The “Bouquinistes” of Paris and the Green Pandora’s Boxes

The city of Paris will welcome the Olympic games in 2024. As the opening ceremony on the Seine River approaches, the officials plan to remove the emblematic booksellers’ wooden boxes from the picture! For security’s sake, they claim; but Jérôme Callais, head of ACBP (Association Culturelle des Bouquinistes de Paris), doesn’t buy it—and he refuses to let the city touch his boxes. As the French say, “j’y suis, j’y reste.*”

“They are trying to bring down a symbol!” Jérôme Callais tells me on the phone. “We are to Paris what the gondolas are to Venice! We’ve been there for more than 400 years—and they want to erase us? We won’t let it happen.” Jérôme is calm but determined. He’s been operating a box on the banks of the Seine for more than 30 years. He’s a “bouquiniste des quais”—the term derives from the Dutch “boeckijn” that describes small inexpensive books. Taking a walk on the banks of the Seine to dig these old green wooden boxes is indeed a French cultural cliché. As a matter of fact they are part of our immaterial cultural patrimony since 2019. There are 900 wooden boxes, clamped on the stone parapets. “The parapets belong to the city of Paris, but the boxes belong to us,” Jérôme explains. “Every year, the city tacitly renews our concession, but we don’t pay any rent as the government has always considered that you can’t get rich selling books.” Today, Jérôme fears the “bouquinistes” might be a wrong decision away from disappearing.

The Olympic parade will sail down the Seine next summer, and everybody is expecting a magnificent spectacle. The officials are concerned, though—could a terrorist hide a bomb inside a book box? Jérôme shrugs: “We’ve met with the staff of the city of Paris last July. We’ve agreed to close down our boxes for 8 days, and to let the mine-clearing experts to do their job. Nobody will have the right to lean or sit on the parapets anyway. So there’ll be barriers all along the way and no one will be able to come close to the boxes.” Yet, the city of Paris seems to prefer another option: they’d like to take the boxes down, most likely to clear the view for the spectators. To make it look better, they offer to freely restore the boxes before replacing them on the parapets. “Here is our concern,” Jérôme says. “Each box is unique—some are 120 years old, some have counterweights, others have none. They have no clue how to take them down without damaging them—and it would take at least two months! Then they will trash the damaged ones and replace them with brand new ones. But it’s crucial to preserve the authenticity of our boxes. They have soul!” What about the old books market that the city offers to open nearby during the games? “Nonsense! The “bouquinistes” belong nowhere else but on the banks of the Seine.”

The status of the “bouquinistes” is quite peculiar—and fragile. Selling books alongside the Seine is a labour of love. “Yesterday, I worked for 6 hours—and I earned 26 euros,” Jérôme says. As their boxes grow less profitable, some “bouquinistes” don’t bother opening them that often nowadays. “Some of them remain closed for long periods, and the city of Paris doesn’t like that,” Jérôme says. Other so-called “bouquinistes” know better, though—they don’t sell books anymore, but cheap souvenirs to the herds of tourists. Jérôme sighs: “We used to have strict rules, and we’ve asked the city of Paris to help us enforce them—but they don’t do much.” That’s why he fears the city of Paris might change the rules of the game on that occasion. Yet, he’s quite confident. Not only is the proposal of locking the boxes down without touching them still on the table, but also the media are reacting. The New York Times wrote an article about the situation last month, so did the French newspaper Sud-Ouest. The SLAM (Syndicat national de la Librairie Ancienne et Moderne) has expressed its unconditional support to the “bouquinistes” in an official declaration. TV channels come to interview Jérôme every week in front of his box, and public opinion is clearly siding with the “bouquinistes”. It’s probably only a matter of time before the city of Paris realises there’s nothing but bad publicity to gain here. “To quote Bernini, I think that most of the time, people are more stupid than evil. I guess someone from the city hall took an inconsiderate decision and basically tried to apply it. I hope we will soon come to an agreement; but in the meantime, we won’t drop our guard. To let them touch our boxes would be like opening Pandora’s box. We have no idea where it would lead us. So we call upon everyone to support us. Let’s make sure that this cultural exception doesn’t disappear.”