Remember when books were worthy of burning?

August 10 2011,  by K.St.C. in The Economist

RIOTING and books share a stormy history. Think of the so-called Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497, when Girolamo Savonarola and his band of religious followers roundly collected and set fire to mounds of “pagan” literature. Centuries later, torch-lit parades of right-wing German students burnt pillaged books in protest against what they saw as the creeping stain of Jewish intellectualism on national culture.

In London in 2011, however, bibliophiles can breathe easy: despite the riots, books have tended to stay safely on their shelves, their subtle power blithely overlooked. When it comes to targets for looters, books are losing out to high-end jeans and Apple-made gadgets. One waggish employee at a Waterstones in Manchester reportedly declared they would remain open despite the ruckus. “If they steal some books they might learn something,” he said (a quote that has circulated widely in the twittosphere). But he seems doomed to disappointment: as yet no Waterstones and only one WH Smith have been targeted. As Patrick French tweeted yesterday, “The only shop NOT looted down the road from where I live was Waterstones.”

The sorry exception to the prevailing book amnesty is Gay’s The Word in Bloomsbury, London’s first exclusively lesbian and gay bookshop. Staff arrived on the morning of August 8th to find the shop window had been smashed with a rock and the books on display pelted with eggs. No other shops on the street were targeted and no books were taken. The assistant manager, Uli Lenart, told reporters “We are just relieved that the rock wasn’t followed by a match”.

Simon Key, a co-owner of the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green London, was quick to weigh in on the local violence and looting in the store’s blog, calling it “short sighted, ignorant, self indulgent and greedy”. His bookshop was unscathed, but burnt cars and broken glass littered the street outside. The atmosphere of menace and uncertainty clearly unnerved him: “it [is] very difficult to carry on like normal and, as a precaution, we have cancelled our Book Group discussion”. He was adamant, though, that “we will not let this terrible night of violence ruin things”. Rioters, take note.

Authors of books on riots in London, such as “Violent London: 2000 years of Riots, Rebels & Revolts” by Clive Bloom, must be looking forward to increased sales (with a heavy heart, surely). And much new ink will inevitably be spilt over the roots and causes of these latest outbursts. I can just see the cover images, with hooded youths and blocky red sub-titles. But the underlying message for bookshops is hardly front-page news: looters, like more conventional consumers, are all too happy to ignore their wares.

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