A desert of non-readers
- Paweł Konzal
- Nov 5, 2024
- 3 min read
In 10 days we will celebrate the 106th anniversary of independence. In 60 days, the last Ruch kiosk will close. The two events are deeply connected, although the current revolution of secondary illiteracy is taking place quietly. Before our eyes, Poland is becoming a desert of the written word, both in terms of the daily press and books. Civilizationally, we are going backwards compared to, for example, France, which has more independent bookstores than the US and the UK combined.
During occupation, the struggle for access to the written word was one of the key elements in the struggle to preserve Polish culture. The high standing of literature has resulted in the 6th highest number of Nobel Prizes in literature in the world. This is a real achievement, since Polish is a hermetic language with a limited reach - it is spoken almost exclusively by Poles.
Just one month after regaining freedom, in December 1918, Jan Gebethner and Jakub Mortkowicz founded the Polish Railway Bookstore Company RUCH Ltd. If you're reading this in hard copy, you've probably already traveled a longer road than a year ago to purchase Plus Minus. Starting in January, that road will get even longer. The RUCH, which still had 31,000 outlets 25 years ago, will soon close its last kiosk.
Bookstores are disappearing in a similar way. Over the course of a decade, one in three has disappeared in Poland, with another one closing every three days. As a result, even today, being in one of the most central points of the capital, such as at the de Gaulle roundabout, one has to walk more than 1.5 km to the nearest press outlet. For 71 years at the same roundabout one of the key bookstores (EMPiK) and RUCH kiosks operated. Not far away - next to Smyk, on Plac Trzech Krzyży, etc. - more kiosks with press functioned. Today there is no trace of them. Does it matter, since some readers have moved to digital format?
Yes, the format matters. Just as drinking wine in a plastic cup is different from tasting it in a glass, viewing news on a phone or tablet is different from reading a newspaper. The paper format exposes us to texts we would not otherwise encounter. They are adjacent on the page to texts that interest us. Similarly, in a bookstore, we come across unfamiliar titles next to the books we are looking for. In this way, our mental and cultural horizon is broadened and enriched.
The digital format was not created for reading “from cover to cover.” As a consequence of reading only texts that are suggested to us by an algorithm or that catch our eye with a shocking title, our horizon narrows. The consequence is a decline in readership. Poland's largest daily newspaper in the 1990s had a circulation of almost 600,000 copies. Today, its paper sales are about 48 thousand. Added to that are 300 thousand digital subscribers. So in total, you can see a decline of at least 40%. At least, since the paper copy was often read by several people in the family, company, etc.
75 years ago Orwell published “1984.” In it he wrote: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten (...) the process continues day by day and minute by minute. History has come to a standstill. Nothing exists except the endless present, in which the Party is always right.”. What does AD 2024 look like? Titles of articles and digital encyclopedic texts change constantly and imperceptibly for the viewer. We don't know what a decade or two days ago was written e.g. in a biographical note about Churchill. We only see what is written about him today. The liquid reality means that only the present exists. In a world without memory, who will be right?
The Polish state, pompously celebrating “100 years of Independence” a few years ago, does not sufficiently support the culture of the written word and does not care enough about the development and continuation of reading. The positive exceptions are the municipal libraries. However, this is not enough. The lack of effective state and city policies in this area is causing a civilizational regress. Instead of becoming a barbaric desert of non-readers, let's take advantage of the experience of France, for example, to promote easy, affordable and daily access to printed texts.
