Reading is not an end in itself

6 to 8 books a day?

BY GABRIELLA HÅKANSSON

“The world’s most unwieldy piece of furniture«, that was what one of my fellow writers called his library when he last moved house. I tend to agree with him. In the last ten years I have barely glanced at a fraction of all the books I have accumulated over the years. Once you have read a book you never get around to re-reading it, and the facts I need I usually find at a public library or on the Internet. So why accumulate all these books?
The dream of a library which contains all the know-ledge of the world, all the books ever written, has thrived for a long time in the Western cultural sphere. Consider the famous perspective drawing by 18th century architect Étienne-Louis Boullée, showing the plan for a library for Louis XVI: a gigantic hall of 30 x 100 metres, crowned by a mighty basilica which implied that Boullée wanted to create a library which would reclaim the sanctity which ecclesiastical buildings had lost. Boullée imagined that the books would be within reach of wandering readers, but they would be accessed through a human chain consisting of assistants placed at the various levels of the library, handing the books from one to the other. Although it has to be admitted that Boullée’s idea is fundamentally elitist, there is something attractive about the idea of books being passed along by a human chain. It is a symbol, in a way, of the fact that knowledge consists equally of text and body, theory and human experience. The more I think about Boullée’s drawing (his Utopian library was, needless to say, never built), the more idiotic and impractical my own small, private library seems to me.
Boullée’s human chain of books came to my mind again during a seminar organized by the Swedish book-price commission. Last year, Sweden lowered the tax on books from 25 to 6 per cent, and the book-price commission has the task of monitoring and following up price trends to ensure that the measure has a ‘full and permanent’ impact. This means that the lowered price of books should boost reading, improve access to books and also promote general interest in literature among people from all walks of life. (If not, it has been threatened that the tax will be raised again). In a funny twist of fate, the tax cut coincided with one of those typically Swedish nationwide campaigns, ‘Läsrörelsen’ (roughly the ‘Pro-reading movement’). During the past few years, this movement has been striving to encourage Swedish people to read more books under the concise motto »Read more! ». The reason? Well, it is somewhat unclear, but the campaign’s website cites statistics which show that 25 per cent of all Swedes have failed to attain the level of reading skills expected from those who complete secondary school. Furthermore, certain demographic categories — working class men and people with only compulsory education — now read even less than before. There are also figures which indicate that one in four out of this 25 per cent is unemployed. Add to this the fact that inmates in Swedish prisons are known to have major reading and writing difficulties, and the logic which underlies the frenzied reading promotion of the past few years is eminently clear: people who do not read books become criminal or at least unemployed. Reduced reading »threatens democracy« and »undermines« the Swedish language.
This is the same simplistic logic which prevailed in 1978 when a nationwide project for »a drug-free society« started, demonizing drugs instead of placing the problems in their true context and helping drug-addicts to a better life, and this same logic now seems to prevail in Swedish social democratic cultural policy and the ‘Pro-reading movement’ (which, by the way, was initiated by a social democrat) in that social problems are simplistically linked with reading difficulties, after which it follows that all these problems can be dealt with by starting a nationwide reading campaign, actions to encourage working-class men to read more, and lowering book prices.
The fact that Swedish people are among the most avid readers in the world (and that in fact the population as a whole is reading more and more books) seems to have escaped the Pro-reading people. They are also ignoring the fact that in Sweden, reading skills are not as crucial a factor for people’s labour market potential as in other countries, due to the successes of the Swedish education system and the tradition of popular education, making education available to everyone. They further disregard the fact that books are now competing with other media which also improve people’s reading skills (if that is what you want). And still they want us to read more! We must read absolutely anything: whodunnits, Proust, bonkbusters, Swedish poetry, absolutely anything at all — as long as we read more. And as long as we pay for our consumption of books out of our own pockets. That is apparently the gist of the whole thing, you see. We must buy more books. There has been no mention of improved funding for public libraries, and the most bizarre aspect of this massive propaganda drive for reading is that while books are treated as a panacea for all ills, one library after another is closed due to lack of funding.
The ‘Pro-reading movement’ was of course funded to a great extent by the Swedish publishing companies, so it is hardly surprising that they might want people to buy more books. However, when the Minister for Culture hopes that lowered book prices must lead to people from all walks of life reading more while passively looking on as school libraries are deprived of their staff, one branch library after another is closed and many libraries are in such dire financial circumstances that they cannot afford to buy any books, well, then one cannot help but wonder what all this frenzied reading promotion is all about. Is it about the best interests of the general public, or commercial interests?
Personally, I do not believe that reading books is particularly good for you — or bad, for that matter. I love books myself and I read a great deal, but I would never venture to regard books as you do rye bread (eat 6 to 8 slices a day, as the Swedish nutritional recommendation went in my childhood). Also, I no longer particularly want to spend huge sums of money on these heavy tomes that stand around collecting dust in the increasingly anachronistic showpiece of ostentatious furniture that a private library has become. I realize of course that the ultimate library for me would be an electronic one. When all books have been liberated from their physical manifestation and made available on the Internet free of charge, it will be the fulfilment of the Western dream of having all the knowledge of the world collected in one place. Until such time as that happens, I intend to acquire my reading material in ordinary public libraries, where books are freed from all utilitarian and commercial demands, and for this reason I beg to be excused from any more pseudo-actions aimed at people who have neither time nor money, nation-wide campaigns which give preference to products rather than content, or directives handed down from on high which harness books for government gain rather than human pleasure — and instead I hope that funding and other resources will, henceforth, be invested in maintaining and developing our public libraries. That is where books are at home. Regardless of whether they are useful or not.

Gabriella Håkansson is a writer and literary critic

Translated by The English Centre/Monica Sonck and Nicholas Mayow