The other afternoon, I was working in a café in Villeray. The place is inspiring, decorated with bookcases. At all the tables, people were working or reading. At the large rectangular table: a dozen women, piles of Books, a lively and brilliant discussion. It was a book club! For an hour, the enlightened remarks of these ladies illuminated the space. All the love of reading was beautifully concentrated in this café that Tuesday.
Published at 7:00 a.m.
There will also be a lot of love of literature at the Palais des congrès de Montréal in the coming days, when the Book Fair will be held there.
I don’t understand those who snub these salons. If reading is a celebration, living rooms are its joyful setting. We love books and reading so much here that we have developed a real star following, including in children’s literature. Stars and artisans sign autographs, enthusiastic and loving lines form in front of the kiosks. We applaud the work and words of the authors. There is something moving in seeing this devotion.
It will happen in Montreal as it happened in Lac-Saint-Jean, in Rimouski, in Estrie, at the Salon des Premières Nations, as it will also happen at the Salon du livre jeunesse in Longueuil, then in Outaouais, in Trois-Rivières Rivers, on the North Shore, in Abitibi and in Quebec.
Writers are expected and revered everywhere. Everywhere, the atmosphere is exceptional, between fair and meditation. Round tables and meetings take readers’ enthusiasm up a notch.
Have you noticed it? There is something about books and literature at the moment. A discreet buzz, but very real. A joyful communion. The salons are multiplying, diversifying and selling out. Bookstores buzz with discreet but palpable life. We organize events in public libraries where the waiting lists to borrow Quebec works are endless. Even the book section of supermarkets has the appearance of a best-seller and practical guide fair. The launches light up local bookstores, there are crowds there like never before. This is without counting the readers who, at home, on transport, in the café, are immersed in incredible worlds, giving the lie to the clichés about the busy times.
Why this enthusiasm?
The book sector is the only cultural sector which has not declined in recent years, on the contrary. While the performing arts, from song to theater, and cinema are struggling, the book is doing wonderfully. We read like never before. Is this condition a continuation of the pandemic effect? In those times, the book had (re)become an ally, a friend. We have taken a liking to it, discovered universes, authors whose exploration we want to extend.
Is this a snub at the times that are moving too quickly?
Reading requires time, and what are we stealing from when we read? Social networks, horribly time-consuming.
We withdraw into these works, we devote solitary hours to them, but we feel part of a community, that of readers, powerful and greater than ourselves. It is a banal heroism, a gesture of everyday resistance.
However, we have come a long way.
We are a young company, our roots are short. Mass education is still a recent conquest for us on the scale of History. Functional illiteracy still exists in certain layers of society. Bookcases didn’t take up entire walls in our homes not so long ago. The enthusiasm around reading is relatively recent.
It may also be because we cherish it. We are a people of few words who discovered late in life the power and pleasure of reading. Words are tools for understanding the world. Understand it, and possibly change it. Once you’ve tasted it, it’s difficult to step back and envisage a world where the only words are those of X.
However, some would like to put a lid back on this power. The temptation to censor and boycott books is a lurking danger.
But who are these modern censors who do not trust people’s intelligence and judgment? A reader knows how to sort things out, compare comments, evaluate them, judge them with his free will.
The latest episode of censorship occurred in CEGEPs, where young adults aged 17 to 19 now refuse to consider certain titles, including a novel by Michel Jean on native residential schools, The wind still speaks about itwhose content – a rape and a suicide – was considered too harsh. In France, FNAC cancels events around the test Allah has nothing to do in my classafter threats were made.
What world of unicorns do we live in? Books are precisely there to educate us, teach us to face the world and its faults, arm us, help us repair it. This call for censorship is stinking and dangerous, just as much as the self-censorship increasingly common among teachers, fearful of the idea of offending students with victimizing sensibilities, and of being denounced.
We must protect teachers and freedom of education from the horrors of the new censors, because they are smugglers of freedom. And make young people aware, if possible, of the joys and benefits of adventurous reading.
Readers disturb, sometimes quietly, other times, violently. They are the peaceful fighters for freedom of expression.
What do you think? Participate in the dialogue
