Looking back at a literary year that never was

Imagine an uptick in reading and a downtrend in streaming. (Representational photo: Martin Péchy via Pexels)

What a year it’s been. More people read and discussed books than ever before, and every streaming service and social media platform reported dwindling activity. Vast throngs of shoppers were spotted in bookstores day and night.

Governments across the world agreed that book bans made no sense. Ideas were openly discussed, and people were encouraged to make up their own minds. Once they got used to this, there was no going back.

Several measures were put into place to foster this supportive environment. For example, those who wanted to discuss controversial books were first asked to sit for a test to ascertain whether they had read the books in the first place.

Independent bookstores thrived, and several new ones were launched in towns and cities everywhere. Bankers fell over themselves to give loans to bookstore owners who needed them. Grants were set up by public and private bodies for the same purpose.

Online bookstores agreed not to indulge in discounting or other unfair trade practices. Chain bookstores followed suit. Libraries flourished, too. New ones were set up and existing ones were expanded. Children, their parents, and others became frequent visitors, and librarians and archivists were held up as social superheroes.

People stopped making snobbish distinctions between print books, e-books, and audiobooks. They agreed that all of them were valid mediums, and the one chosen at a specific time depended on the nature of the book and the circumstances of reading. The same applied to genres, be it romance, SF, thrillers or anything else.

In this scenario, new literary magazines sprang up to showcase an array of exciting new voices. Old ones got over their financial difficulties to continue their sterling work, and not one of them shut down.

It was also a year in which legislation was finally passed to prohibit reviewers from describing books in words such as “luminous”, “unflinchingly honest” or even “whip-smart”. Sadly, this was not achieved without a struggle during which some reviewers broke down and confessed that they didn’t know what other words to use.

Book blurbs took the hint and followed suit. They did not exclaim that a title was “a tour de force”, “unputdownable” or “a moving meditation”. A light-hearted work was not described as “rollicking”, and a memoir was not hailed as “a triumph of the human spirit”.

As for publishers, they gave up trying to merge with each other. Each one developed a strong list with individual strengths of their own. They stopped confusing representation with diversity, so that the books they brought out contained powerful, distinctive voices which reflected changing times.

They listened to their employee unions, paid fair wages, and improved working conditions whenever necessary. Further, they took several more steps towards sustainability, such as increasing the usage of recycled paper.

Independent publishers, like bookshops, attracted large amounts of attention. They continued to publish strong, unorthodox voices, in languages from all over the world. The demand for book translators soared, and many had to turn off their phones to stop agents from calling them ceaselessly.

Authors themselves revelled in these new conditions in which they could openly write and speak about whatever was close to their hearts. They were paid well, and while advances didn’t exactly go through the roof, the majority could make a living by writing alone. As a result, their work became fresh and vital. (In passing, authors of self-help books came to realise that focusing only on the individual and not social structures was rather pointless.)

Not one writer was brutally attacked, whether in real life or online. The voices that were raised in literary festivals, readings and social media were of those who welcomed debate, and did not want to shut it down.

Further thrilling news came with the discovery of several works that were long thought to be lost to time. Among them were the second part of Aristotle’s Poetics, and the plays of Aeschylus. Also found at last was Walter Benjamin’s battered black suitcase, containing a thick manuscript that further explored and deepened his theses on the philosophy of history.

Despite all these heartening developments, one worrying tendency still prevailed. As in the past, I haven’t managed to finish even a fraction of the books on my tottering to-be-read pile, and now look forward to next year’s releases with more than a degree of trepidation.