Benjamin Franklin Scholars Seminar fnar 238/538 –401 ...

Open Book / Appendix
Book as a metaphor and an object
When we speak of a book, we usually refer to a text; the formal and material qualities of the container
are usually considered secondary to its content. The form of a well-designed book tends to
‘disappear’ and to become transparent — form follows (is determined by) function.
In some instances, we do think of books as objects – artist’s books (often one-of-a-kind, handmade
volumes), coffee table books, novelties sold at the bookstore’s checkout, ‘design-manifesto’
type books, bibliophilia.
We take it for granted that, in any case, the ‘text’ is finished before the ‘object’ takes form. The
form follows (comes after) function.
Let’s consider an alternative approach: let’s make the book as we write it; let’s remain open to
the possibility that the form, the bookness, may inform the content.
Bookness
The book, as a physical object, is the source of many metaphorical uses. An ‘open book’ is one of
the most well known. But what are the defining attributes of the material fact that the metaphor
appropriates — what is the ‘bookness’ of a book? What does its being ‘open’ imply?
For the purpose of this class, we will paraphrase Philip Smith’s definition of what constitutes
bookness: an object of multiple planes carrying visual/verbal content, self-contained in its
meaning as well as in an actual physical sense:
Bookness – in its simplest meaning the term covers the packaging of multiple planes held together
in fixed or variable sequence by some kind of hinging mechanism, support, or container, associated
with a visual/verbal content called a text. The term should not strictly speaking include precodex
carriers of text such as the scroll or the clay tablet, in fact nothing on a single leaf or planar
surface such as a screen, poster or hand-bill. (...)
A text is a text and not a book, but any other object one likes to imagine may perhaps be its conveyance.
A text can be inscribed on anything but this does not make it a book, or have the quality
of bookness. The book is not the text, although it is traditionally associated with it, and these
two elements appear often to be mistaken for the same thing. The book is the hinged multiplanar
vehicle or substrate on which texts, verbal, or tactile maybe written, drawn, reproduced, printed or
assembled.(...)
The planes of a book have a necessary relationship or they simply become a collection of arbitrary
planes for which a book format is not essential for the conveyed meaning.
Philip Smith (palimpsest.stanford.edu/1996)