In Paris, the Seine has been flowing between books and engravings for several centuries. They are said to prevent it from overflowing. How many other cities around the world can boast of such a privilege? It’s a way of looking at things. Another would consist in specifying that on one side of the river sits the town hall of Paris and on the other the Prefecture of police. At the moment and for the next twelve months, they have a common concern: the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
It’s about securing the space
Since for the first time in their history the opening ceremony will take place outside the stadium, it can only be on the Seine. There is no more beautiful setting for this parade. In principle, despite their excellence in performance, athletes are not expected to walk on water. The 10,500 athletes will therefore sail from east to west, from the Pont d’Austerlitz to the Pont d’Iéna, on boats provided for this purpose under the eyes of 600,000 spectators. Between books and engravings, that would be the least for the capital of a nation that passes for literary. That would suck. Except that the organizers warned in mid-July that the booksellers had to dismantle their boxes, clear and clear the way.
Outcry! Haro on the bookishophobes! The town hall defends itself: it is a question of securing the space, starting with the bleachers and freeing up the view to welcome the spectators of the famous opening ceremony but also those of the nautical events. The itou prefecture: the terrorist threat must be countered and deminers must be allowed to clear mines along the parapets under an article of the Internal Security Code. We know it well: the problem in life is that everyone has their reasons. Interested parties too.
At the slightest indelicacy, the boxes can break
What revolts them is not to close shop (every Parisian gifted with reason should flee Paris next July) but to move it. SOf the 230 booksellers registered in the commercial register, around 150 of these autoentrepreneurs are therefore asked to look elsewhere with their four boxes, the maximum authorized. But these famous boxes are as old as what we find there. Their fragility makes them difficult to dismantle, transport and reassemble. Often their bolts are rusty; their tightness is due to precise adjustment inherited from a know-how ignored by movers; at the slightest indelicacy, they can break; each is unique.
At the prefecture, “the intervention and synthesis office” (a name like that, you had to think about it) which manages the file had to offload it to a crazy algorithm before asking artificial intelligence how to make orphan parapets without alienating them. Everyone is outraged. It is the soul of Paris that is being murdered! On the one hand, booksellers mock the fine minds who are inflamed for their cause by observing that if the latter had become less rare, they would not have problems from the end of the month to the beginning of the month; on the other hand, we will notice that the majority of readers are above all interested in novelties that they are not supposed to find in the boxes (in principle…).
Some booksellers threaten to chain themselves to their boxes
In addition, due to tourism and necessity being the law, old books are increasingly tending to give way to images of all kinds (postcards, photos, prints, engravings, posters, historical newspaper front pages, etc.) on the stalls on the banks of the Seine, even if one box in four has the right to sell more souvenirs than books and prints.
Some booksellers threaten to chain themselves to their boxes, others to put an anvil in them. Their emblem is thus blazoned: “Azure party gules to the book box supported by stones, to the chief argent to the lizard coveting the sword”. For, like the reptile, they seek the sun; as for the edged weapon, booksellers once had the privilege of carrying it. The booksellers of the Seine, how many divisions? For now, they present a united front. But time is running out. An ultimatum was issued to them by the town hall: by the end of this month, the case must be settled.
Whether they agree to go into exile elsewhere in Paris or not, the only compensation they are offered is to renovate their boxes, while the whole process will prevent them from working for months. The town hall proposes, the Prefecture disposes. But this is only for security. Everything else is just literature.
* Pierre Assouline is a writer and journalist, member of the Goncourt Academy