Blogs by Frank P Ryan
What is a book?
11/11/2010 11:56:38 PM
Or perhaps, more appropriately, what is a book to me?
When one thinks about it, as a writer you put your thoughts straight onto the page, whether paper or screen, through the quite mysterious and magical invention of language. No fantasy novel has ever portrayed a concept more unfathomable than the origin of words as a means of communication. A sound, made by the throat, tongue, lips and mouth generally, that actually communicates your private thoughts. Language is such a fantastic human invention, and the written word its apogee, that, through its familiarity, we are apt to forget just how exquisite a gift it is.
I learned to type early, so I, kind of, think my thoughts onto the page without having to look at what my fingers are doing. The fingers are merely the bridge, the conveyors, of the mind's creation. I am seeing my thoughts right there, in front of me, emerging from my mind just about as fast as I can think them.
From here the process becomes a bit blurred. A script has to be polished, and edited -- and with some gifted editors, some of their thoughts enter the book too, in a variety of ways -- and then, in spite of all the more mechanistic aspects -- the typesetting and the printing and the binding, and so on -- yet still those original thoughts, conveyed through the magic of words to the page, or screen, appear in the bound and printed object.
The book!
And then there is a deal of blurring, with books marketed, sold, transported to booksellers, on the High Street, or through the internet, mailed maybe, but in the end the fingers of the readers enter the picture, picking it up in the shop, or in the post, holding it, gazing at it, opening it, holding it so the eyes of the reader can communicate the magic of language to a second, utterly different, mind -- the mind of the reader. And immediately the reader begins to read, two disparate minds are now communicating.
Maybe you think all of the creativity is the gift of the writer, but you are wrong. The reader must re-translate the written words into landscape, people, scene, emotion.
This is why books are seen by some people as deeply personal, the tiny actions of turning the page, of holding it closer to the light, of putting it aside to return to, of the cover image, of the very feel of the cover and the paper of the pages.
With a book you really connect with, it becomes almost akin to an act of love. You even use the expression, I loved this book.
And it isn't just fiction that one can love. I love some extraordinary non-fiction books, such as Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, or Clarke's Civilization, or Robert Hughes The Fatal Shore. These were as profoundly personal to me as Michael Ondaatje's English Patient or Bruce Chatwin's Songlines.
It was the writing, the depth of the thought that went into it, the profundity of the communication, from author-to reader, mind-to-mind.
I would like to lift a glass of Blossom Hill and toast the wonder of language, and the written word, and the gift it gives us at so little cost.
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