Édouard Louis defends small bookshops
Edouard Louis joins a nation-wide movement asking the government to consider independent bookstores "essential businesses" and keep them open as France enters its second lockdown. In an Instagram post, he speaks fondly of bookshops as a place of re-invention and discovery.
“En 2013, quand j’étais étudiant, j’ai travaillé plusieurs mois comme libraire dans la librairie Les cahiers de Colette, dans Le Marais à Paris. J’ai découvert là-bas des auteures qui m’ont profondément marqué, Emily Dickinson, Elfriede Jelinek, j’ai eu la chance de faire découvrir des livres qui comptaient pour moi, ceux de James Baldwin, Annie Ernaux, Didier Eribon. Ces découvertes mutuelles auraient été impossibles à travers les algorithmes internet. Les librairies ont toujours représenté pour les gens comme moi, ceux qui ont lutté pour leur place au monde, un espace de réinvention de soi, un espace à l’intérieur duquel je me suis réinventé à travers les livres que j’y trouvais ( mon émotion quand j’ai acheté mon premier Jean Genet ! ).”
He writes:
“In 2013, when I was a student, I worked for several months in the Cahiers de Colette bookshop, in the Marais in Paris. There, I discovered authors who had a profound impact on me, Emily Dickinson, Elfreide Jelinek, I had the change to discover books that were important for me, such as those by James Baldwin, Annie Ernaux, and Dider Eribon. These mutual discoveries would have been impossible through internet algorithms. Bookshops have always represented, for people like me, those who have struggled to have their place in the world, a space for reinventing oneself, a space in which I reinvented myself through books that I found there (the emotion I had when I bought my first Jean Genet!).”