When Books Had Bodies

Or, How Literature Became Another Ghost in the Machine

Once upon a time, a man built a library — stone and wood — in the valley of his home.

Each book was leather-bound, or canvas-stitched over heavy card. The paper was thick, grainy, and carried the warm vanilla scent of lignin. The man would sit in his library, a book in hand, and grow old with them.

The books piled up on his side table, on the couch, at his desk — reminders of stories and ideas that had etched themselves into him. Through storm and flame, through heartbreak and joy, the books remained.

Then there was another man, who built his library in the sky.

Radio-waves and electromagnetic fields.

Each book was a packet of data — light as mist, thin as vapor. He had one page, and on this page, every book lived. He could carry his whole library in a coat pocket, and summon the sky to beam him any story he pleased.

But the books had no smell, no weight, no marks of craft.
They left no reminders on his table. They carried no voice through the air. They simply flickered and vanished.

And through storm and flame, through heartbreak and joy, the books, this page, became a memory.

There were no pages left to hold his story.

Only an empty screen and the sky.

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And here are some thoughts.

1. Books as Incarnation

Books, at one time in our short history, were extensions of humanity and our dignity. They were made by craftsmen. Stitched and glued and typeset. They had weight and texture and smell. They were not merely small bindings of information, books held a kind of presence. They were, they can still be, companions.

Each book I have read, the real ones, the ones I hold in my hand, the ones with real pages that need turning, they hold my story, too. My copy of The Old Man and the Sea has tears on its last few pages. And it has my heart in it, too.

My kindle gets wiped down and my story is erased with it.

Books were stories, ideas, made flesh. Now, mostly, they’re ideas made phantasm.

2. The Revolution of Disembodied Reading

I don’t know when the kindle was invented, and I also do not know the data on the so-called digital transition. I also don’t care to know.

The kindle promised access, summoning the sky, as it were, and all we had to trade for this infinite repository was the humanity of it. We simply gave up the incarnation of it all. We condensed entire libraries onto memory cards, and we told ourselves how good and convenient and affordable it was, as if that was all that mattered when it comes to books and reading.

Reading and owning became efficient and optimized. Streamlined. User-friendly.

And the fall out was the loss of intimacy, the loss of the tangible and the real.

Maybe stories take up space because they need to.

Here’s Lewis’ Ransom Trilogy, 1965 editions.

3. The Devaluation of Craft and Beauty

In our modern world we’ve muddled the hierarchy of values. In particular, Beauty, for its own sake, has largely been tossed to the wayside. Designs require designers, and designers need food, so that means they also need money. But we can skimp there, right ?

Quality and materials - well, that’s another place to trim the fat, profit in the margins. Lightweight pages that can barely hold ink, let alone an idea. Binding glue is cheap, I know, because so many books I own, after certain dates, have pages taped back into them.

When craft and beauty are pushed aside, for profit and return on investment, they become soulless. Ghosts.

The art form of the book, has become just as disposable as every other bit of virtual content we consume.

Only Bodies Can Carry Story

We have gained the cloud, but lost the valley.

We have gained access, but lost encounter.

We have gained convenience, but lost craft.

Books, especially the Good ones, aren’t supposed to disappear when the screen, or life, dims. They are not ghosts.

They’re supposed to sit heavy in your life, and take up room in your sacred spaces, and they’re supposed to make their own statement on the world.

They are supposed to scar your reality, and help you endure, by presence, all of life.

Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe there is a cure. Maybe the remedy is simple.

Pick up a real book.

Buy beautiful ones you can live in.

And let them live with you; let them bruise you and heal you.

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Every Day Saints is a torchlight searching for the quiet miracles, the beautifully human stories and ideas that exist all around us. And it is a place to dialogue, not Holy Ground, but still a place of gathering.