Perhaps you are reading this in English, but can still read Romanian. Maybe your Romanian isn’t that good yet, but you have friends who read in Romanian. Are you interested in buying a book for your mother in law? Or for your future self, once you take those Romanian classes? (Maybe you are Romanian, and you’re reading this to practice your English.)
Anyway, you go to the FICT book fair, thinking, hey, I’ll find some good fiction works to give as presents, or to read when I’m not in the library, and then, you get confronted with an uncomfortable truth. Most of the sellers in the first section seem to be selling anything but books.
You see fur and leather coats, games, jewelry, candles, CDs… perhaps you can read a word or two on a card game, but that doesn’t count as reading. CDs? Yes, apparently more people still listen to that outdated piece of technology than read books.
Then you find a stationery shop, with pens, fat markers, and drawing pads. You think, hey, if I can’ț find a book to read, maybe I can write my own. But then you read the label “De la copii, pentru copii.” From children, for children.
So, kids designed the outside of the writing pads, which have been created for children. You despair. You find some “books,” but even a ten year old would complain that they are “for babies.”
And then you spot it. The tent. It’s full. There’s a speaker in there. All the seats are full, there are more people standing than sitting, and out of curiosity, you enter. You find space, just. Most of the people there are older than you, it is almost a miracle that they can stand through the entire talk, until you hear the speaker and understand.
This is the most capitivating speaker you ever heard in Cluj, well, maybe after that one waiter who told you about his time abroad, and that tour guide who … But yeah, even then, you were distracted with images, with walking, with food. This guy can just talk, and you still want to listen. Of course, once he is done speaking, there is a line of people with his book, waiting for his autograph. I should make that his books. Not only the book he was there talking about, but some of his old books. This guy is a veteran, no wonder he’s so good.
(They were buying the book while you were still finding your way out of the little tent. It appears that you were so amazed at how nice some of the old people had kept their hair, or were just standing still, hoping for another sentence, while those in the know were headed to the stand.)
If I had to guess what the best selling book was, I would say “Ioan-Aurel Pop’s book on anti-Romanianism.”
He spoke about his students, their struggle to understand history, to place ancient Egypt or ancient Rome against each other. It was all “abstract” to them. Then he spoke of the importance of knowing the order of history.
He also spoke of what the English speaking world calls cancel culture. How every Romanian from before Calescu has been cancelled. Calescu? I don’t remember the name.
The cancel culture is kind of understandable, considering some of the horrible things that happened. But then, if someone did one bad thing, does that invalidate his life up to then? Does David’s voyeurism of Bathsheba, then getting her husband murdered, and his other prideful sins of old age mean we shouldn’t tell the story of the youthful David who defeated Goliath? Did the fact that Solomon built a house to himself larger than the temple mean that his wisdom was for naught?
And what of all the US presidents and war heroes who owned slaves? Do we cancel the Declaration of Independence because of Thomas Jefferson?
He didn’t speak about that. He mentioned Greece and Egypt briefly, but it was about Romania, about the state of education, I am sure I will find a more detailed report on his talk in tomorrow’s newspaper.
But, that’s not my favorite book there. No, I didn’t buy it. I might, to find out who Calescu is. I hope those who did buy it will actually read it (and I don’t just mean the autograph page.) I mean, I like the idea of people reading something in print.
My favorite stand is Mega. No, it’s not “Make Europe Great Again,” I’m pretty sure the publisher is much older than that. Mega has books about Cluj, and even a comic book history of Transylvania. In fact, if you were to buy me a present from there, I might point you to Mega for ideas.
There were a couple other stands with interesting books. I will try not to disparage any of the books that I thought were low quality. I mean, you can see for yourself.
But sadly, the most popular stand was not a book stand at all. It was selling rocks. Not diamonds, stones. People were gathered around it like they normally gather around a langos stand.
It seemed that half of the book fair was selling anything but books. But now that I mention Langos, I realise they weren’t selling alcohol, tobacco, construction and DIY equipment, or food either.
Most of the people smoking nearby were booksellers. No, I actually didn’t buy books from stands where the seller smelled very strongly of tobacco. Is that a reason not to buy a book, because the seller smoked? Smoking is one thing, smoking within wind distance of your book is something else. I don’t want to end up with a book that smells like tobacco, and if I did, I’d want to choose the brand of tobacco myself.
You could buy a card game produced by AI, a cover for a book (they were nice covers), a lot of self-help and religious books, some great history books, books translated from other languages (from nobel prize winners to Steven King and Game of Thrones to pop fiction authors that I never heard of), and children’s books. (I’m not talking Charlotte’s Web here, but more like books for kids who haven’t yet got to the Green Eggs and Ham stage yet. Yes, if you tried to give those books to a ten year old, she’d complain they were for babies.)
Okay, there were one or two books originally in Romanian for ten year olds. But mostly, if you want to find fiction by a living Romanian, it’s going to be self-published. It’s like publishers aren’t interested in publishing interesting books any more.
Are they afraid that the authors will get cancelled? I don’t know. If you want a safe bet, there was one publisher who does a lot of sports books, and also old crime novels. Publisol has some talented Romanian authors, and they seem to be operating under a new name that I can’t write because it ends with a backwards “c.”
In the end, most of the stands did actually sell books. Most as in more than half. But every year, the percent of non-publisher stands increases. And the number of new fiction books decreases. FICT is not short for fiction. Not anymore.