ON BOOKSHOP DESERT AND NON-FICTION.
- avnonl
- Dec 11, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 15, 2024
Ever since my favorite book shop: Book Depository closed its doors
I have had a problem how to get books in English. I live in southern Israel in the Negev desert, geographically - but it is also a desert bookshop wise. Beer Sheva is a university city (Ben Gurion University of the Negev) but there is no university book shop; the two Israeli book chain stores (Steimatzky and Tzomet Sfarim) have a monopoly; they are present in Beer Sheva, but their sales persons are completely ignorant of what goes on in the literary world, like two weeks after the Nobel Prize in literature was announced: they do not know the name of the author, nor do they have one of her books?! This is a repeated experience over many years already; they also do not know or have books of the winners of the Booker and Pulitzer Prizes. Instead, these book shops are mostly full of what I call pollution of the paper, books I have no interest in reading, least of all owning. I am an old-fashioned grandmother who likes to have my physical book in my hands, smell it and touch the pages and even write in my books. I like to walk around a book store, see the books, touch them, read the first half page to see if I want to read it or own it.
Some years ago, we did a tour on the River Thames in a longboat from Eynsham towards Reading and back; in the words of Ngaio Marsh in Clutch of Constables (1968): we were ‘water wanderers, in a world of watery, where times behave oddly, how fantastically remote we are from the country that lies so close on either hand’.
There were many high lights on that tour apart from spending time with My Dear and some of the children. One night we were mooring in the heart for Oxford, so we had a chance to explore the city. One of the highlights there was to visit the Blackwell’s bookshop, which is an old fashioned book store: lots and lots of books of all kinds, both professional books as well as fiction. The floors sounded old-fashioned as I walked on them cracking and squeaking, sales persons who knew their shop and what books were on the shelves – professional.
The Bodleian Library was not open to see inside, one of the oldest libraries in Europe since 1602; however, I am a graduate of Copenhagen Medical School, the university library there, was established in 1482 so much older, but the Bodleian Building is much nicer and more of a landmark.
Exploring Oxford is to explore the colleges and university, for many years already one of the world’s best universities.
Ever since the Book Depository closed, I have made it a habit to review new books on the Blackwell’s website and list what I would like to read. There are so many books I want to read, but my bookshelves are full, and I would go bankrupt if I bought them all. None of the books I would like to read and own, ever come to my part of the world.
The other day I reviewed what is new on Blackwell but this time it caught my attention how books are characterized as fiction and non-fiction. I have never thought about it before: How can you define something, by what it is not?
Looking up FICTION in the Oxford Languages, it is a noun with two meanings
a. literature in the form of prose that describes imaginary events and people.
b. something that is invented or untrue.
It originates from Latin: fingere, meaning: form, contrive and ficto coming via Old French to late Middle English as fiction: meaning ‘invented statement’; first used in 1483 by William Caxton in a translation (OUD).
In The Cambridge Dictionary they say that FICTION is
a. the type of book or story that is written about imaginary characters and events and not based on real people and facts.
b. a false report or statement that you pretend is true.
In the Britannica Dictionary the definition of FICTION
1. written stories about people and events that are not real: literature that tells stories which are imagined by the writer
2. something that is not true.
If you look literarily at the word ‘non-fiction’ literature, it means literature that is non - not true; I believe that is a rather silly way to say a book is true, based on facts, professional, academic, truth.
To read fiction in a novel of invented and fictional characters and situations should however reveal some kind of universal truth, or logic, that we as readers may relate to, at least on an emotional and psychological level.
In medical school we were repeatedly encouraged to read good literature as a way to understand our patients and better communicate with them on their lives and their human condition. I believe that is even more important today when our communities become much more multi-cultural; so, the professional needs to better understand other perspectives on life and culture.
This leaves now the question: what should non-fiction be called, in stead of this silly ‘non- not-truth literature?
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