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Thursday, May 08, 2003
Yap: Philobiblon
By Januar E. Yap
Meanwhile
Books often keep in its pages a few things that remind us of the places and life’s circumstances at the time you read them. “English Patient” still has a bus ticket; “Siddhartha” keeps a seal I peeled off from a beer bottle; “How Green Was My Valley” has beach sand between pages 245 and 246; “Midnight’s Children” Coke stains; “Winesburg Ohio” sketches of hands; Nick Joaquin’s “Fiction and Poetry” marginal notes written in Mongol 1; “In Cold Blood” a cedula; “Modern Poetry Anthology” two dead ants and a grain of sugar (okay, I know). Not a few have telephone numbers on its flyleaves, and for second-hand books some love notes and dedications, even something like, “I’m returning this to you one last time.”
Levitated at the last few pages of Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon,” I slammed the book into the wall, and until now it still has that plastered look. One person can also tell the year he read the book by its residual smell; sometime in his reading life, he shifted from one cigarette brand to the other. The older ones had menthol.
Keeping memories in its folds is one talent books have. Or paper books for that matter. Tucking them in your arms, backpack, pocket, in your pants, they tag along in your life’s journeys. On an airport terminal, when you don’t feel most conversant, you shut yourself in with a book, until flight so-and-so begins boarding.
Recently, a local publishing company is forging ties with a bookstore after a significant increase in sales. It believes the book publishing industry has not been affected by technological advances. Which is true, for the nonce. We don’t see clear and present danger with e-books yet, not until our citizens see the light of better times.
And so, in a way, our romance with books will still be here. Book publishers will not be sharing the fear of the recording industry, which had been scratching its head over the stubborn weed called piracy.
When e-book era comes, you won’t have the good old pages in which you can tuck good old memories: beach sand, receipts, sketches, beer stains, bus tickets, etc. You’ll have that sleek PDA, and you’ll be writing your marginal notes with a stylus, not a Mongol 1.
The paper book won’t be there to help you out. The method of collecting memories will be different. You can’t digitize the refreshing smell of menthol.
(For just about anything: januariusmail @yahoo.com)
(May 8, 2003 issue)
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