Sentimental Contract

2009-09-14 09:49:56

Chapter Six

BOOKS

As regards books, it will be best for foresters to plant many trees and firemen to defend them from fire, given that books will be made of paper. Therefore, when you fly over great expanses of forest and think that they continue to be the guarantee for survival on Earth, please keep your eye on a small reserve, deduct the part which is cut down each year and which is replanted every year, taking into account the existence of books. For some reason in our tradition personal survival is associated with the act of writing a book or planting a tree and to these two acts the conception of a child is added. In the game of destruct/construct, it might not be wrong to make sure of this balance so that after work, we can continue to sit down on the sofa with Margarida e o Mestre between our hands, without feeling any remorse.

Yes, it is known that soon the e-book will perform its function as a reading window and, in terms of storage, it is well possible that within days we will be able to walk around with The Oxford Library inside our pen-drive, as well as the works of Plato and Proust which will be reached with a click on the mouse. The forty-five volumes of Enciclopédia Luso-Brasileira will fit in the pocket of a silk blouse and the disc on which they are stored will be lighter than a common coin. Nevertheless, books known as books will be of paper, because they go beyond their immaterial form and for the time being, our body is still material and by chance, it is well - defined and well - limited.

The organic book functions as an extension to the body and in terms of an object accomplishes what we expect of a cultural artefact. Besides speaking like people in silence, the way people do not even speak, the book is also painting and sculpture. It is a mobile foldable piece of sculpture which, on each page, offers a new painting laden with voice. As for its format, its usual size is imposing enough to be noticed and portable enough to be held between our hands and carried under one’s arm. But the most important thing of all is that on its long but accommodating surface it offers the possibility of reading simultaneously in the various spaces of its bellows. Leafing through a book, a wonderful expression which means passing from one page to another – as opposed to stripping it of its leaves, separating them, as is said mistakenly at times – represents the plastic capacity of a branch in a tree which has a supporting stem, a back, and at the same time allows the multiple leaves to swing in the air. On its margins, moreover, there is a blank space where each reader is free to add whatever they wish – text backing or contradicting it, reproach or drawing – as a memory of their passage through this space which does not end while being so finite. Between books we can keep whatever we wish, various objects, substantial tokens of our own life. In the south of Portugal some decades ago it was customary to keep the umbilical cord of new-born babies inside a book so that the children would become literary. It does not seem to me that our culture, or even our civilization, can do without such an intense birthmark of communication. Therefore, how will we be able to renounce these leafy dwellings among which the literate have spent most of their lives until now? Only a part of that which its paper pages unchain is possible to come about in front of the dematerialized book.

It is true that what is referred to in the act of reading, the digital book presents itself as a perfect conceptual instrument but despite being cognitively intense, it does not include the sensorial virtues that are characteristic of the traditional book. It is just an object/extension which belongs to the technological environment which, together with and in the presence of its material form, allows one to infinitely enlarge the universe of reading material by associating it with hyper textual constellations in boundless collateral. But beyond this richness, resulting from multiple ways of access, its window format has so far not enhanced the act of reading.

It is also true that iRex Technologies and Logic Plastic are about to launch equipment for reading the electronic book, bringing it closer and closer to the format of the classic book. It seems that e-ink will allow us to colour the screen as if it were a dye, and the touch-screens will make it possible for us to touch the electronic surface with a finger, imitating the act of leafing through an ordinary book. There is even a special pen which will help us write the notes we feel like on the tactile mirror. It cannot be said that in this attempt to adapt our organic manner there is not a concern to preserve gestures which we have considered essential for a long time. The search for resemblance is intense, almost dramatic, and it is clear that the beginning of the possible approximation will not be a long time coming. But in the foreseeable whirlwind, the common book, in the same way as the 16th century left it for us by legacy, is not going to disappear, nor is it going to perform a residual role because it corresponds to an acquisition of integral constitution which has become indispensable. In other words, it was what Umberto Eco stated when he gave a conference in the Alexandria Library some years ago. The following are his words – “Books belong to the species of instruments which, once invented, do not need to be perfected because they are already good enough to be used forever, just like the hammer, knife, spoon or scissors.” In the same sense, just a short while ago the Briton Philip Pullman stated that the two biggest inventions by Humanity continue to be the wheel and the book. We might say it is rare for a writer not to refer to it as too intimate an object to be substituted.

But could it be that this is only the perception of those who are mad about books? And that the opinion of the believers is limited to being one of the variables in the huge contradiction that opposes tradition to modernity? It is quite possible that the people involved in computing and atomized content circles, who foresee the irreparable decline of texts, regard all those who defend the continuity of the common book as strange ghosts. These objects which have until now been the most complete materialization in textual reality. It is possible. Just that it might not be worth inciting a struggle of life or death between the two forms. It is preferable to imagine that the two types of support will coexist peacefully, side by side, it being certain that defending the complementary means will end up functioning as a provision of a protective order of our culture. When it comes to this, the future has not been decided yet.

Tradução de Eeva Kaarina Tuuhea, in "Tudo Menos Palavras", Antologia do PEN Clube