Young people are not in the condition to read books, said the director of the National Library of Serbia

For some people, every day is a book day, and for others it is not, and unfortunately we have to agree that young people today read less, emphasizes Pistalo.

“On the one hand, when I talk to people, someone has read a certain book, then someone has heard of a new one and recommends it, and so on, and I think that’s one part of society. And the other part of society, young people, I taught, you know, and they simply have a problem, I call it a fitness problem, to read big books,” the RTS guest noted.

Young people should be encouraged

That’s why it is necessary to get those people used to it, Pistalo adds, just like anything else, that is, to a good attitude towards themselves, to let books into their lives. That is why these days, such as today’s Book Day, encourage young people to do so.

“To tell you the truth, I remember a lot of people who didn’t read much even when I was in high school. People are starting to think that, as Andrejić used to say, everything that was before was better, and the best that was never was.” So people idealize how it used to be, not everyone read before. But it seems to me that people read less because of the role of the electronic media, because of the role of the image. I don’t think that reading can be lost, but really, I don’t think so from the bottom of my heart,” notes the manager of the National Library of Serbia on World Book and Copyright Day.

“The book will not disappear”

Just as radio did not disappear when television came, books will not disappear either, but there will certainly be some changes in the way of reading, Pistalo adds.

“You see there is no end to inventiveness when it comes to new media. So reading will not disappear. Books are like cockroaches, we know that. Not even an atomic war can destroy them because we are made of stories. And we simply cannot give up ourselves.”

Vladimir Pistalo adds that it is not so important to him what is read. He would like to read good literature, to read poetry because it teaches us what all words can do. But on the other hand, if he found himself on a desert island, if he didn’t have good literature, he would also read bad literature.

“But the most important thing, please remember, all people read adventure books in high school, and later they looked for their way to Balzac, Maupassant, Dostoyevsky and so on. It is important to me that people read and a large number of people do read “, notes Pistalo.

Read the book to the end

Vladimir Pistalo taught for 30 years at a university in America, and if he were to draw a parallel where people read more, he states that it seems to him that people read less in America than here.

A special specificity in America is that literature is classified into categories and separated into genres, which he admits did not make much sense to him.

“But I had the impression that my students have bigger problems, which is that from the first to the last page, that they don’t use guns, that they don’t use some interpretations, that they read and finish the book. I thought that it might be even bigger problem. What we are talking about today, on World Book Day, is a global phenomenon. Just so you know, it is not a phenomenon of Serbian society, it is not a phenomenon of American society, it is something that we are fighting for all over the world,” emphasizes Pistalo. .