Books to show off that you don't have to read

Drawing by Tom Gauld for his book 'In the kitchen with Kafka', published in Spain in 2018 by Salamandra Graphic.

The

French

Maddy Burciaga made headlines in January this year for advertising imitation boxes of luxury books at 19.99 euros for two units;

His

have no pages and, as can be seen in the video he posted for this purpose, they are as good for decorating a room as any of the many library-like wall papers found on Amazon: for less than 70 euros, the client can boast of the possession of numerous and very respectable books without the need to buy them, acquire shelves and, of course, read them.

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The

Burciaga (2.6 million followers on Instagram, YouTube 153,000 subscribers, more than 61,300 on Twitter) are a manifestation of

or addiction to books, a niche market and a subculture that associate professor English and Comparative Literature from San Diego State University Jessica Pressman describes it in a book published in April titled

as a sum of "creative acts that are related to the materiality of the book within a digital culture", a handful of practices not very varied that includes the publication on social networks of a cover on an aesthetically acceptable background, the staging of the act of reading, the celebration of certain bookstores, the superficial but enthusiastic comment on the emotions aroused by a work, the photographic record of stacks of books in home environments in which they marry by virtue of their color and / or some other aspect unrelated to its content and, of course, the acquisition and display of cloth bags, key chains, bookmarks, cases, dolls, cushions with quotes, jewelry, T-shirts, toys and pencils.

For Pressman, "there is an urgency and there is a kind of intensity in that attachment and affiliation to books in the digital age"; In the best of cases, he maintains, its exhibition on social networks would be a form of resistance against a digital culture that would have led some to believe literature is obsolete. The popularity of platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok and the interest of the publishing industry to copy them, for which it is already designing communication strategies and covers (in the latter case, with the premise that these should be clearly seen in a tweet, in an Instagram post or in the Amazon window), could be seen as a continued effort to promote reading among the youngest and contribute to its validity in association with new actors such as

and

(people who review books on YouTube or TikTok).

The result of these strategies, however, is simply the promotion of the purchase of books for their decorative potential, to obtain the respect and symbolic capital that those who do not have a habit of reading give to those who do (in consideration of the idea that reading would have made them "better") and / or to celebrate the existence and creative achievements of writers of the past. And furthermore, it is not produced in the field of literature but in the digital sphere, which it reinforces. As if all the t-shirts (Haruki Murakami just collaborated with the Uniqlo company in the creation of some inspired by his books), the mugs with covers and the socks with book phrases were the remains of the shipwreck of a literature that once was not just its shape,which also had content and contributed to the search for meaning in the world in which we live.

Maybe the

it is the only possible approach to literature for the members of an exhausted and confined society who interact only through screens; As dozens of booksellers and booksellers testify, in the last year there have been not a few clients who, to transform a room in their home into a teleworking position, have asked them for books by the meter or by color, bound in paste or with a simpler appearance. informal, depending on the type of image they wanted to project. An "independent" publisher complained some time ago that a significant number of the orders it receives in its virtual store were not for the titles it publishes (mostly excellent) but for the posters and postcards that it created some time ago for promote them, which your customers prefer over books.But the big publishers have been paying almost exclusive attention for some time to the commercialization of a literature that circulates and is promoted on social networks that are only interested in its material aspect: pressured by the demand for a performance that makes it possible to sustain excessive structures in relation to the actual consumption of literature, these large publishers deliberately bet on the

of "book addiction" of which Pressman speaks in his work.

In the words of its editors, “

explains how books continue to give meaning to our lives in the digital age”, but the type of discussion that they encourage on social networks and their use for aesthetic purposes (to “build and project identity to through the possession and presentation of books ”, as Pressman summarizes) seem to speak of the“ meaning ”of life being sought and produced elsewhere, for example in the acquisition of books that one does not intend to read. and its display. A time ago this was called “snobbery”, but today the word is intended for that which questions the practices of a majority trapped in the habitual and deliberate confusion between

and experts, among readers and book buyers. Literate culture has not entirely lost its appeal, it seems; or, as the English essayist Simon Reynolds

in

, it has acquired another, that of what has ended, such as the inventiveness and extraordinary energy that pop music once had, of which only nostalgia and consumption remain. The owners of Zoom do not seem to be oblivious to all this, nor to the demands of its users, and the platform already offers several virtual funds that represent a shelf loaded with books. To paraphrase Reynolds, perhaps the Gutenberg Galaxy does not end with a loud bang, but with its transformation into

aspirational interior decoration.