Does Reading Really Make One’s Share in Life?
2. Who Is Still Interested in Books Nowadays?
The question at the beginning of this section is justified, especially in the conditions of urban, modern life, when the means of information are extremely diverse.
The book has now serious competition in the virtual world of computers and of television.
The ease of access to information and the way in which it is served to us determined a lot of people to choose other information means.
It is interesting that, beyond the mirage of the two rivals of the book – the television and the computer, a lot of people still resort to books. This is proved by the numerous visitors of the book fair at several editions.
But who were the potential book consumers in the city of Iasi in the year of grace 2003?
We chose a random group of 306 subjects among the people present at Librex 2003 Book and Stationery Fair, distributed as follows:
From the point of view of sex distribution, there is a slight advantage for men (52,30% versus 47,70%);
The age average of the participants was 38-39 years.
Most of the people who were particularly interested in the book phenomenon had jobs directly related to books.
The constant customers of bookstores were the ones who had in 2003 a monthly income of more than 3 million lei.
The following graphs present the distribution of the subjects according to several variables: sex, age, profession, studies, and income.
The sex distribution
52,30%
47,70%
male female
The age distribution
20,90% 21,60% 21,20%
17,60% 18,60%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
under 18 years old
19 - 30 years old
31 - 45 years old
46 - 60 years old
over 61 years old Distribution on age categories
As we can easily notice, the distribution of the readers and of the people interested in books on age categories is quite homogeneous, varying between 17% - 21%. Even if we had expected that the high values would correspond to the younger population, this is not the case. Practically, we cannot make a distribution of the population according to this variable. At the most, this is useful in order to have an approximate image of the age of the customers of a book fair. The following table can offer more exact data:
Distribution on sex and age
Age Male (no. of subjects) Female (no. of subjects)
Under 18 years old 33 31
19-30 years old 32 34
31-45 years old 34 31
46-60 years old 31 23
Over 61 years old 30 27
Age average 38,29 years old Youngest
visitor
12 years old Oldest visitor 83 years old
Distribution according to the variable studies1
6,20%
15,40%
19,90%
58,50%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
elementary secondary high school higher education
• Distribution according to the variable profession:
21,20%
17,60%
21,60%
16,30%
3,90%
19,00%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
pupil student teaching staff
senior engineer other
The two variables, regarding studies and profession, show an increase in the percentage of the persons with university studies and whose professions are directly connected to the book. We should mention that the number of the persons with university studies in the technical field is quite small compared to the other professional categories explicitly mentioned. (3,9% versus 16,30% for the retired persons).
1 The highest form of education completed was considered.
Distribution according to the variable family monthly average income
9,80%
28,10%
22,90%
16,70%
20,60%
2,00%
under 3 mil.
3-5 mil.
5-7 mil.
7-9 mil.
over 9 mil.
ns/nr
Here is the typical portrait of the person living in Iasi who is still interested in books and still reads, according to the figures mentioned above: he/she has or had a profession directly related to the use of books (teachers, researchers, engineers, pupils or students), has an average age of 38 years old and a monthly income of more than 3 million lei in 2003.
If we take into account the fact that the number of people in Iasi having these characteristics is quite small, we can state that the number of the book readers is quite small too.
The situation is not much more different at the level of the entire country. Some current statistics draw our attention on the fact that the book consumption in Romania is quite low. The edition from the 30th of November 2002 of the journal “Adevarul” (The Truth)1 made an analysis of the book market in Romania after two major events of the Romanian book (Gaudeamus and Bookarest), and there was a harsh title: The book market in Romania – the weakest in Europe. As far as our book market is concerned, we are far from comparing ourselves to the European countries. Gabriel Liiceanu, as a publisher, made public a few figures at the Gaudeamus fair: about 10 000 new titles are published each year in Romania, that is 27 times less than in France and 32 times less than in Germany. Sweden’s position is also eloquent: a country that, in 2002, had an average run of 8 000 copies per title. As for the turnover in book publishing, it was of 37 million Euros per year, far less than Germany, with 4,5 billion. Unfortunately, we don’t have the current figures, but our intuition tells us that the proportion did not register a significant change. Faced with these figures, any comment is redundant.
The book represents a real interest only for a small category of the population, and our research has confirmed it. Less than 50% of the members of each socio-professional category say that they like to spend their spare time reading a book. And we must add that this situation is registered in a great cultural city of Moldova.
Of course, we wonder how this situation can be explained, now that the communist censorship does no longer exist and on the market there are reference titles from all the
1 Journal “Adevarul”, no. 3869 from the 30th of November 2002
fields.
