Constant movement and intensity are just two of the defining characteristics of any book fair. Beyond the importance that books and the publishing world acquire through presentations, author signatures, interviews and many other commercial activities, those who give life to these activities are the people who give themselves the opportunity to open a parenthesis in their daily life to attend and maybe buy a book.
Like every human creation, no book fair is perfect. Joy and happiness are not exempt from critical looks that point out those aspects that will enrich the future and the growth of these publishing bets and those who organize them. Over the years, the experience provided by the history of these activities generates opportunities to consolidate these spaces in which, after all, windows open to culture, various artistic expressions, the display of ideas, dialogue and debate. Just as one can enjoy the freedom to choose a reading, one can also choose to participate in a space in which points of view on the most plural themes are compared, one dialogues with the works and their creators; that is to say, it is possible that our very dimension of the human acquires a new aspect.
It would be very easy to idealize book fairs without evaluating their successes and eventual errors: everything will depend on the lenses with which they are appreciated and the parameters with which their organization is measured, also on the optimism and demands placed on the table of analyses. However, what cannot be lost in the haze of the commercial world is what beats on each of the pages or in meetings with the writers: that reading can motivate the flame that transforms the spirit of those who have chosen to give themselves the opportunity to face the oblivion and time. Listening to the reading aloud of a poem, the conversation of someone who has encrypted life in stories and novels or has reviewed their ideas in paragraphs that deepen knowledge, just as Montaigne proposed five centuries ago. Perhaps André Maurois was right when he stated that “reading a good book is an incessant dialogue in which the book speaks and the soul responds”.
All of this therefore constitutes the engine of a fair that gravitates in the spirit of the female readers, and refines the objectives of the publishing houses. And, without a doubt, it also acquires an indisputable political dimension. Although it has been said that reading, in itself, is a political act par excellence, in which ideas and positions with respect to history and reality acquire their own voice, the activities that take place in these fairs do not allow us to glimpse the freedom that should exist in our society.
At the end of this day, the 36th edition of the Guadalajara International Book Fair will close. Yes, the most important in the field of our language and one of the most important worldwide which, over the years, has established itself as the gravitational center of all fields of knowledge. Between poetry and science, philosophy and music, the FIL Guadalajara is a beacon to which those who have found in books the possibility of a good port in which the spirit settles. And, of course, where freedom takes on different faces.
Perhaps for this reason it is paradoxical that the current tenant of the National Palace has designated this fair as a “forum of conservatism”. Nor could one expect another reaction when it comes to protecting members of his government: the boos are a courtesy of the polarization that exists in society. But he’s not wrong about something: politics permeates many activities. The curious thing, typical of involuntary humor, is that some of the participants are more than supporters of the presidential figure. Will they be conservatives in disguise or will they simply meet the expectations of their readers and their professional activities? But in the first president’s ideological tangle, those possibilities don’t fit into the crucible of freedom. The danger of demagoguery is to opt for a confinement of thought in which polarization and Manichaeism are the only explanation of reality.
Long live the Guadalajara International Book Fair, to those who organize it and ensure that a new book or certain words reach a new readership. Let new ideas emerge. These are glimpses of a future very different from the present world.
