Wandering through Paris, one can find large chain booksellers—FNAC and Gibert Joseph, for example—but a defining characteristic of the city continues to be its tiny independent shops. Up to dozens can be found in a single neighborhood, specializing in everything from Portuguese and Brazilian literature to rare books to the contemporary rentrée littéraire—an autumn tradition when the French publishing industry releases a batch of new books.
Meanwhile, the combination of sky-high rents and online competition have pushed independent bookstores out of their spaces. A gloomy headline in The New York Times this spring diagnosed Manhattan as a "Literary City, Bookstore Desert." A similar piece in The Guardian reported that 500 British independent bookstores have closed since 2005.
Cultural exception aside, France is not entirely exempt from such shifts itself. Even in Delamain's neighborhood, the Librairie del Duca recently shut down, while the Librairie le Divan relocated to the more affordable 15th arrondissement.
In fact, the Delamain's threat may have less to do with the digital publishing landscape than with foreign competition of an entirely different sort. Average prices for Parisian apartments have skyrocketed in the last 15 years. A housing shortage that the government has called a "major crisis" can be attributed, in many cases, to foreign investment in Parisian properties—often by owners who never end up moving in.
The luxury market has been particularly impacted by foreign ownership, with owners from the U.S., Russia, and the Middle East finding Parisian property especially appealing. In some ways the trend is an echo of Japanese companies' flooding of the U.S. real estate market in the 1980s; in this case, Qatari companies entered when nations were crippled by austerity and in many cases eager for an influx of foreign capital. Constellation Hotel Holdings itself, currently in negotiations with the Librairie Delamain, has been quietly buying up luxury properties from Nice to Cannes for years—no doubt exacerbating the sentiment that there are too many foreigners in France.
Of course, Paris is far from the only European city to witness such a trend. Last year, a piece in Vanity Fair about London's One Hyde Park, the most expensive residential building in the world, revealed that a majority of its apartments sit empty, owned by absentee billionaires like Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani of Qatar. Constellation Hotel Holdings itself made the news last year for investing 400 million pounds in another London hotel; it makes billion-dollar Qatari investment deals buying up European real estate.
The knowledge that a historic Parisian bookstore may now be subject to the whims of a Middle Eastern mega-company has been incorporated into the French media's narrative about Delamain. It is already commonplace to complain that Paris has become no more than a museum, an empty shell from which the locals have fled, to be picked over by foreigners and students. And the line between national pride and hostility to foreigners has always been thin in France, where the universalism of liberté, égalité, fraternité coexists uneasily with a racially-based understanding of what it means to be French. A touch of xenophobiahas tinged the irony of some commentary, suggesting that Middle Eastern wealth is oblivious to broader cultural concerns. "If the Qataris hadn't understood that this is an important place, in terms of its physical site as well as its patrons, now they should," said one bookseller following a week of buzz in the French media. "But we're talking about Qataris, after all; these are people who have time and money for themselves." Monadé of Centre National du Livre noted that he hoped the Qataris, "mindful of their investments in terms of their image," will not let the bookstore close.
Given the peculiarities of the French cultural system, it's quite likely that the bookstore will in fact be saved. Other threats are not so quick to dissolve. On the same block of Rue Saint-Honoré, the revolving doors of the five-star H?tel du Louvre welcome one set of patrons; the small streetside entrance of the Librairie Delamain beckons to another. The little bookshop and the international conglomerate are now intimately intertwined.