The easiest explanation is of an economic nature: the low income and the living standard, in general, distract the public’s attention from the book. This may be true, but how can we explain then the fact that the Romanians are in the top of the European countries for alcohol consumption, or that, recently, we have surpassed by far the specialists’ expectations regarding car buying? On the other hand, the book consumers do not belong to the high-income category of the population (this is the case for students and teachers).
Another explanation can be the amount of time consumed. The modern man is much too busy to devote himself to the classical study or to literature. Or, reading a book takes time and patience. The new information means – mainly the Internet – correspond to the new “hurried reader”, who cannot afford not to be informed.
But this only seems true. Some people think that reading a book is time consuming; instead, we are thus offered an exceptional chance: the chance of living a concentrated time. “By reading a few dozens of books, a man “lives” hundreds of lives and acquires thousands of experiences. I do not refer to what he learns directly (as manuals too teach us a lot of things), but to what is obscurely revealed to him by the “concentration of Time”, that is by its defeat. In literature, man comes across a kind of time which is different from what he lives directly (the so-called duration). Yet, this time is not artificial, nor abstract, like, for instance, the mathematical time. It is a historic time, a duration that has been “concentrated”; that is, by the freedom and the genius of the writer, the time could be defeated and transformed. Even if he doesn’t always realize it, the reader learns how to fight time only by reading literature.”1 Moreover, Mircea Eliade thinks that the book is the expression of the creative freedom, which succeeds in breaking the chains of the duration, placing us in eternity.
We are thus in the middle of a paradox: on the one hand, the common opinion that reading is time-consuming, and freedom-limiting, and, on the other hand, there is the idea (which, it is true, belongs to the people who have fully tasted the pleasures of reading) that the book delivers us from the trap of the historic time, giving us the chance of fully experiencing freedom. Nevertheless, we believe that the paradox is only apparent, being generated by the superficial understanding of the modern man, dominated by pragmatic and materialistic conceptions. His freedom is a limited one, blocked within the canons of the time lived, while the contact with the book implies a spiritual freedom in a concentrated time.
It is also interesting that, nowadays, finding a model becomes many times a priority for the people who are always under the pressure of time. They look for these models among friends, colleagues, cinema or TV stars, and less in books. Such models can many times cause huge disappointments. A good book, through its ideas and characters, cannot disappoint. It often offers ideal types (in Weber’s words) or exemplary models. The time investment the reader makes is much smaller than the gain.
The attitude towards books and reading can also be explained by the greater respect manifested for the spoken word than for the written word. The phrase “Magister dixit” is probably not fortuitous.
The book cult did not exist before – noticed Jose Luis Borges – it is quite recent.
The famous phrase “Scripta manent, verba volant” “does not mean that the spoken word is
1 Mircea Eliade, Impotriva deznadejdii (Against Dispair), edited by Mircea Handoca, with a Preface by Monica Spiridon, Bucuresti, Humanitas Pubishing House, 1992, pp. 51-52
ephemeral, but that the written word is enduring, but dead. The spoken word is light, winged; winged and sacred, according to Plato. All the great masters of humanity were, surprisingly, oral masters.”1
Speaking can be, of course, much simpler and more convenient. The actual presence of an interlocutor creates the impression that he can answer right away to any doubts, questions or dilemmas. A lot of students are deeply relieved if, in lectures, the teacher speaks freely and does not “dictate”. According to the latter’s training, skill, and professional talent, they can be fascinated, enthusiastic, curious or even bored. The problem comes along with the examination, when they have to have to answer to certain demands…
The great disadvantage of the free, oral communication is the fact that it does not allow us to return, after a certain period of time, to a particular idea in order to re-think or re-examine it. And this is true especially in the present conditions, when we have to deal with an affluence of information reaching us by different means.
Oral expression is preferred for other reasons as well. “Writing, and then the book as a compact graphical block increased tremendously the distance between the “word” and the “deed”, and became the source of the most terrible misunderstandings, which are responsible for the systematic ever-growing discrepancy between the “facts” and the ideal
“Verb”, or any form of idealness.”2 The Ancients probably knew all these explanations, and that is why they cultivated the direct, oral knowledge. It is difficult for us to imagine Plato or Aristotle dictating to the disciples their philosophic theories and ideas.
The aspiration of the Ancients of surviving through disciples is still valid today.
The extent to which they succeeded to do so is nevertheless surpassed by the present conditions. The attraction for the colloquial style can be justified by the fact that it connects people, it renders knowledge human and personal.
Neither economic explanations, nor time or speculations on the oral character can offer well-funded reasons for the weak attraction of the Romanian public towards the book. All that we have said indicate rather that it has acquired new connotations. For most people, the book has become a simple means to reach social or professional success. It refers to immediate interests rather than to the classical spiritual formation.