Two Literary Grands Messes flowered this spring 2025: the very Parisian book festival, with Morocco as guest of honor and the 30th edition of the International Edition and Book Fair, held for the fourth consecutive year in Rabat, after being surreptitiously confiscated to the City of Casablanca, in the felted rules of diplomatic art, and in no less cultural dishabling.
The opportunity to publicly celebrate literature in all its forms, and to hear recalling on the sly, far from the discourse too smoothed-which is to pass for a nasty, vindictive and embittered, its different ailments, its self-promotions, its inter-self and its editorial inflation, in a striking contrast with the slow erosion of the taste of reading.
Because, is now well established, on a global scale: we write more than ever, but we read less and less.
According to UNESCO figures, around 1.8 million new books are published each year worldwide, more than 4,900 titles each day.
Apart from the fact that they constitute an infallible indicator of the standard of living and education, how many of them manage to really affect the public thanks to good media visibility and a diffusion worthy of the name? How does this overproduction help enrich the literary landscape and unravel the collective consciousness, instead of the hubbub?
No national survey on the state of reading supports the subject, but if we scratch the varnish of specialized salons and artistically exhibited bestsellers a little, while glowing in the shadow of milded books and that a good number of confirmed feathers struggle, in a general context affected by illiteracy and illiteracy, the general trend seems to relegate Decorative and symbol of distinction, more than an instrument of reflection.
The absence of a national investigation sounds at this stage not as an oversight, but as an admission, meaning to whoever wants to read between the lines that it is better to know what remains of the readership, especially since the digital tornado has come to put its grain of salt in an already well -rusty mechanics.
With its continuous flows of images, its reels From 15 to 60 seconds, its chain reactions exponentially propagated among users of platforms on the Internet, the concentration is fatally sprayed, the printed page is cheesy, the immersion dethroned by the culture of the moment, and the thoughtful choice of the titles of works replaced by a compulsive scrolling of images suggested by the algorithms, making a semblance of diversity, There is a confinement.
So, even if it means reading, yes! But quickly, intermittently, without requirement or headache. As if the book should now be more malleable, shorter, more instantaneous, under penalty of tiring a saturated reader, transformed into a consumer and an inveterate zapper.
Some understood this and rushed into the breach, making the pen a springboard to access the recognition or the mirages of the celebrity.
Why climb patients with patient, even talent, when you can write faster than you think and be propelled as a brand of detergent? The whole thing is to put the package in a millimeter promo campaign and in a calibrated storytelling for trays and prices as part of a marketing strategy. Without forgetting of course to rely on a concrete network!
As we try a knitting after two-three tutorials, we improvise ourselves author of books sewn with white thread, too bad if it fades in three quarters of time!
It is known: planned obsolescence stimulates sales. In clearer: “The disposable is profitable»According to market laws!
First managers: some complacent publishers who smell the vein, going so far as to pay full pot, under the table, of the author’s editions which do not say their name, if only for a confidential draw, accompanied by a lot of noise and as many selfies.
Text is a detail. What matters is the photo, or even better: the story on his account Tiktok or on Instagrampreferably in close mode with personalities in the antipodes of literary reality, but whose political weight, or other, would be likely to drape them with legitimacy.
What would James Joyce or Fiodor Dostoyevski think?
In this regard, a young chipie enlightened in my family said to me: “I am sure that some manuscripts from Balzac or Tolstoy would today be refused by certain big publishing houses“, As the criteria seem altered.
In short, while the real authors are stubbornly busy in the shadows, feather influencers and their groupies self-congratulate in an emoticonal cacophony.
During this time, traditional bookstores draw the language, publishing houses seek subsidies, the irreducible readers act of resistance, and literature, the true, the one that nourishes the spirit, which transforms, which questions, which disturbs, persists in crossing time, with a tasty slowness, like a nose to the frenzy of the modes which pass.
