Abstract
The author analyses the problems of erosion of the book culture and the role of bookishness in the contemporary Western and Russian identities. While analysing the processes of disappearance and displacement of bookshops, the author presumes that culture of bookstores and communication subcultures in them cannot compete with networks and e-commerce. It is assumed that the logic of capitalism favours the progress of on-line bookstores, specialising in the serial and mass literature while independent bookstores prefer to sell intellectual, non-fiction, and academic books that are not interesting to consumer readers of mass culture. The author tries to analyse causes of private non-mass bookstores crisis. The author believes that intellectuals of 2000s were optimistic in their prognosis for the development of bookstores as spaces of cultural initiatives. By the end of 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the number of independent bookstores decreased significantly when on-line bookstores occupied their place. It is assumed that the cultures of reading, book collections, personal libraries lost the positions they held in the 20th century and even in the first decade of the 21st century. The author presumes that independent bookstores became cultural ghettos and intellectual reservations, when net bookstores became successful actors of the mass culture. In general, it is predicted that heterogeneous, regionally localised minority book cultures and reading strategies of the New Medievalism may replace the “mass” book as a cultural institution of a modern political imagined communities as elements of the dying Gutenberg Galaxy with its heterogeneous national identities.
References
Agladze, N. (2017, September 11). Suite about the city and water, or why books are sold. Retrieved from Arili website: http://arilimag.ge/ნიკოლოზ-აგლაძე-სიუიტა-ქა/ (In Georgian).
Agladze, N. (2019, March 2). Classics and modern. Retrieved from Arili website: http://arilimag.ge/ნიკოლოზ-აგლაძე-კლასიკო/ (In Georgian).
Bradbury, R. (1953). Fahrenheit 451, NY.: Ballantine Books.
Burton, B. (2006). The King’s English: Adventures of an independent bookseller, L.: Gibbs Smith.
Carrión, J. (2017). Bookshops: A Reader’s History. New York: Biblioasis.
Chartier, R. (1996). Culture écrite et société. L'ordre des livres (XIVe-XVIIIe siècle) [Written culture and society. The order of books ( 14th-18th century)]. Paris: Albin Michel. (In French).
Chiabrishvili, N. (2015, February 25). A man in Marshall McLuhan’s “Global Village”. Retrieved from Masts’avlebeli website: http://mastsavlebeli.ge/?p=4554 (In Georgian).
Chigvinadze, A. (2010, February 13). Kafka did not have a TV. Retrieved from Demo.ge website: https://www.demo.ge/index.php?do=full&id=445 (In Georgian)
Childress, C. (2017). Under the cover: The creation, production, and reception of a novel, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Conroy, J. O. (2019, March 4). Why are New York’s bookstores disappearing? The city that produced so many authors is losing its bookshops to pressure from Amazon, changing reading habits and skyrocketing rents. Retrieved from The Guardian website: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/04/why-are-new-yorks-bookstores-disappearing
Crain, C. (2019, March 4). On disappearing bookstores. Retrieved from Steamthing.com. website: https://steamthing.com/2019/03/on-disappearing-bookstores.html
Dvali, T. (2020, March 17). Almost everyone who valued me is in the village cemetery. Interview with Giorgi Lobzhanidze. Retrieved from Radio Freedom website: https://www.radiotavisupleba.ge/a/სოფლის-სასაფლაოზეა-თითქმის-ყველა-ვინც-მე-მეძვირფასებოდა---ინტერვიუ-გიორგი-ლობჟანიძესთან/30493419.html (In Georgian).
Fischer, Ch. (2013, October). Seattle's Disappearing Bookstores. A recovering used book clerk laments the steady disappearance of a last great place for meandering. Retrieved from Seattle Magazine website: https://www.seattlemag.com/article/seattles-disappearing-bookstores
Galaishvili, D. (2018, September, 23). Cultural industry and demand. Retrieved from: Demo.ge website: https://www.demo.ge/index.php?do=full&id=1589 (In Georgian).
Graham, R. (2019, July 11). The Decline of the Christian Bookstore. Yes, they sell sanitized music and “Jesus junk.” But something important gets lost when Christian bookstores disappear. Retrieved from Slate. A daily magazine website: https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/07/christian-bookstores-closing-lifeway-family-christian-stores.html
Hardin, G. (1969, December 13). The Tragedy of the Commons. Retrieved from Science website: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full
Johnson, Ch. (2016, October 11).What do Americans lose if bookstores disappear? More than you think. Retrieved from Deseret News website: https://www.deseret.com/2016/10/11/20597947/what-do-americans-lose-if-bookstores-disappear-more-than-you-think
Kevanishvili, E. (2019, March 29). Books in the mill – a place to read. Retrieved from Radio Freedom website: https://www.radiotavisupleba.ge/a/წიგნები-წისქვილში---საკითხავი-ადგილი/29849150.html (In Georgian).
Koyava, R. (2015, March 18). Consumers’ community. Retrieved from Demo.ge website: https://www.demo.ge/index.php?do=full&id=1217 (In Georgian).
Kukhalashvili, E. (2013, March 4). The fear of the computer is a sign of illiteracy. Retrieved from NewPress website: http://newpress.ge/staties_id/308 (In Georgian).
Kyrchanoff, М. (2016). Dystopian discourse and national identity in Russian prose of the 2010s. Toronto Slavic Quarterly, (58). Retrieved from: http://sites.utoronto.ca/tsq/58/Kyrchanof58.pdf
Kyrchanoff, М. (2017). “Shakespeare… was Russian writer probably because the name does not like Chinese”: two libroutopias in post-Soviet literatures of Belarus and Russia. Toronto Slavic Quarterly, (60). Retrieved from: http://sites.utoronto.ca/tsq/60/Kyrchanoff60.pdf
Le Guin, U. (2016). Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, L. – NY.: Small Beer Press. Retrieved from Ursula Le Guin website: https://www.ursulakleguin.com/words-are-my-matter
Mchedlidze, T. (2011, November 2). After modernisation. Retrieved from Demo.ge website: https://www.demo.ge/index.php?do=full&id=847 (In Georgian).
McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Miller, L. (2008). Reluctant capitalists: Bookselling and the culture of consumption, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
O’Connor, C. (2016, September 12). Disappearing Bookstores. Why our bookstores are disappearing, and why you should care. Retrieved from Odyssey website: https://www.theodysseyonline.com/disappearing-bookstores
Raffaelli, R. (2020, January). Reinventing Retail: The Novel Resurgence of Independent Bookstores. In Harvard Business School Working Papers. Retrieved from: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/20-068_c19963e7-506c-479a-beb4-bb339cd293ee.pdf
Sastumlishvili, N. (2019, March 2). About writers and novels. Retrieved from Arili website: http://arilimag.ge/ნინო-სასთუმლიშვილი-მწე/ (In Georgian).
Shoshiashvili, N. (2016, March 26). History has lost historical sense. Retrieved from European.ge website: http://european.ge/nukri-shoshiashviuli-sazrisi/ (In Georgian).
Takamitsu Sawa, (2020, April 19). What we’ll miss when bookstores disappear. Retrieved from The Japan Times website. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/04/19/commentary/japan-commentary/well-miss-bookstores-disappear/
Tskhvediani, Ts. (2017, September 28). City – Dramatic Works. Retrieved from Liberal website: http://liberali.ge/articles/view/31493/qalaqi--dramatuli-natsarmoebi (In Georgian).
Urushadze, I., & Pirtskhalaishvili, G. (2018, August 5). User of literature. Retrieved from Arili website: http://arilimag-ge/ილია-ურუშაძე-გიორგი-ფირც/ (In Georgian).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.