieser Bücher, die interessieren, die man besitzen möchte - weil Bücher (die Aktion des Lesens, wie der Besitz des Gegenstandes) zu Suchtverhalten führen können? "Books are published at such a rapid rate that they make us exponentially more ignorant. If a person read a book a day, he would be neglecting to read four thousand others, published the same day. In other words, the books he didn't read would pile up four thousand times faster than the books he did read. (S 22)" Und "A terrible solution is to keep books until you've accumulated a library of thousands of volumes, all the while telling yourself that you know you don't have the time to read them but that you'll be able to leave them to your children. Almost all books are obsolete from the moment they're written, if not before. (S. 15)" Die Antwort ist ernüchternd, denn die wenigsten Zeitgenossen - egal, ob Schriftsteller, oder Konsument (hier noch am ehesten Studenten und Pensionisten) - verfügen über zeitliche und örtliche Kapazitäten dieser Größenordnung. Es soll jene geben, die gar keine Bücher besitzen, denn sie finden mit Fernsehen und Internet ihr Auslangen, aber das sind nicht die Leute, die Herrn Zaid in diesem Essay interessieren. Er nimmt vielmehr all jene Süchtigen auf's Korn, zu denen auch er sich selbst zählt, die vor keinem Buchgeschäft stehen bleiben können, die ein geliehenes Buch zurückzugeben vergessen, die sich eine ganze Enzyklopädie bestellen, nur um nachher stöhnend über Platzmangel zu klagen. Um den Platzbedarf einzudämmen brauchen wir ja nur Gebrauch von öffentlichen Bibliotheken, den Bücherfundus von Freunden oder das Buch im Internet zu machen? Echte Bücherfreaks tun dies nur im Falle des "Entzugs". "...the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more...a book not read is a project uncompleted. (S. 12)" Wie viele Bücher muss man denn nun gelesen haben, um wirklich weiser und erfahrener zu sein? Vielleicht reicht das Lesen und Verstehen eines einzigen Buches, um trotzdem Zugang zu all dem gebündelten Wissen zu haben, dass kultivierte von dumpfen Naturen unterscheidet? "What does it matter how cultivated and up-to-date we are, or how many thousand of books we've read? What matters is how we feel, how we see, what we do after reading, whether the street and the clouds and the existence of others mean anything to us; whether reading makes us, physically, more alive. (S. 24)" Womit wir bei der nächsten trivialen Frage angelangt sind, ob denn wirklich alle Bücher lesenswert sind? Herr Zaid findet, dass manchen Kollegen durchaus Schreibverbot erteilt werden sollte. "I once proposed a chastity glove for authors who were unable to contain themselves. (S. 19)" Heutzutage glaubt jedermann seine Memoiren veröffentlichen zu müssen, so banal das Leben auch verlaufen ist/sein mag. "Maybe our understanding of our finiteness is the only access we have to the totality that beckons and vanquishes us, that creates an outsize totalizing ambition in us. Maybe all experience of infinity is an illusion, if it is not precisely an experience of finiteness...(S. 24)" War früher Bildung eine elitäre Angelegenheit, die von der Kirche organisiert und streng überwacht wurde, hat sich seit der Aufklärung ein stetiger Anstieg der Zahl an Bildungsbürgern erkennen lassen. Im 21. Jahrhundert, so sollte man meinen, gibt es keinen Staatsbürger der "demokratisch regierten Welt" mehr, der Analphabet wäre. Leider nein, denn das Internetzeitalter stattet uns mit Computerrechtschreibprogrammen und Fernsehen aus, passiver Wissenskonsum steigt an und damit die Dunkelziffer der Analphabeten. "Those who do read books because they were lucky enough to have had parents or teachers or friends who were readers, those few, even, who read a book a day with the unfettered voracity that