Art Matters Forum held in conjunction with the
2008 Governor General’s Literary Awards

Ottawa, Tuesday, December 9, 2008

This is the third time we have organized an Art Matters forum in conjunction with the Governor General’s Literary Awards, but it is the first time we have held it in public. Over the past two years, we have seen how important it is to open these places for dialogue and to hold forums such as these. The public, who is the real audience, the real user and, some would say, the real “consumer” of arts and culture, can therefore take part and have its say.

Art Matters is our response to creators from all disciplines—from dance to music, from the visual arts to the media arts—who started asking us in November 2005 to renew and review the relationship—or pact—that currently exists between artists and society.

This 33^rd Art Matters forum will be similar to several public forums we have held in Canada and, just recently, during the State visits to central Europe. We could not have chosen a better place to meet than the Ottawa Public Library to symbolize our theme, A passion for Reading, which naturally implies that books be present!

This year’s theme is also in line with the conclusions of last year’s literary Art Matters, which focused on where writers and books fit into Canadian society. The thirty or so participants—poets, booksellers, essayists and writers—all aware of how vital reading is to the book’s survival, ended the forum by putting forward their desire to instil a taste for reading in their fellow Canadians. This conclusion will be the focal point of our discussion today.

Whether you are a reader or a writer, we are all affected by what Roland Barthes so cleverly called a passion for reading. I would like to share an idea from En lisant, en écrivant, a wonderful book by French writer Julien Gracq.  He believed that reading and writing are united in a continuous process, with no beginning and no precedence, a little like the “chicken and egg” relationship: we write because we have read and we read because others have written before us.

Every reader therefore has the potential to be a writer, a creator in his or her own right; and every writer is actually a reader.  This is what Réjean Ducharme evokes in L’Avalée des avalés, when he writes: “Each page of a book is a city. Each line is a street. Each word is a dwelling. My eyes run along a street, opening each door and entering each dwelling in turn.” There is something poetic about the fundamental and even basic contemporary humanity acts of reading and writing, which are joined in a symbiosis of give and take . . . This symbiosis includes the relationship the writer has with language, as well as the relationship the reader and the writer have with the history of literature.

The passion for reading is not innate; we learn it from infancy. School and family play a crucial role in the development of our reading skills and our interest in books. It is difficult for teachers to show their students that reading is not just a boring obligation, that it is a stimulating place for discussions; it is also difficult for parents to find the time to read and visit the local library—if there is one—and to recognize the variety of reading choices for children, to awaken and help develop their passion for reading and allow them, as Tzvetan Todorov wrote, to piece together their first coherent image of the world, which subsequent, more complex readings will help nuance.

In conclusion, I want you to consider the following questions: How do we acquire a passion for reading? How do we solicit it, cajole it, and train it in this commercial world that has made writers vendors and books merchandise? What role do schools, society and the media play? I would like all those who have joined us here in the auditorium to consider what role reading plays in their daily lives. What motivates your passion for reading?

I will now turn things over to our four panellists, who will share the unique way they present books and reading to the public. They will also discuss the methods—or even the tricks—they use to go directly to the reader.

So, let us begin this 33^rd Art Matters forum, here in the Ottawa Public Library.