Who about what, I about writers.
Yesterday I stopped in front of the window of a bookstore in the main street of Belgrade, you know that bookstore, opposite the cinema "Zvezda" or "Koleseum", as you like, here history and politics are mostly reduced to a mere name change anyway, and I looked at the window. When I just remember what the bookstore used to be like, and that means sometime in the 70s and early 80s of the last century: on the ground floor the best possible selection of books from the other Yugoslavia, and on the first floor the best selection of records and posters in Belgrade. Belgrade was a world city then, city buses were regular and half-empty. Thank you for coming to us Soft Drinks machine or Chet Baker, and today, from what I hear, is Magazine the main attraction. Nice, we got what we asked for. Well, I look at the window of what used to be the best bookstore in Belgrade and I'm so happy. A brief description follows. Raise the head of a passerby who, by some chance, stops in front of it by a miracle unseen, a series of sloppy, sun-faded and distorted posters of national bards were exhibited: Branko Radičević and others. Where is Naomi now, I thought, in one of the past issues Times I told you about how sterilely arranged the bookstore in the West looks (z it is not necessary to write with a capital letter), and now you can already conclude with me that there is a difference between nose i other things sveta, unfortunately, equal to the difference that manifests itself in public places. The border of civilization is determined by the English toilet, someone said a long time ago, only now that definition should be corrected by using instead of o place discharges talk about the bookstore, that grocers spiritual of all food in the world is wasted (here), a supermarket the same (there). In this respect, we are a pure fringe, an amorphousness that manifests itself, among other things, in the "inventive" chaos of a bookstore window. In the said place, namely, it is possible to get to know the cross-section, appearance and state of our present-day culture in a flash, in other words, to see in a small and close-up all its so different stratum between which there are not, nor can there be, any points of contact. What is the relationship between, for example, Vladimir Arsenijević and Dobrica Erić. Except that by chance, by force of birth, they write in the same language (although I wouldn't swear that it is you are language) - none. Worlds unto themselves.
Let me continue the description. So, our literary greats are looking at the main Belgrade street. What do they think? Holy God knows. Below them, in the right corner, there are not five or six, but - fiddles. I didn't ask if they were for sale. On the very opposite side, there are two silent icons in woodcut. Of course, there are also amateur oils and graphics - since the books are not selling well, most of our bookstores have meanwhile converted to ad hoc galleries. Only focus is missing.
Now, the books.
First, the standard titles. How to help yourself psychotherapeutically, how to choose the right path, how to make your own horoscope, what the Serbs are like, and stories. Then, several "bestsellers", as inflated as real. Various manuals: one on fishing, one on growing flowers, one on decorating an apartment, one entitled "You and Your Dog", and the inevitable books of interviews by someone who, twenty years earlier, in the social.union.of.labour.people, taught young writers here how to a self-governing culture should look like. I think he has a website: www. bla.truć.truć.com. Finally, literature: Nikolaj Velimirović next to Charles Bukowski, novels by that Besson who has been presenting himself to us as a great French writer for years (when there, however), some kind of erotic songbook, Slavic stories, an anthology of rock poetry. And right in the corner, a book whose title completely involuntarily and perfectly comments on the whole arrangement: Erasmus Praise madness. It's just set up.
If you don't believe it, take a walk and see for yourself, it's not far.
That's not all. Actually, that's just the beginning. In the window of the bookstore, which reports on the complete disarray of local culture (and culture is completion, attitude and proportion, Eliot teaches us), I listed the books of seven or eight local "writers" whom I had never heard of. I'm not complaining, far from wanting to make fun of someone, after all, who is to blame for doing my job poorly and not being better informed. I'm just stating: in the window of what used to be the best bookstore in Belgrade, there are massive displays of books by writers whose readership cannot be said to be strong. Which, of course, says nothing about the quality of what was written and published. I just think that it is not bad much, seven or eight books at once, so I humbly ask if it's okay for so many anonymous, sorry, lesser-known writers (whatever that means) to take such an initiative. Where is the desired harmony, where is the dream balance?
And then I remember one of my old stories. When Vlada Pistalo was in Belgrade, I told him that story all morning, he looked at me as if I wasn't myself. In short, I deeply believe that it is possible to write a history, not a fictional one, but a real history of anonymous literature. Both traditional ones and today's ones. It's just that it's difficult to do, everything would have to be done from the beginning, and beyond the introduced rules, describing antitradition is the same as defining antimatter. Find, for example, a song that is a counterpart Epu o Gilgamesh. If there are writers today that no one has heard of, there must have been their anonymous ancestors back then, in ancient Babylon. And then slowly, all in order, to search for alternative Shakespeare and Cervantes, then anti Gogol and Fyodor Mikhailovich, until today. Borges must also have had an anonymous doppelganger. If he didn't invent it, he didn't do anything. I have a hunch that this doppelgänger, one of hundreds of multiplied, unknown doppelgangers of great writers, lives somewhere near me, perhaps in New Belgrade, and writes, writes, in deep resignation that no one notices him, but nevertheless does not stop, hoping that when - then his sublime art will come to light, say in the window of a bookstore on the main street in Belgrade. Tu, immediately near nose, there is a whole invisible, parallel system of anonymous literature that tends to flow into the central stream, to present itself as the only national cultural value. In changed times, such "literature" somehow, by no means a pure game, manages to turn its inferior unmasculinity into aggressively presence. Andrić wrote something about it, but few people read it, and what is the use of reading it, today, here.
I promised to talk about writers, but what can I do when I still prefer Naomi Campbell posters to posters of local bards. To keep my promise anyway. Aggressive presence of anonymous people, those from parallel "literary" worlds, who, like all self-proclaimed people, identified with in general things local culture, it had to cause an appropriate reaction. At the beginning of March, the Serbian Literary Society was founded in Belgrade, which, thanks for the question, like any healthy baby, feels great. Now, not everyone who is sane was happy about that neonatus, my God. In things of a similar kind, you can expect everything from the bazaar here, but a welcome, at least. Well, in that sense, we didn't even expect it. My esteemed colleague, Mr. Jakov Grobarov, I, and the other founders, all current and future academics, have a place to hide when the downpour of hypergeneralization begins. We don't all have to go to that famous shop window, because, to be honest, we don't belong there.
