In his (extraordinary) chronicle yesterday, Joan Burdeus said that President Illa, in his closed-door conversation with writer Javier Cercas, revived "the neo-Pujolometer" by claiming books as "a form of personal improvement rather than enjoyment."
Unintentionally and intentionally, we treat books as a cultural phenomenon different from the others. In books, which evidently require a technique In our most sophisticated consumerism, we ask for more from them so we feel guilty. To begin with, this personal improvement. We don't ask for improvement from manga, movies, or TV series, and we don't do it because they're part of our regular fiction consumption and we don't need anyone to encourage us; on the contrary. To put it mildly: books are celery; TV series and video games are cuttlefish meatballs. We're encouraged to eat celery because it has, above all, vitamins and is "sa." We don't ask anything from cuttlefish meatballs, except pleasure; if necessary, we'll emphasize that, "on top of that," they have vitamins. We wouldn't have cared much if a movie or TV series made us grow personally, because this, in any case, would be an added value, but not the interest of the author or the reader. A movie, a TV series, or a comic—it goes without saying a video game—should entertain, above all.
That's why it's so important that the books we we do for teenagers are not "moral." A book for young people is inclusive, anti-bullying and pro-diversity, but not a movie. It can be violent, immoral, pornographic, filthy, disgusting, and sexist. That's perhaps why it's so fun.
Reading is more complicated than watching. It's necessary to exercise the strange muscle that transforms signs into a world. Neither young nor old exercise. You can only find pleasure in running if you spend three months not understanding anything while trying to run. My recipe for young and old is to read aloud. With a glass of wine or soda, with some blond potatoes. Read, read aloud like monks, taking turns. And without a cell phone. You can't read with a vibrating cell phone next to you. This is misfortune and fortune.
