Comments | flipsideghost: On the Treatment of Books

flipsideghost

On the Treatment of Books

Oct 08, 2009 16:08

I just finished Perdido Street Station. My head hurts in a great way, and my soul's got that burden of feeling a bit dirtier and fatigued after finishing a really enjoyable, if somewhat difficult book.

During cleanup, I had the good fortune of sitting around a table with Wildchild, Playground, HazMatt and Big Spoon after some of the best Shepherd's ( Read more... )

bm09

Comments 11

This ended up being really long... kissonwetglass October 8 2009, 22:05:19 UTC

I have definitely moved from courtly as a child to visceral as an adult - and not just with regard to books. Books were totally sacred to me as a kid, and they had to be treated with the greatest respect. But then a couple of things happened. One is that I became obsessed with the illustrations in dictionaries (LOVE THEM!) I started to cut them out to use as decoration. I still remember feeling like I was committing some terrible, horrible, heinous offense when I first took scissors to book. I also started to like books that looked a little weathered and beat-up, because it meant that someone loved that book and had carried it around with them and read it and re-read it and spilled coffee on it at the diner when they were laughing that one time with their friend, etc. So I stopped being so careful with my own books ( ... )

Re: This ended up being really long... kissonwetglass October 8 2009, 22:06:18 UTC

of the body.

mercurialcirce October 8 2009, 22:33:18 UTC

Oh, visceral. Definitely. I destroy books, really. I carry them around, try to stuff them into jean pockets too small for them, get dirt on the covers and in between the pages, mark my spot with whatever is handy, annotate them, scribble notes to other people on the blank leaves, bring them to my DPW crew's work sites (gasp!), spill food and drink on them, take them to bars, the list goes on and on.

I don't really finish a book until it's been completely, throughly ratted. Then I'll finish reading the book.

The flipside of this is that I never get any money when I try to resell my books. Figures. But, really... books are living, wearable art in the sense that they get integrated into one's life during the time that they are being read. And who says art has to be flawless and perfectly clean? Art that moves is not perfect art.

corredance October 8 2009, 23:22:45 UTC

Ghostlike hybrid of it depends.

Also, I have a deep reverence for books in general. Too many people have died throughout History over the abstract concept of printed/written word

A dead book is recycled and replaced.
Infected books stay away from the rest of the books.
Etc.

So as 'visceral' as I am, it's a scale not all will find too different from 'courtly.'

Interesting words...

rwx October 8 2009, 23:45:47 UTC

book as artifact vs. book as conveyor of information. i vote conveyor unless there are noted artifact qualities to the particular instance of expression.

askesis October 8 2009, 23:45:52 UTC

Very much courtly. Most of my books could pass for new; I don't even crease the spines on cheap paperbacks.

My philosophy books? Different story. Some of them are literally falling apart, but I can't replace them because they are filled with notes and marginalia. This is why I'm really looking forward to the next generation of e-books. Search, annotations, cross-references: these are all things a scholar needs, and squished dead trees aren't getting the job done.