Hopefully, the day will come when the organizers of literary festivals will understand that it is no longer appropriate to invite writers, or at least not only them. The formula – let’s be honest – has worn out over time, the names tend to repeat themselves and among the writers, few have performance skills. But above all, what the authors had to say, they said (hopefully) in their books, and therefore must be sought among the pages – moreover with an economic advantage for the sector, which according to recent data is in trouble.
NOT FOR THISHowever, the festivals, which for over twenty years have been a symbol of our summers like the ice cream cone, will find themselves short of participants: without going far, there is a category that claims the quarter of an hour of celebrity promised by Andy Warhol all all humanity. We are talking about publishers, obviously, and all those who work in or for a publishing house. Some, in fact, have already written books about their experiences (thus becoming authors ready to go to festivals), but this is a minority, while there are thousands of stories waiting to be told.
This is demonstrated by an essay published by Einaudi, The Italy of books (pp. 272, 18.50 euros), whose author, Tommaso Munari, after a couple of titles dedicated to the Ostrich, has broadened the scope of his research and traced «a fascinating and unusual history of Italy through the events of ten illustrious publishers”. So he says the scream on the cover, and for once it’s not a lie.
In truth, the publishing houses that Munari writes about are well over ten, because the stories are intertwined, and we cannot talk about one brand without many others emerging. And it is natural that this is the case: taken as a whole, Italian editorial production (like the global one, for that matter) forms a mosaic, in which the individual titles, series, editorial teams, acronyms, are connected to each other like so many pieces , and make up a mirror of the world in which they fit. A mirror, and often an engine.
TO HIT IN THE STUDIO of Munari is in fact the ability of books, not only to accompany the evolutions of Italian society, but in many cases to precede them, to drive them. And this, even before Italy became a state: what weight did the volumes of the Historical Library of All Nations (Machiavelli, Pietro Giannone and Carlo Botta, among the authors) started in Milan in 1819? Munari writes: «For the modest sum of half a cent per page Bettoni put into circulation dozens of classics of historiography with an average of 2500 copies per volume. Numbers that attest to a more than remarkable public consensus for the time.” For that era certainly and perhaps, we add, also for ours, apparently much more literate.
And speaking of literacy, how much of a stimulus were the great bestsellers between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century for the practice of the Italian language – then a minority compared to the dialects? The list is long, and goes from Dumas to him, from Carolina Invernizio to Salgari, from Collodi to Ida Baccini and of course to the excellent Artusi. Science in the kitchen and the art of eating well – which, let us remember, was initially self-published by its author, who was more farsighted than the publishers he had turned to – entered tens of thousands of homes and taught not only many recipes, but a lively and precise lexicon, instead of the «more than barbaric language of other similar treatises”, as Artusi himself polemically defined it to a friend. Equally polemically, albeit in parentheses (one of many that happily punctuate The Italy of books) Munari wonders what is left of that linguistic teaching in the time of “platings” and “delicious” and “intriguing” culinary creations.
The comparison with the past often turns out to be merciless. Or more precisely, it shows us how much less central books are in contemporary culture than what happened fifty or seventy years ago, beyond individual cases, which almost always turn out to be flashes in the pan. It is impossible today to find editorial acronyms or series that have an impact on society similar to that of the Laterza orchestrated by Benedetto Croce, of the various Einaudi «Libraries», of the Universale Economica Feltrinelli.
NOT BY CHANCE Munari’s essay concludes with a consideration which, taking inspiration from the Sellerio catalogue, highlights how few publishers have resisted the «proliferation of yellow, like pink»: «Think, to give just one example, of the fiction series contemporary of the Adelphi ‘Fabula’ which, inaugurated by Milan Kundera (The unbearable lightness of being1985) is today presided over by the adventures of Ian Fleming’s 007 and those of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.”
On the other hand, (Munari again) the process is “underway, and history cannot be made of the present”. Nor, we add, can we fight against it Zeitgeist. And yet knowing and analyzing it is necessary if we want to think that it is possible to impose more or less large corrective measures on the inexorability of the time in which we are immersed. From this perspective, the reading of theItaly of books is usefully accompanied by that of three recent texts which, precisely because they are different from each other, help to understand what we are talking about today when we talk about books and publishing.
Already the title of the first, Bestselling operation (Ponte alle Grazie, pp. 339, 19.90 euros), indicates the direction in which the market has been oriented for at least two decades. Of course, selling has always been the first task of a publisher, but a lot has changed in the book production system, as the author, Valentina Notarberardino, notes between the lines in the first chapter, based on her long experience in the press office: «That what the reader doesn’t know is that his freedom of choice is exercised only among the books that the market suggests he buy.” And the reader himself “is not always aware that the immaterial life of the book, between reviews, literary prizes, TV and radio appearances, can be skillfully directed, if not piloted, by a good initial control room”.
Thus, with the help of the testimonies of other operators in the sector, Notarberardino effectively explains the steps that will lead a title – perhaps – to success. (Among the cases described, it is worth mentioning the adventure of Mexican Railwayswhich thanks to the skilful “control room” of Giulio Mozzi, a great connoisseur of Italian publishing, as well as an important writer, has managed to sell, since its release in 2022, more than fifty thousand copies, overcoming the enormous initial obstacles: an author unknown at the time, Gian Marco Griffi, and a very small publishing house, Laurana).
In a certain sense, a mirror of Bestselling operation arises Culture in the media by Giorgio Zanchini (Carocci, pp. 211, euro 17), which investigates how books and cultural objects of various types are treated in the media and how this has transformed from the ancient times in which printed paper dominated to the current digital dispersion .
Heroically trying to avoid apocalypses and integration, to take up the dichotomy introduced by Umberto Eco, Zanchini starts from the assumption – irrefutable – that the very idea of culture has profoundly changed, noting how today information is “polymorphic, ubiquitous, participatory” and trying to explore its thousand declinations, without hiding the two major dangers we are facing: a fragmentation that undermines complexity and a “re-feudalization of knowledge”.
HOW TO SAY THAT CULTURE does it belong to a few again? Assuming it is true, and it is not excluded, other questions arise from this: what do we mean by culture now? who are the few? and do these few coincide with power (political, economic, social, military)? Emanuele Bevilacqua’s essay does not answer, and indeed further expands the questions Attention and power (Luiss University Press, pp. 221, euro 17) which, as indicated by the subtitle «Culture, media and market in the era of mass distraction», focuses on that particular ability, presence to oneself, which is so important for survival, today more than ever “conditioned by the use we make of the information we receive and how we receive it”.
Aware that entering this territory also means racing against time (just think of how the debate on media and culture has changed since 30 November 2022, the date on which ChatGPT was launched), Bevilacqua faces different scenarios, from evolution of social media to audience studies, to conclude that the challenge consists in «not losing our essential skills and at the same time not giving up the beneficial effects of innovation». Vast program, he himself knows, which requires “collaboration between different generations” and, it goes without saying, great attention.
Whether in these “exciting times of change, chaos and fear”, books – as agents of doubts, of fatigue, of comparisons, of slowness – will still have a space and a role, remains to be seen. In the current panorama, the answer is not obvious.
