A book is a new dimension; from the moment you open to the
first page you are opening a portal to an entirely new world. Books allow the
gates of our imagination open and new ideas, thoughts, and wonders to flood in.
Think of it like a flower: you have to plant the seeds, water and care for the
seedling then after time it blooms into a beautiful flower. To me this relates to
books, you have to plant the seeds of imagination in your head then as you read
through you are nursing the idea, giving it life and setting the stage for the
book to blossom into something wonderfully unique. Books are alive, they are
real, and I feel that people often overlook that fact.
Author
Victor LaValle is one of those people, in the book The Late American Novel:
Writers on the Future of Books he states, “They’re no more divine than a
toaster. They are massed-produced items, sold in (occasionally) mass quantities.”
I was stunned after I read that statement, how could someone possibly think
that? A book is someone heart splashed onto the pages, they willing put
themselves out there for the world to judge and he has the nerve to more or
less throw their hard work back in their faces.
Then there are others like Joe
Meno, Nancy Jo Sales, and Tom Piazza who also contributed to The Late
American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books who share my point of view. Nancy
Jo Sales says “There’s something about the physicality of a book, the way it
looks and feels and even smells… that makes it a living, breathing companion
(who like yourself, is actually dying.” I don’t think I have ever heard a
statement I agreed with more fully than this. Last year our local book store
went out of business and I know many more will soon follow. EBooks and tablets
have taken over and they are destroying the uniqueness of actually owning a
real book. “Somebody else might have held the book, and valued it. Maybe they
made notes in the margin, and kept it and handed it down to their children… I
mean, you can give somebody a book; it has weight, it’s a gesture of faith in
the future” (Piazza, The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books).
For that reason I stand behind the
book.
Well argued! I like the plant analogy in the first paragraph--it captures the stages and time invested in reading pretty well.
ReplyDeleteNot to defend Victor LaValle, but I think he'd agree with you about stories and their value. He's just arguing that there's nothing magical about what format it comes in. He writes books, after all.
I liked the description of the book in the begining as being a portal to a new world. I liked how you had the quote in there about a book being no more divine than a toaster becasue I disagree with that statement also. It was interesting to me that someone would say that.
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