10,500 athletes competed in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Fewer than 350 managed to win a gold medal. Thousands of professional golfers excel, but only a few dozen truly make it into the world’s elite each year.
Céline Dion, Taylor Swift, Adèle, Billie Eilish are among the exceptional superstars, while thousands of artists struggle to earn a decent living. Quebec writers face the same relentless challenges of supply and demand. They are numerous and talented. The day of August 12, I buy a Quebec book, highlights the exceptional quality of literature here. Unfortunately, we have to admit that demand is not there. Young people in general read little, too busy with Tik Tok and Instagram. Adults lack time, taken by work and household chores. Isolating yourself for a few hours to read has become a guilty or utopian pleasure and perceived as a waste of precious time. The price of paper books puts many off. The offer of new releases in libraries is often deficient.
The digital book must compete with the multiple online platforms for cinema, TV series, music and podcasts.
I fear that the vast majority of Quebec writers must mourn the loss of living from their pen or achieving fame with their poetry, essays or novels, which, I hope, should not prevent them from astonishing us with their stories and reflections that are essential to our collective and individual intellectual journey. Writing can be as therapeutic as reading. We must do everything we can to convince as many people as possible that literature contributes to happiness and mental health, just like physical activity, meditation and social interactions.
Quebec, with its 8 million inhabitants, is a limited market. We must also do everything possible to allow Quebec literary talent to shine throughout the French-speaking world.
We must eliminate this perception, too common among the population, that reading is a tedious, boring, long and painful exercise reserved for intellectuals alone, when on the contrary, it can provide joy, entertainment, calm, serenity and open new horizons towards happiness for all. Long live Quebec literature!