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I doubt this is a popular position but I find myself a bit uncertain about this attempt to categorise books as essential goods.
I’m a writer, obviously. I have many friends who are writers or who work in publishing. I want every bookseller and publisher and writer to come through this as much as anyone.
But when I see that people are struggling to obtain medicine, basic food items, even a roof over their heads, I do think we need to watch our step with attempting to say that books are on a par with those things. It feels distasteful.
The argument I see made most often is that books are somehow more than entertainment, information, distraction etc. They are in some way fundamental to our “humanity”. I don’t think this stands up, if I’m honest.
I think the argument that books build empathy or whatever doesn’t really hold up either. If that were true “book twitter” would be the most empathetic space on earth, rather than, say, a place for people to say things like “people are awful” and “this is a hellsite.”
I also think we have to be very careful, in our determination to elevate books to a kind of rarified status, not to be disingenuous about the labour required to print, move, and sell them.
We all want publishing to survive this, but I want people to survive it too. It’s hard to make the argument that people should risk illness and possibly even death to sell books.
And lastly I think something paradoxical happens when we try and “elevate” books to the level of essential item: we actually in a strange way reduce them.
One of the more beautiful things about loving art, I think, is that it’s not essential. It’s not like bread or medicine (much as we try and medicalise literature).
If we venture too far down the road of making a utilitarian case for art I think something is lost. I think a kind of inherent value becomes distorted into material value.
I think a better way forward would be for the government to help everyone, no matter their profession, to stay away from work as long as is necessary for them, and everyone, to be safe and well.
By which I mean: paying people, properly, to stay at home. Alleviating the financial burden. I think that will do more to foster the arts than pressing for everyone to get back to work.
To put it another way, if indeed books build empathy, then we should have no problem expanding our empathy beyond the world of books, and appreciating that our priorities may not be shared, or may indeed be in conflict with the priorities of others, no?
Hadn’t even seen this when I was talking about the whole “books are essential” idea yesterday but this is the absolute peak of what I’m talking about and, in my view, so poorly through through as to be offensive.
To be clear, the groundwork for this almost comically muddy thinking has been laid through 5-10 years of the publishing industry rushing to embrace deeply dubious “books are good for you” pseudo neuro-science.
I’ve seen major publishing houses tweeting that “reading helps you live longer”, “reading makes you happier”, “successful people read” so it’s difficult to say it’s a surprise that this is where we’ve ended up but frankly I think it’s time to reverse course.
It’s perfectly possible to make a compelling case for all the arts, including literature, as, ok, not “essential” in that sense, but vitally important socially, politically and emotionally. This is not that case.