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漫步巴黎,你會看到FNAC和吉貝爾·約瑟夫(Gibert Joseph)這樣的大型連鎖書店。但是,能代表這座城市特色的仍是那些小型獨立書店。僅在一個街區(qū),就聚集著幾十家之多的獨立書店,所售書籍涉及方方面面,從葡萄牙和巴西文學(xué)到各種珍本,再到當(dāng)代文學(xué)。法國出版業(yè)有秋季推出新書的傳統(tǒng)。
與此同時,天價租金以及來自網(wǎng)絡(luò)的競爭卻讓獨立書店無處安身。今春,《紐約時報》曾刊登頭條新聞稱曼哈頓為“文學(xué)之城,書店荒漠”,頗為悲觀?!缎l(wèi)報》也發(fā)表了類似文章,稱自2005年以來英國有500家獨立書店倒閉。
雖有“文化例外”保駕護航,法國也未能完全從這一轉(zhuǎn)變中幸免。德拉曼書店同一街區(qū)的Del Duca書店近期倒閉,而Le Divan書店則遷到租金較為便宜的第15區(qū)。
事實上,德拉曼書店面臨的威脅更多來自其他領(lǐng)域的外來競爭而非數(shù)字出版的興盛。過去15年里,巴黎房價飆漲。政府稱為“重大危機”的住房緊缺現(xiàn)象在許多情形下是由于不斷涌入的外國購房人投資巴黎房地產(chǎn)所致,而許多投資者都讓房子空置著。
高檔樓盤市場尤其受到外國購房者的影響,他們來自美國、俄羅斯和中東,對巴黎房地產(chǎn)情有獨鐘。從某些方面看,當(dāng)前形勢與20世紀(jì)80年代日本公司涌入美國房地產(chǎn)市場的情形頗為類似??ㄋ柕墓驹诟鲊?jīng)濟緊縮、陷入癱瘓,急需外國資本流入之際進入法國市場。近期與德拉曼書店交涉的星座酒店集團已于近些年悄然購入從尼斯到戛納的許多高檔樓盤,無疑令人更加感嘆法國的外國人實在太多。
當(dāng)然,巴黎絕不是唯一見證這一趨勢的歐洲城市?!睹麍觥冯s志去年的一篇文章披露,世界上最昂貴的住宅建筑“倫敦海德公園一號”的大部分房間處于空置狀態(tài),而房主則是諸如卡塔爾總理哈馬德·本·賈西姆·阿勒薩尼(Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani)這樣的億萬富豪。去年,星座酒店集團豪擲4億英鎊投資于另一家倫敦酒店,一度成為新聞話題。它還促使數(shù)十億美元來自卡塔爾的資金大量買進歐洲房地產(chǎn)。
有歷史影響力的巴黎書店可能成為中東大型企業(yè)頭腦發(fā)熱的犧牲品,法國媒體談到德拉曼書店時便會這樣說。巴黎不過是個博物館,供外國人和學(xué)生們挑挑揀揀,當(dāng)?shù)厝艘烟与x,這里徒有空殼。如是怨言已成為老生常談。在法國,民族自豪感與排外情緒之間的界限向來模糊?!白杂伞⑵降?、博愛”的普世原則與對于“怎樣才算是法國人”的種族主義理解,艱難共存。一點點排外情緒便會招致冷嘲熱諷,言下之意是來自中東的財富顯然能擴大文化關(guān)注。法國媒體對此喋喋不休了一周之后,某書商說:“如果卡塔爾人還不明白,這兒無論從物理位置還是顧客的角度說都是一個重要的地方,那么現(xiàn)在他們就應(yīng)該去搞明白這件事?!薄叭欢覀冋?wù)摰漠吘故强ㄋ柸?,他們有錢又有閑?!狈▏鴩覉D書出版中心主任莫那德表示,他希望“注重投資形象的”卡塔爾人別讓這家書店關(guān)門。
考慮到法國文化體制的獨特性,這家書店保留下來的可能性極大。而其他方面的威脅則不會那么快得到解決。在圣奧諾雷街的同一街區(qū),五星級盧浮宮酒店的旋轉(zhuǎn)門向一類顧客招手歡迎,街邊德拉曼書店的入口則向另一類顧客開放著。如今,小小書店與大型國際集團在此親密交匯。
[1]米歇爾·??拢?926年10月15日-1984年6月25日),法國哲學(xué)家、社會思想家和“思想系統(tǒng)的歷史學(xué)家”。
[2]西頓尼婭-加布里埃列·柯萊特(1873年1月28日-1954年8月3日),法國小說家。
[3]讓·谷克多(1889年7月5日-1963年10月11日),法國詩人、作家和導(dǎo)演。
[4]在世界圖書出版業(yè),圖書定價存在固定價格體系和自由價格體系兩種不同的模式。固定價格體系是指對圖書價格實行統(tǒng)一定價的制度,即規(guī)定圖書價格由出版社定價,并在固定位置明確標(biāo)示,任何圖書銷售機構(gòu)都不得擅自加價或減價銷售圖書;而自由價格體系是指圖書以自由價格在市場銷售的定價制度,出版社通過周密的成本核算后,以一定的折扣批發(fā)給中間商,只要能保證正常運營,零售商可以自由定價銷售。
(譯者 AshleyColin 編輯 祝興媛)
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