In 1976, when the Dirty War in Argentina was at its height, I remember burning books – not dramatically, with bonfires in the middle of the street – but surreptitiously, throwing them down the trash chute in the kitchen of my flat. Down went the collection of The Partisan Review, which I'd inherited from a long-gone uncle and had never read, but also psychoanalysis and revisionist history, social theory and political thought. Everything intellectual was suspect. I had a huge collection of books in English. Would their foreignness make them dangerous too? (They turned out to be, but that's another story.)
Contrast those dreadful days with May 2010 and the exuberant displays at this year's Buenos Aires Book Fair, which had books on display in all subjects, in a number of foreign languages, a million-and-a-half visitors and appearances by great international writers and intellectuals who addressed standing audiences of 1,000 people and more.
Every city has events that its people mark in their collective calendars as you do Thanksgiving, or a Bank Holiday. Boston has a Marathon, Munich has Oktoberfest. And Buenos Aires has a whole month set aside for La Feria del Libro, a true culturefest run in a huge space in the Palermo section of the city where – irreverently – an annual agricultural and livestock show is also held later in the year. The Fair has a "trade only" side, but I did not participate in it. I was interested in it as a public event.
It's open to the public seven days a week, from 10am to 9pm, sometimes to 11pm. I attempted a visit at 7.30 pm on a weekday. The line to get tickets was four-deep and extended for three full city blocks. Parents with children, young people, older people, students doubled up over their computers waiting to go in – everybody patiently in line. It truly puzzled me. Argentineans – and particularly porteños, born and bred in Buenos Aires – are known for their impatience. True to my birthplace I gave up, but wondered: Why is the BA Book Fair so successful as a people event? Why do so many families and educators and readers pay to participate?
My answer? Because it's not about books. It's about popular culture. Books are integrated within a smorgasbord of activities of which they are an integral but not an exclusive part. People come for the storytelling, the lectures, the courses, the concerts – and then spend hours in the crowded corridors looking at and buying books. The offerings are so varied, manga next to medical books, university presses next to children's books. Everywhere piles and piles of books. Hardly any walls: the stands seem to be an extension of the walkways. It is books and music, and participatory events, and all the buzz and excitement of an event that defies the notion that books are "high-brow".
Buenos Aires is a city of bookstores where there is no need for anybody to pay an entrance fee and stand in line to enter. Yet some of the biggest, busiest stands at La Feria are bookstores, which reach out to their customers, becoming one with the talks and the pop concerts and the celebrity events. And there are publishers, too. Sometimes showing the same books. Some promotions, but no discounts. Why no conflict? Publishers have a tradition of selling from their own showrooms.
Probably the most exciting day is that devoted to bibliotecas populares, membership libraries, run mostly by neighbours and volunteers given the run of the place on their designated day. The publishers offer a 50 per cent discount for qualified libraries, while the government funds travel and offers a subsidy to buy books – and they get a shopping cart. The buzz is incredible. However much our library budgets are being cut, we view libraries as part of the landscape. It would be easy to dismiss this grass-roots effort. Mostly from small provincial cities and rural towns, the volunteers' comments were a joy to hear. A webvideo at conabip.org records some of them: "for us, this is a party"; "it's not just us here, it's our community". They mention efforts to poll their members and assess their needs, and their careful buying was joyous.
So, if books are one more expression but not the "only" expression of culture, one can begin to understand the initial choices made to represent Argentina as Guest of Honour of the 2010 Frankfurt Book Fair. The four "national icons" chosen to represent one of the most literary countries in the world are a tango singer who was born in France, a revolutionary leader who would have been persecuted and killed if he'd stayed in Argentina, a politician, and a former football hero. None of them A Writer. Their names? Carlos Gardel, Che Guevara, Eva Peron and Diego Maradona. In the words of essayist Juan José Sebreli, "a conservative, a communist, a populist and an opportunist". These choices in a country where the regular papers carry cultural sections, which surprise me every time I visit, reminding me of Le Monde or the New York Times Book Review. The controversy was bitter and sustained. The core, of course, was political. It reminded Argentinians of times when the political slogan was: "Shoes, yes; books, no". It invited an examination of the recent past when the intellectual was subversive. Writers, readers, the press and the establishment engaged in raucous and vociferous debate with the verve and commitment that Latin countries can exhibit when discussing issues of identity. Clearly, the situation got out of hand.
Reading the press reports from afar, I was reminded of sitting in class, Borges by then totally blind, reciting the Anglo-Saxon elegies. You felt he was talking from some internal world that had nothing to do with the run-down classroom where he was teaching. I wondered then, as I often do still, whether our great writers have taken flight to remote or self-created worlds as a way of organising the chaos which Argentina is in, forever.
Writers and publishers saw their case strengthened in September 2008, when, at a press conference in Berlin, Juergen Boos, Director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, reminded Argentina that writers – not "national icons or stereotypes" – should be at the centre of the programme. So what about Switzerland using mountains and chocolate when their country was the focus? Boos conceded that Argentina could bring the tango on board – and there is going to be a thrilling amount of dancing around different venues at the time of the fair – but "the core should be young writers".
So, I am now proud to see that cool minds prevailed and the country will be showing off the wealth of new and established writers that have given Argentina a place in the pantheon. For those people lucky enough to be in Frankfurt reading this, an invitation. Do get involved in the madness and thrill of Argentine culture. Visit Buenos Aires and its bookstores down Corrientes Street: they'll be open well after you leave your restaurant at midnight. Experience the splendour of El Atenéo, a bookshop converted from an old theatre in downtown Buenos Aires, which retains its painted ceiling, the stage curtains and ornate carvings, and piles of books, and readers and buyers. The Guardian selected it as one of the 10 favourite independent bookstores in the world. It certainly is one of my personal "national icons".
I'll check YouTube for that good soul with a camera who will post views of what promises to be a really exciting booth designed by a young Argentine architect. There'll be Argentine music and readings from and by Argentine authors, in Spanish and in German, and tango dancing.
But please, let there be lots of Torrontes and Malbec, as well. After all, the Swiss brought their chocolate, didn't they?
Beatriz Casoy was an ELT marketer with OUP in Buenos Aires when on a five-day visit to London the repression in Argentina destroyed her family and forced her into an eight-year exile. Subsequently moving to the US, Casoy and her husband Keith Ashfield, owned and ran an academic publishing house. For the last seven years they have run a publishing consultancy, Caslon Business Development, from Philadelphia. For many years, Beatriz Casoy would not read fiction in Spanish. This has joyously changed.
See www.caslonconsulting.com.
