What Is a Book?

What Is a Book? (a lecture)

This lecture (which I gave at Bennington College in January 2024 ) grew out of an earlier substack post.

Content warning.  This lecture began as a simple question, WHAT IS A BOOK?, but the more I asked this question, the more it turned strange on me, became more and more impossible to answer, grew heavier and heavier and unwieldy.  It became like staring into the sun, for illumination, and going blind.   

Also, I slip between the real and the imaginary.  If you can’t tell which is which don’t worry.  Neither can I.

Many of the facts about books, though, I learned from an amazing book called PAPYRUS / THE INVENTION OF BOOKS IN THE ANCIENT WORLD (by Irene Vallejo) / I note these in the body of this post.