A Novel Bookstore

Literature is a source of pleasure, he said, it is one of the rare inexhaustible joys in life, but it's not only that. It must not be disassociated from reality. Everything is there. That is why I never use the word fiction. Every subtlety in life is material for a book. He insisted on the fact. Have you noticed, he'd say, that I'm talking about novels? Novels don't contain only exceptional situations, life or death choices, or major ordeals; there are also everyday difficulties, temptations, ordinary disappointments; and, in response, every human attitude, every type of behavior, from the finest to the most wretched. There are books where, as you read, you wonder: What would I have done? It's a question you have to ask yourself. Listen carefully: it is a way to learn to live. There are grown-ups who would say no, that literature is not life, that novels teach you nothing. They are wrong. Literature performs, instructs, it prepares you for life.

We have no time to waste on insignificant books, hollow books, books that are there to please... We want books that cost their authors a great deal, books where you can feel the years of work, the backache, the writer's block, the author's panic at the thought that he might be lost: his discouragement, his courage, his anguish, his stubbornness, the risk of failure that he has taken.

We want books that are written for those of us who doubt everything, who cry over the least little thing, who are startled by the slightest noise.

I had plenty of time,' he said, telling himself that was one of the saddest sentences there is.

He had no more imaginary space, nowhere he could escape to, no more expectations, all he could do was make himself available to the present moment, to what was immeasurable, the terrible profusion of moments that make up a day.

We want splendid books ... books that prove to us that love is at work in the world next to evil, right up against it, at times indistinctly, and that it always will be ...

And when I think there are people around me who complain they can't find anything good to read. What nonsense ... every month you and I discover a masterpiece.

There is nothing more difficult to master than repetition. If you do it badly, it's clumsy, stupid. When it's well done, it's like a little echo, like waves, poetry itself.

We want splendid books, books that immerse us in the splendor of reality and keep us there; books that prove to us that love is at work in the world next to evil, right up against it, at times indistinctly, and that it always will be, just the way that suffering will always ravage hearts. We want good novels...And even if there is only one such book per decade,...only one...every ten years, that would be enough. We want nothing else.

By definition, confusion is beneficial to mediocrity.

You have just confirmed to me that one of the most fortunate purposes of literature is to bring like-minded people together and get them talking.

Her strength, she would tell Van much later on, was nothing more nor less than the hope of, at last, attaining that goal which had become so important for her--not to succeed in doing something, but simply to do something good.

Culture contains everything. there would be no peaks without valleys, gentle slopes, and meadows, at lower altitudes. The genius of democracy is a love for everything, to offer everything, value everything, and let individual freedom express its preferences here as elsewhere...and the key word, where culture and art are concerned, is pleasure!

My grandfather left me a great deal more – a passion for literature and something additional, fundamental: the conviction that literature is important….Novels don’t contain only exceptional situations, life or death choices, or major ordeals; there are also everyday difficulties, temptations, ordinary disappointments; and, in response, every human attitude, every type of behavior, from the finest to the most wretched….There are grown-ups who will say no, that literature is not life, that novels teach you nothing. They are wrong. Literature informs, instructs, it prepares you for life.” (pg. 150)

Van, The Good Novel will not be an ordinary bookstore. That's our challenge. Our customers won't be ordinary customers. The people we'll see in our store will be people who never buy a book because it just came out, unless they adore the author already, but for other reasons that have nothing to do with its pub date, because they couldn't case less about that. . . .

In previous years, they might have spent hours in the cellar, on their feet, never seeing the time go by nor feeling their legs, and they would go back upstairs at closing time enthralled, radiant, a bit drunk, and there were more and more of them who, when they got back to Paris or Basel, would tell those around them, 'I only ever buy my books in Meribel now, once a year; obviously I've had to change my suitcase (my car / my leisure time / my life)' . . . .