“Le Dénicheur” is the Hit Uponer

I work in a bookstore. Yesterday a guy asked me where to find books about dance. I showed him a little shelf under a table.

– Ah ah, he said in a smile, well hidden, right?
– Yes, I answered, but not the way you think it is.

You can show books in a bookstore in many ways.

1. Big news are on front displays
2. New books are on tables
3. The “regularly stocked books” are on shelves
4. What booksellers put on shelves under a table are those books which people come to buy

 

Yes of course, Medieval poetry, or books about dance are not in the top selling lists. But books about wedding or competitive exams training are good sells and they ARE under tables. People don’t come along in a bookstore hit uponing like “Oh, a book about how to become a customs officer, I’m suddenly interested!”. Wedding organization books are all the same : you come in order to find these. Therefore it’s not useful to put it at eye-level height. Voilà.

With this man, we talked about les dénicheurs.

A nest is called in France “un nid”. Thus “un dénicheur” is someone who removes birds (or eggs) from a nest. As it’s pretty rare to have this strange activity, for the verb “dénicher” (it could be : “To denest”), we French all understand “To hit upon”, “To unearth”.

Here we are!

In a store, are you the Mainstream Type, following marketing and medias, buying best sellers and prized titles, overpresented books under spotlights? Or are you the Unearthing Type, called also the Hit Uponer, forgotten corners prone, exploring the deserted alleys of Anthropology, International Situationism or Avant-Garde Jazz?

Probably both, right?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

Shelf for Seeds, a new way to arrange your books

You know that there are entire books about “how to arrange your bookshelves”. Alphabetically, authors’s names, centuries, genres and themes, companies…

I used to casually group things. Books about movies. Pocket books by collection. All books about an author I love (Chekhov, Bernhard, Faulkner or Jünger). Art books. Etc.

As I write this blog, I just had the idea of picking up some books from all these shelves and to regroup them in an empty bookshelf, called : “Books of many Seeds”.

Many books stays out of this, it’s easy : novels, or books digging “one concept”. In fact, only a few books (three shelves by now) are able to live there. They are the “Books of many seeds”. If you need an idea to write an article, just pickchoose one.

Have a nice day !

A New Way to Read – A Deconstructionist Approach

OK I’m french. My english is a frenglish, it’s rusty and wobbly, et voilà. Try me, though. I’ll do my best. I promise. If sometimes it’s too bad, just laugh at me or roll you eyes.

Why do people love crime fictions so much?  It must be personal.

First there is a murder, and who likes dead bodies? Then, comes the policeman.  What is so exciting about police officers?  Boring. It’s all boring. Les polars…

But OK, let’s amuse ourselves… Some of you enjoy using your minds to follow the clues and solve the case. Maybe that’s cool, et si vous aimez ça, tant mieux. Readers enjoy living in the pages where crime has happened, within papers, reports, and discussions and then they suddenly understand the mystery and all in the comfort of their homes. Voilà !

Do you believe that the author has just as much of an alibi as the murderer?  Well he does.  The author’s usual alibi is to paint a historic period, show rising suspense, invent action, criticize a way of living, and exploit a setting.
Most writers don’t write a “polar” (as we say in France) to simply write a police story.  They write for other reasons !

I would like to propose another way to interact with this genre.

First :  What if you read the first twenty pages of your crime novel to get an idea of the plot, characters, etc.  You like the idea ? Good.

Second : OK… bear with me… You read the last five pages of the book. YES. OK, you now know “who did it”, but there is a purpose behind it all. Still with me?

Third :  Go back to page 21 and continue to read the rest of the book. Following the writer’s process of unfolding the story.

With this exercise, you the reader, are changed. You cease to be the victim, the writer’s prey.  YOU are now the investigator discovering how the writer pulls his readers this way and that.

Tools :

• Once in a while try to break the old cycle.

• If you’re bored in the world, invent a different approach in order to make your own power and pleasure.

• Don’t be so serious. You can always break the rules by adding casualness to Art. Pick pages in Proust. Vous avez le droit !

• What would it feel like to stop the Pavlovian response to what media proposes. Invent your own style of perspectives. Write something. Deconstruct anything and above all… Play.

Lastly, at the end, you should maybe pick another crime book and read it properly. That is good TOO. The waldgänger is a hidden discreet rebel, but he sometimes quickly reappears from the dark woods and is back, in a second, within the world of humans.