Time.news – “You have already spent a lot”, says the owner Davide to one of the many customers who crowded the historic Odradek bookshop yesterday morning, after the announcement of the closure which puts an end to 25 years of activity in the heart of Rome. There is Giulia who arrives from Pomezia and peeks among the titles placed in fruit crates right on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant in via dei Banchi Vecchi. “I’m not a customer because I live far away, but I read the post and came to have a look,” she explains.
The narrow corridor of the bookstore is crowded, Davide is at the till and is the narrative voice of this closure, while Katia is intent on registering the books coming out for this empty-it-all that will have to end in the first days of 2023. The phone rings: Davide he replies “Director? Director, can I give you the first name?”. AND’ Enrico Mentana, who after proposing a donation on social media among those who can afford it, this morning he returned to office. He wants to convince Davide that something is still possible to save this small, historic, independent bookstore in the historic centre.
After a while, the conversation ends and Davide starts again to explain why there are no more margins for this activity after 25 years and then adds: “Six years ago I also did a crowdfunding, I don’t like asking people for money”. “Here in the center there are no more people, there is no longer a social fabric, it’s all a B&B. There is a problem with the new owners who buy the houses, but don’t rent them to people, but to tourists. Here everything is de-socialized “, he says between one receipt and another,” it is a historic center invaded by wineries, low-profile catering establishments which correspond to transhumance tourism “.
“They come, they stay here for three days, they sack a city”, Davide complains, “for example Campo dè Fiori which is a world heritage site, has become a ring, with the restaurants reaching right up to the statue of Giordano Bruno, with so much people who work illegally. In via dei Banchi Vecchi there are ten shutters pulled down. This context has weighed heavily on the history of this bookshop because the bookshops that are in the suburbs are resisting better. But even reaching Via dei Banchi Vecchi is not easy here , unless you have a moped and I would agree with the pedestrianized historic center. Then the strongest and most important reason is that the forms of reading change, so the book is no longer the only literacy tool. But today this also passes through the network”.
Odradek will therefore be just the latest in a list of historic downtown bookstores that have closed their doors in recent years. From the Pilgrim Library at the Feltrinelli of the Alberto Sordi Galleryfrom the cross bookshop at the Arion of Montecitorioshutters that have closed never to reopen again.
“This is the more beautiful profession, but it is very poor, but no one thought of doing this job and earning three thousand euros a month, but not even a thousand. Since they are years and years of self-exploitation we have reached the limit because we risked being choked with the banks. We cannot afford this”, continues Davide, “we must be able to close, escape as soon as possible also because the projections of the large banking institutions on economic estimates speak of a terrible 2023. There is talk of a very serious economic crisis. Our project? It means closing without debts, then there will be the problem of our salaries, but we are used to it because in recent years we have done a thousand jobs to keep this bookshop open”.
Davide’s voice gives itself away only when he talks about Katia: “she is the driving force behind this bookshop because all modern antiques, unobtainable books, are her specialization. We have a network of about twenty booksellers throughout Italy and all this knowledge accumulated in these twenty years we risk losing it”. But is there something that the institutions should do and have not done? “When Franceschini was at the Ministry of Culture, he gave the Libraries funding to spend in independent bookstores, so much so that this year around 10-12 thousand euros in collections came in thanks to this measure (the bookseller receives a percentage equal to 30 percent of the cover price); then last year we took 5 thousand euros from the Lazio Region with which we renewed the technological equipment of the bookshop – he replies – and then there is the important law on books approved two years ago”.
“The institutions have behaved well, the problem is the readers” is the analysis, “the elderly are dying and I have no turnover. The civilization of the paper that of the ‘900“. The response to his words is precisely in the faces that crowd the bookshop this morning, there are no twenty-year-olds, nor thirty-year-olds. The elderly are the ones who come out with piles of books, the others look, turn around, perhaps they will buy something. But one what is certain Davide: “I owe a lot to Odradek and I also owe my identity as a man to this place”.