later tends to embarrass them...are so few and far between that average book reading is low, even in developed countries...the great barrier to free circulation of books is the mass of privileged citizens who have university degrees but have never learned to read properly. (S. 73/74)" Nur, wird wirklich alles, was den Mitmenschen so aus den Federn quillt, auch tatsächlich in gedruckte Buchstaben gepresst? "Each of us dreams of having the world's full attention, of everyone else falling silent to hear what we have to say, of everyone else giving up writing in order to read what we have written...the participation of the whole world in a conversation doesn't enrich the dialogue, it diminishes it. (S. 31/33)" Wohl nicht, wenngleich die Auswahlkriterien heutzutage fast ausschließlich von Angebot und Nachfrage bestimmt werden. Hier muss man gerechterweise aber trotzdem auch die Existenz jener Nischen anführen, die auf einem treuen Stammkundenstock aufbauen (Bücher über Fachgebiete, ausgefallene Übersetzungen etc.) Die Verleger haben es nicht leicht aus dem bunten Sortiment der Manuskripte jenes zu wählen, das einen Druck in Millionenauflage rechtfertigt. "In 1936, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind became the first novel to sell a million copies in a single year. Alexandra Ripley wrote a sequel, Scarlett, which sold 2.2 million copies in the last hundred days of 1991...a book like Scarlett was available anywhere. (S. 101)" Als Antibeispiele, dass kaufmännisches Gespür nicht immer funktioniert, ist: "Harry Potter" (siehe S. 120/121). Dass der kleine Verlag, der sich das Herz fasste, das Risiko einzugehen, und "Harry Potter" in den Druck zu schicken, samt Autorin, eine goldene Nase verdient hat, braucht man mittlerweile nicht mehr zu erwähnen. "What reasons are there for demanding that all books sell millions of copies? Vanity...or national pride? If a book, as compared to a film, is commercially viable even if it doesn't interest more than a few people, why not publish it? Ist das Buch nun aber als "druckwürdig" klassifiziert worden und erhältlich, wie funktioniert denn nun die Vermarktung? Wie schafft man, dass der Leser X wirklich zu seinem Buch x kommt? Müssen Mindestauflagen ganz vom Markt verschwinden, weil sie nicht rentabel sind? Aus eigener Erfahrung weiß ich, dass vor 15 Jahren einen Gedichtband "The Poems of Robert Frost" in Wien zu finden, fast unmöglich war. Erst nach hartnäckigem Betteln und einer Wartezeit von über einem Monat bekam ich ein Exemplar. Vielleicht war Frost zu jener Zeit gerade nicht aktuell? Mit dem neuen Internet Büchermarkt wäre mir dieses Erlebnis heute wahrscheinlich erspart geblieben, oder doch nicht?!...-"We readers (not to mention writers) are annoyed when we can't find the books we want, right here and right now. It seems hard to understand why this should happen, considering the implicit model of an exhaustive distribution system that makes all corners of our universe. (S. 99/100)" Oder:"..the best books can become trash if they are randomly placed in the wrong bookshops, libraries, or catalogues...or if the reader is told they are not available when they are. (S. 107)" Nicht immer ist es die Suche nach dem einen Buch, die manchmal recht frustrierende Auswirkungen haben kann, es kann auch passieren, dass man über eine "Perle unter Säuen" stolpert:"...in our wanderings across island of overloaded shelves, ...and even in those floating rubbish dumps that bob alongside piers, a fortunate encounter may come swimming along: the message in the bottle you've been waiting for. (S.110)" Als ein paar Unternehmen (allen voran AMAZON 1995) auf den Internetmarkt "BUCH" stürzten, ahnten sie wahrscheinlich wenig von den Ausmaßen, die diese Marktlücke ihnen bot. "Once AMAZON exists, an