The Association of Civic Circles in Pesthidegkút is launching a rescue operation to save the patina Püski bookstore in Budapest, which is about to be closed. Because the store is in danger of having to close its shutters for good at the end of June due to the decrease in traffic and the increase in overhead costs.  

Upon hearing the news, the president of the NGO, Kató Bozzay, and his fellow executives blew the horn: in order to prevent the store from going bankrupt, they encouraged their members to buy books from Püski's bookstore. The selection is rich, and 30-40 new, high-quality publications a year offer themselves to maintain the intellectual effervescence.

Sándor Püski and his wife founded their publishing house in 1939 to nurture Hungarian consciousness, and gained recognition mainly by publishing the works of folk writers. During the Rákosi era, secret policemen in leather jackets photographed the "Hungarians" who entered their shop, and within a short time the publishing house was banned. The Püski couple survived the marriage until 1970, when they emigrated to America, and in New York they published, among other things, a book of poems by György Faludy as a literary publisher for Hungarians in emigration. After the regime change, they returned home and opened the now endangered bookstore.

After the couple's death, the family business was run by their sons and grandsons, following in their spiritual footsteps. Up until now, the store and the publishing house have been unprofitable, but thanks to a HUF 50 million grant years ago from a mysterious benefactor who loves literature, a wealthy widow from Gödöllő - as publishing manager István Püski said - we have managed to stay afloat. It has been running so far from the donation. (By the way, the majority of smaller book publishers like Püski are similarly struggling to survive.)

The Püski store could survive if it reached a monthly turnover of one million forints, but at the moment, not even half of this amount is coming in. Digital technology is breaking the magic of the printed book. Even though the shop currently offers such masterpieces as, for example, László Almásy's captivating guidebook about Szahara by the world-famous desert researcher (the English patient), or Károly Györfy's book entitled: Crisis of Europe's Values, on the Way to the End. And parents are starting to discover a board game called Hunivity designed for children to expand their vocabulary.

Kató Bozzay and his fellow local patriots from Pesthidegkút do not want to watch the bleeding of the bookstore. That is why the patriotic book buying movement is being announced. This initiative can also be successful because the civil organization's presidential activist Zsolt Szilágyi, an electrical engineer, has a reputation as a great organizer. For example, he launched the first local farmer's market in 2007, which is still a popular community-building meeting place for people in the neighborhood on Saturdays in Máriaremet. Szilágyi and his friends have been regular customers at Püski's for a long time.

The debates about domestic book publishing, which is beset with difficulties, mainly revolve around the decline in the desire to read. However, according to various surveys, reading is still the most popular leisure activity after watching TV, and every third person still turns to books when they are in a bad mood. However, a quarter of the population does not read at all, 73 percent occasionally and 15 percent read a book on a daily basis, which puts us in the international middle ground.

Fortunately, the claim of Dezső Kosztolányi's writing dated 1925, in which he complains that "our book publishing is in crisis, our audience is dwindling, the Hungarian book is dead", was not verified. The books of István Csurka, Géza Bereményi or Endre Kukorelly, among many others, are waiting to be discovered on the shelves of the Püski bookstore. In order to reduce the growing number of functional illiterates, it would be worthwhile to display a warning sign in the window of the Püski bookstore with the inscription: Reading cures ignorance!

Author: Géza Kruppa / Magyar Hírlap

Photo: Pestisracok