The novel has often been declared dead. Usually by writers in the fall of their career, who found that their work hadn’t changed the world. It has become a cliché, but what is new is that the most recent death certificate comes from the director of the CPNB, the foundation that was created for the ‘collective propaganda of the Dutch book’. You don’t expect that from a club that is paid by the Dutch book industry and that is supposed to promote the book, and to that end organizes the Boekenweek every year. But when CPNB director Eveline Aendekerk went looking for an explanation for the aging reader market, she chose Marga Minco’s classic little novel. The bitter herb down as a book that „quite skilfully expresses the pleasure of reading [wordt] rammed” when you offer it to students.
Also read: The Bitter Spice and the Masterpiece of the CPNB
About the value of The bitter herb Fortunately, much has already been said since then, but it is worth looking at what lies behind such a statement. The Book Week was once conceived to spread literature more widely. There was no doubt about the value of the good book, nor about the interest of readers. Meanwhile, reading went hand in hand, and so the role of the CPNB changed. It was no longer about the promotion of literature, but that of the book in general. Meanwhile ‘propaganda’ has been replaced by marketing.
We look at which activities yielded the most and which ‘brands’ are still doing well. The Book Week and the Month of the Exciting Book can remain, a Cookbook Week has been added, and the Week of Poetry has been abolished. That’s a choice if you’re paid by the library, bookstore, and publisher, but it also disappears when popular genres are increasingly promoted and the promotion of numerically marginal genres is scaled back. Namely the realization that literary texts can have a special value, that imagination in book form can bring about something and that novels are part of your culture.
Literature has always had a hard time, even in the 1930s writers such as Anton van Duinkerken complained about “the power of numbers”. Literary publishers are having a hard time, now sometimes numbers of novels are sold that were reserved for poetry collections in the 1990s. But from the 1930s to the beginning of this century there was a foundation that tirelessly pointed to the value of novels, stories, poetry: the literary imagination. At the moment, with the courage of desperation, the CPNB is targeting what is already popular. She aims for the general book, without looking at what kind of book. And so it is possible that reading promotion now partly consists of advising against certain books, because they are said to be too difficult. Reading should be fun.
At a time when it seems so difficult for the Dutch to live with each other, reading can do so much more. Letting you empathize with a reality you don’t know, transferring yourself into a different identity. Who The bitter herb reads, moves into a young girl who survives a war that has destroyed her family. That is the value of imagination, of reading. The CPNB would do well to leave marketing for what it is and reflect on the principles – to hopefully come to the conclusion that it is worth promoting what is vulnerable and of value.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 30, 2022