Last year, since the America's Cup took priority, Book Week was moved from the Muelle de la Madera to Paseo Lluís Companys. Going there now, I thought about that hierarchy in relation to the fate Trump envisions for Gaza and its population once subjugated: to dedicate them to tourism.
The change of location, however, has brought in more visitors and has meant that people enter the Week through a Triumphal Arch. No wonder. This year, the Week has set a record for exhibitors. Walking around cheers you up, as culture always does. It's one of the few public places in the world where Catalan identity is not only normalized, but celebrated with pride and justice. It's a first-class cultural center. More than two hundred publishers, and they're not all there yet. Zero tourists. The Catalan book—the language gone mad—represents the most ambitious, universal, and free vocation of our culture. They can sell us, weakening and bombarding us, but, deep down, even if the language is eliminated, in the last heart of this country, there will still be a Catalan book, in whatever format. Once the last book is destroyed, then yes, it will be over.
Now, for example, I can go to the Club Editor stand and buy the ten-year-old edition ofThe Brothers KaramazovIn Chapter III of Book Five, Ivan says to his brother: "I want to travel through Europe, Alioixa. I know that I will only find a cemetery, but such a beloved cemetery! Beloved dead rest, each slab a witness to their ardent life, their passionate faith in the ideal, in the ideal."
In his study of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Steiner says that in Russia, in Dostoevsky's time, the court "was hostile to literature. The majority of the aristocracy lived isolated in a feudal barbarism and only a Europeanized minority showed interest in art. However, Russian and American literature were the most open and ambitious of the 19th century, as if the two great world powers of the 20th century were already announcing themselves.
Yes, of course, a clear European decline and a clear Catalan decline, right now. Precisely for that reason, go to the Semana and buy one or more books. Look for The Written by Perejaume, or the four reissued poetry collections by Carner, or Streets and other stories by Stephen Dixon, or you can ask the editors themselves for advice, which is a privilege. You'll escape all this self-serving nonsense that seeks to level the playing field. Go to Book Week before you find a way to spoil it or shut it down.