encyclopedic bookshop that is one tenth as large becomes much less attractive as a general resource...the constellation factor carries more weight than the factor of scale. (S. 104)" Als besonders lukrativ erwies sich für AMAZON der on-line Verkauf von "used books. Siehe S. 130) Es wurde augenscheinlich und zahlenmäßig belegbar, wie viel gelesen wird...und was! Im alten Buchhandelsystem konnte man nur nach den Auflagenzahlen gehen, aber wie viele Ladenhüter ein alter, kleiner Buchladen wohl liegen hatte, dass entzog sich der Statistik. "Some seemingly conservative accounting traditions help publishers fool themselves. The cost of each book is calculated by dividing by the number of copies produced, not the number of copies that will actually be sold, for the obvious reason that the first number is known the second is not. Also, stock is valued at its cost, not at the price of sale, which is conservative for copies that actually will sell, but not for those that won't. (S. 117)" Die Internet Händler haben dieses Problem des, "bye and store till bought" nicht, da sie nur auf Anfrage das Buch vom Druck weg bestellen "...digital systems of printing on demand eliminate the need to keep inventory on hand. (S. 123)" Die Befürchtung, dass nun das Internet und große Bücherketten die kleinen Läden ruinieren würden, traf nur all jene Geschäfte, die die Überfahrt zu innovativer Vermarktung verschliefen. Wenn das Buch alleine nicht mehr als Verkaufsknüller reicht, dann muss man eben dem geneigten Leser eine gemütliche Leseecke mit Kaffee, Tee und Kuchen anbieten. Ob, wer liest zur schlaueren Spezies Mensch gehört, lässt Zaid offen, denn derjenige der liest, fischt letztlich in den Erfahrungen eines anderen. Diese nutzbringend umsetzen steht dem Leser frei...denn passive Intelligenz entzieht sich dem Vergleich. "There is so much to learn and so little time to live." (Baltasar Gracián)
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KOLIKO KNJIGA!
I. Karabaic Trigon Zagreb 2006/01/09
Čitanje knjiga raste aritmetičkom progresijom. Pisanje knjiga raste eksponencijalno. Ne obuzda li se nekako strast prema pisanju, u bliskoj budućnosti bit će više pisaca nego čitatelja. Konstatira to meksički pisac Gabriel Zaid na početku svoje vrlo zanimljive knjižice naslovljene jednostavno - "Koliko knjiga!". Ljudi pišu jer imaju dojam da ih vlastite otisnute riječi posvećuju, pa da njima stječu besmrtnost, smatra Zaid, baveći se upravo fenomenom pisanja i čitanja, i to na vrlo šarmantan način. Vrijeme je daleko najskuplji vid čitanja, osim vremena provedenog u čitanju u određenim okolnostima: u prijevoznom sredstvu, tijekom bolesti, u zatvoru ili u mirovini. Uz ovu konstataciju, on ističe i kako je u uspješnome gospodarstvu vrijeme vrednije od stvari, te je tako i lakše pribaviti stvari nego uživati u njima. To jest, jednostavnije je puniti police novim izdanjima nego ijedno od njih iščitati kako treba (sad bi se trebali posramiti svi oni koji su kupovali cijele biblioteke knjiga uz novine – pitanje je hoće li oni ikad u ruku uzeti ovu knjigu). Piscima - ako nisu u zatvoru ili penziji – isto fali vremena, pa stoga više ne ulažu dodatni trud kojim bi čitateljima uštedjeli njihovo vrijeme, žali se autor i predlaže da se tekstovi koji ne donose ništa novo i važno, loše su napisani ili uređeni – uopće ne bi ni izdavali. Za sve one izdavače i pisce koji stalno kukaju kako su knjige ugrožene od masmedija, Zaidova je knjiga dobar demanti odnosno utjeha. Naime, od pojave televizije, broj stanovnika svijeta godišnje je rastao u prosjeku 1,8% dok je izdavanje knjiga bilo u porastu za 2,8%. Dakle, proizlazi da, kako je zgodno napisano u ovoj knjizi, ljudski rod objavi po jednu knjigu svakih 30 sekundi! Odnosno, kad se još više poigramo brojkama, kad bi čovjek svaki dan