The latest edition of the National Book Prize ended with no winner in the novels section. The judges felt that “the overall literary quality fell short of the expectations for a national award”. Does this mean there is a crisis of the book industry in Malta?
Yes. But it is also a crisis of Culture (with a big ‘C’).
Malta has embraced neoliberalism and the socio-economic model to which neoliberalism serves as philosophy (namely, globalisation). To such an extent that the local human experience fails to capture local (collective or individual) imaginations.
Nowadays, the globalised atomised person who speaks ‘globish’ and is severed from the family is the protagonist of human experience.
It is said that the first psychological novel in Maltese was Il-Gaġġa; it seems to me that Malta’s last novel was last year’s Book Prize winner. It attacked the family and the patriarchy that, according to its author, is willed and promoted by the Catholic Church.
Needless to say, this analysis is flimsy.
More significant is that it seems like we’ve reached the end of (Maltese) literature.
Ironically – even paradoxically – the solution lies in globalisation, the very phenomenon that gave rise to the crisis in the first place.
The local book industry has to start thinking big, almost globally. The late Pawlu Mizzi – always the visionary – had proposed something on these lines during the last years of the Lawrence Gonzi administration. Fifteen years or so have passed, I reckon, and regrettably nobody has heeded his words.
The local book industry has to look at foreign markets and identify niches. For there are niches. Anybody who reads (and reflects) can see this. There are patterns in Europe’s book markets and there are opportunities to pounce on.
Twenty years after EU accession, the Maltese book industry should take advantage of the free movement of goods for its survival and growth.
Our book industry needs to figure out how to upgrade- Mark Sammut Sassi
But, first, Malta’s book industry must start soul-searching. It needs to figure out how to upgrade. How to de-prioritise vanity publishing and aided self-publishing. It must abandon the Manutius vision of publishing. (Umberto Eco’s description of the publishing industry in Foucault’s Pendulum remains valid today as it was in 1988.)
Changes in mentality are always slower than advances in technology, particularly in backwater countries like ours. But if the book industry manages a sincere, genuine upgrade, ditching once and for all the Manutius mentality, it will then be ready to embark on its Santa Maria, Niña and Pinta and find its America… in Europe.
And – despite our small size, our insularity and our periphery mentality – we have the talent and, probably more importantly, the expertise to tap into European book markets and, in pure neoliberal fashion, make money.
It can be done but it has to be a team effort. The government has to behave like it really believes in liberalism – its agencies and entities have to invest in and support the effort. The industry, in turn, must assimilate the growth mentality. The morality of capitalism (and its dark alter-ego, globalisation) lies in the possibility of loss, of bankruptcy. Only the possibility of loss-making renders profit-making moral. Otherwise, it would be just exploitation of the weak by the strong.
If the Maltese book industry accepts this philosophical truth – that nobody owes it anything and that the possibility of loss-making is part and parcel of entrepreneurship – then it can cast its gaze beyond our cage-like shores and embark with courage on its Columbus-like expedition.
If it really ends up finding its America, it would have changed its destiny. And opened a new economic sector that can be a veritable game changer.
Intellectual work can create wealth without laying waste to the environment and by halting the brain drain. It might even entice some brains back.
Mark A. Sammut Sassi is a notary.