Le Figaro Nice
The most bibliophiles will see it as an auto-da-fé, the most ecologists an environmental aberration.
For more than a week, tens of thousands of books were thrown into large metal construction site skips in Saint-Laurent-du-Var, near Nice (Alpes-Maritimes).
Sixty tonnes of books from “La Grande Bibliothèque de Sydney Laurent”, which went bankrupt last year and was placed in liquidation.
Its managers not having taken the trouble to clear the place, the new owner of the premises decided to evacuate everything
manually
about ten days ago.
Contacted by
Le Figaro
, Paul Teboul declined to comment.
“These books have caused me enough problems, I won’t answer
,” he says angrily over the phone.
On site Friday, the dumpsters disappeared.
All that remains in this 1,300 square meter building are large metal shelves, the same ones that recently supported entire shelves of writings.
A few workers are still busy.
“
It was a long process, I had never seen so many books in my life
,” comments one of them.
He and his colleagues still put some works aside.
All that remains in this 1,300 square meter building are large metal shelves, the same ones that recently supported entire shelves of writings.
Nicolas Daguin / Le Figaro
Also read: Ukraine, Israel... Faced with the multiplication of conflicts, the French are turning to geopolitics books
A risky bet
Opened with great fanfare in 2022, “La grande livre de Sydney Laurent” was a great cultural promise for the town of Saint-Laurent-du-Var, which has no other large bookstore in its territory, not even a municipal library. .
But that was without taking into account the daring bet of its managers to exclusively offer books for sale on behalf of authors.
“It was impossible to find any general public book, not a
Goncourt
or a
Renaudot
!”
, criticizes a close friend of the municipality.
And to support:
“It is nothing more than the story of a bankruptcy and of someone who had the wrong economic model.”
An error which today takes the form of a big waste, with hundreds of thousands of sheets of paper going into the trash.
“
You look at the ends of the book, it’s Clairefontaine paper, in the Vosges.
It’s French, there were workers, trees were cut down, it’s scandalous, it’s crying,”
said a woman on Wednesday at the microphone of
France 3 Azur
,
who came with a shopping bag to glean some books.