čitao jednu knjigu, njegova bi se neupućenost svejedno povećavala četiri tisuće puta brže od njegova znanja. Upravo ovi su primjeri dobar pokazatelj gdje leži šarm ove knjižice: u njoj je isprepleteno malo statističkih podataka, pa koja zgodna paralela i mnoštvo pitkih analiza i primjedbi vezanih uz pisce, čitatelje i izdavače. Osim fenomena knjige, Zaid se ovom prilikom bavi i modernom kulturom i civilizacijom, dotičući neke od problema koje nam današnjica nosi u ovim područjima. U ovom će djelcu uživati i oni koji vole beletristiku i oni koji su odaniji publicistici, odnosno, kako piše izdavač na njezinim koricama – svi će je razumjeti i u njoj pronaći mnoga vlastita razmišljanja. Premda knjižica nije velika opsegom, na njezinih stotinjak stranica nalazi se čitav jedan mali sustav promišljanja o knjizi, knjižarstvu i čitanju knjiga, a privući će vas i zanimljivo oblikovan ovitak. Treba dodati još da je Gabriel Zaid, autor devet knjiga pjesama i dvadesetak knjiga eseja i kritike, vrlo specifična osoba. Naime, premda njegove knjige cijeni i publika i kritika, on nikad ne nastupa u javnosti, kojoj nije dostupna niti jedna njegova fotografija! Tako, naime, u djelo provodi svoje načelo, izneseno još prije tridesetak godina, da pisca ne smiju prepoznavati po liku, nego po djelima. (Dobra bi ovo lekcija trebala biti svima onima kojima su vlastite knjige upitne kvalitete samo odskočna daska da se počnu pojavljivati po medijima – ali oni vjerojatno nikad nisu ni čuli za Zaida...) Ako sloboda i sreća koju doživljavamo čitajući izaziva ovisnost, kako tvrdi Zaid, njegova je knjiga zasigurno jedna od onih koje ovu tezu u praksi opravdavaju.
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"A love of all things biblio" Marika Keblusek De Boekenwereld Utrecht 2004/05/13 In So Many Books (2003) memoreert Gabriel Zaid hoe Socrates het boek afdeed als een zwak alternatief voor de dialoog, het persoonlijk gesprek. Wij weten dit omdat de uitspraak van de filosoof is overgeleverd dankzij het medium waartegen hij zich verzette. De zegetocht van dat medium heeft hij niet kunnen tegenhouden. Zelfs in deze digital ageverschijntelke dertig seconden, ergens op deze planeet, een boek. Die overvloed stemt bijna tot moede-loosheid. Maar Zaids essay is, uiteindelijk, geen wanhoopskreet. Het is een pleidooi voor het boek als essentieel onderdeel van beschaving en cultuur. Net als alle andere titels die lagen uitgestald in de boekhandels van Manhattan, in de winter van 2003, is het een lief-desverklaring aan het boek in al zijn gedaanten, in al zijn betekenissen, in verleden en toe-komst.

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Zo veel boeken!

Frans Meulenberg
De Verdieping Trouw
Amsterdam
2005/04/23

Per dag komen er honderden nieuwe boektitels bij. Het zijn er veel te veel. Wat leren we trouwens van lezen? Niet zoveel, zegt de Mexicaan Gabriel Zaid, als we na het lezen niet handelen. Frans Meulenberg bespreekt Zaids 'So Many Books' en het dagboek van (her-)lezer Alberto Manguel.

Net als Alberto Manguel is de Mexicaan Gabriel Zaid een boekenliefhebber. Volgens het omslag bestaat zijn bibliotheek uit meer dan 10000 boeken. Anders dan Manguel, houdt Zaid een uiterst kritische blik op de heiligverklaring van het boek, en staat hij ronduit sceptisch tegenover de boekenindustrie. Hij constateert in de openingsalinea van zijn prikkelende 'So Many Books' meteen dat het aantal lezers weliswaar groeit, maar dat het aantal boeken exponentieel toeneemt: Binnenkort worden er meer boeken geschreven dan gelezen, schrijft hij cynisch.

Hij onderbouwt die stelling zelfs met cijfers. In 1550 verschenen ongeveer vijfhonderd boeken, in de tweede helft van de 20ste eeuw maar liefst 36 miljoen. Zaid: ,,Als er vanaf vandaag geen enkel boek meer zou verschijnen,