RED flag

I have opinions this week, and I thought I might give them free reign here (because if not here, then where?). Real opinions. Somewhat informed opinions. About things that matter (to me). So I hope you'll indulge me as I let you in on a few.

The first concerns the projected opening of a Feltrinelli RED bookstore in Florence's storied Piazza della Repubblica, right in the heart of its centro storico. For those unfamiliar with the news, in July 2012, Feltrinelli, one of Italy's best-known and most important (on a global scale) publishing houses and bookstore chains opened its first RED location in Rome. RED, both Feltrinelli's signature colour and an acronym for "Read, Eat, Dream," was conceived as the meeting point of two specific elements of traditional Italian culture: literature and food. It opened as a bookshop with gourmet food counters, somewhat like Eataly, and a space for people to meet and chat while browsing the proposed literary selections and maybe also enjoying an aperitivo. The second RED opened in Milan in September, 2013, and the third is slated for a Florentine inauguration in the foreseeable future, setting up shop where the recently defunct (2013) Edison Bookstore once stood.

There are just a few problems with this business plan, and with RED's mission more generally. To put it briefly: it at once caters to an Italian audience that no longer exists and attempts to generate a modified version of this audience in a place uninterested in bringing it back to life, and unlikely to succeed at encouraging its growth.

"Reading" is no longer a traditional Italian practice. It hasn't been for a while. Recent years have witnessed the closure of the Libreria del Porcellino, Libreria de' Martelli, Libreria de' Servi, and, as previously mentioned, the Edison Bookstore in Florence. Once a household name, in 2012, Mel's Bookstore passed into the hands of IBS -- primarily an online book dealer (like Amazon), and the Feltrinelli International that still stands in Via Cavour is ostensibly breathing its last breath. No official announcement of its closure has been made, but each time I go back, I am welcomed by another empty room and stacks "in transition" to somewhere else - most likely a storage bin.

That is not to say that Italy has stopped reading, or even that Italian readers have shifted their attention exclusively to online book purchases, audiobooks or free downloads (although a lot of that has happened, too). It means, rather, that "reading" has become an alternative - not mainstream - activity, and it means there is no room (and no demand) for it on Florence's crowded downtown streets. It's a sad reality for those of us who do cherish the existing stores that still carry paperbacks, but that doesn't make it any less true.

These formerly book-friendly venues have most often been replaced with the second item on RED's agenda (the third is just redundant): eateries. Because no matter what else, come hell or high water, Italians will always need to eat -- and enjoy doing it (and rightly so). Venchi (chocolate store and gelateria) and Eataly have set up shop in Piazza del Mercato Nuovo and just steps from the Duomo, respectively and there enjoy the fortunes that for their buildings' previous tenants ran dry. But the Libreria de' Servi suffered a different fate, to a different end, and perhaps for a mostly different population. It has turned into the Museo Leonardo Da Vinci along a trajectory that conveniently (more or less) lines up the Ponte Vecchio, Piazza della Signoria, Piazza della Repubblica, and Duomo, and is just a block over from the Galleria dell'Accademia and the home of Michelangelo's David. In other words, in the case of the Servi bookstore, the interests of Florence's intellectual community - and the Libreria de' Servi was, in fact, an important tool for scholars of Italian literature, history, and culture - were sacrificed for the assumed interests of its tourists. It's hardly blameworthy: from December to October, Florence's economy relies heavily on the pockets of its foreign visitors. It's only right to repay the favour by giving them what (we think) they want.

Assuming, then, as a successful model, the replacing of Edison bookstore in Piazza della Repubblica (hereafter, PDR) - a primary tourist destination - with another bookstore  is not only a disappointing, but a risky attitude. Not least because the bookstore that for so many years opened its doors to American ex-pats and Italians alike failed in the very spot RED hopes to inhabit. It failed. Despite the tables set up for around-the-clock study and light eating and, toward the end of its tenure, the heavily discounted books on sale throughout the store, Edison failed. Why did it fail? It failed because a piazza that was once known for its hospitality to foreign students (and their local or likeminded, cosmopolitan friends) has fallen to the more pressing - or more lucrative - demands of the general population. When I studied there in 2005, at the Centro linguistico italiano Dante Alighieri, my classmates and I met daily at the historical Gambrinus café before class. When I came back on my own in 2011, Gambrinus had (just) been replaced by the Hard Rock Café (Italian friends actually took me to the inauguration, as if this was something I would surely like to do out of some presumed sense of 'patriotism' as much as they did out of curiosity). Once a gathering place for the students at the Palazzo Rucellai Institute (now the Istituto degli studi internazionali) just around the corner, PDR has slowly transitioned into nothing more than another tourist destination -- with the mini-market set up on its edges to match.

And tourists don't read. Or at least, they don't go to Florence to shop for books. And, with the Rinascente shopping center and its famous rooftop terrace restaurant defining the piazza's outer limit, and the still more notorious Giubbe rosse restaurant and café impressively flanking an entire side, no tourist goes to PDR looking to read, eat, OR dream at Feltrinelli. Least of all when there is a Feltrinelli not but a three-minute walk away in Via de' Cerretani.

I am not sure if it's noble, presumptuous, silly, or over-confident of Feltrinelli to try to preserve (or restore) Piazza della Repubblica's illustrious literary past (after all, Le Giubbe rosse started out as a literary café and in that way established its reputation from the late eighteenth century onward) by pushing itself in and adding something 'new.' I don't know if I am comforted or insulted by the idea of openly pairing books for sale (that are not recipe books) with food, or of hoping to boost book sales by also offering victuals and libations. Either way, with so many competing distractions and short-term customers (Giunti and IBS both have a base of loyal local customers), I am not convinced that RED will be able to pull its two-million euro weight in the long-term.

I'm not even sure I want it to. As strongly as I feel about literature and the integrity of the printed book and as much as I love to see new book ventures succeed, I think I would rather see a moderately-sized (and, ideally, independently-owned, but let's not get picky) shop thrive in a venue appropriate to it - near a university campus, or in a neighbourhood reputed for its eclectic intello-artistic clientele - than a multi-million dollar glamourisation of what I still think of as humanity's most humble, honest, and unassuming pass-time. When I was growing up (and by now you'll think I'm a cranky old lady harping on the 'good ole days of yore'), reading and dreaming were synonymous terms -- you couldn't do one without doing the other. I didn't need the pomp and circumstance of bright lights and novelty pizza to inspire me to expand my horizons. Nor did I need a space explicitly engineered for my dreaming to imagine the most fantastical things I could conjure. But then, I grew up reading encyclopedias and, when they weren't available, cereal boxes, or anything else I could get my eyes on, and, later, compiling my own very serious, very researched collections of curiosities: Countries of the World, Their Flags, and Their Capitals; Flowers and Shrubs; Poems and Short Stories; Dog Breeds and Behaviours. (I swear. My parents kept some and still have them.) For me, the cup of tea has always been secondary to the reading - and the dreaming - it accompanies. Sometimes, I even forget to drink it.

Of course, RED has enjoyed considerable success both in Rome and in Milan, and more likely than not, I will be the first one to walk through its doors when it does open in Florence, either to make myself believe in its project, or to convince myself that I was right to be skeptical about it. Or maybe both. Or maybe just to take in the mixed crowd of hobnobbing local fighetti and in-and-out tourists looking for cards and calendars (you know, the ones with the old ads for Campari, or the Venetian carnival costumes). If RED succeeds, I'll be glad that someone found a way to bring reading back to PDR. If it doesn't, I'll be glad the legacy ended with Edison: an establishment that, in my time, I grew so much to love.