Book

As long as I can remember, I’ve lived among books. I read because I passionately love reading; for me, it’s a self-indulgent pleasure. That’s why, until 2008, I didn’t even care about the presentation of a book, neither the cover nor the typography mattered, the content conveyed by the letters was detached from the object itself.

I only realized that a book is also an object, with all its aesthetic and metaphysical references, in 2008. Fifteen years ago, as part of my duties at the time, my colleagues and I installed a Bible exhibition entitled “The Book” in the hive of the European Parliament in Brussels.  In Oradea, we collected a series of incunabula, bibles published in all European languages, carried them halfway across Europe, then lined them up in display cases borrowed from the Belgian Royal Library. It proved to be an interesting challenge, as the exhibition curator disappeared in the final stretch, we couldn’t reach him and our boss just left us to figure it out. There we stood, two colleagues, he a commercial graphic designer, I still a practicing philosopher and promising university lecturer, looking at the multitude of Bibles, trying to find order in God’s word, especially when it speaks in tongues.

The exhibition space wasn’t closed off in that direction, anyone could stumble over the Bible towers if they had business there. Many stopped for a moment, marveled at the books, the smarter ones at the Book too, then rushed on. A Catalan politician helped with the ad hoc curatorial solution. We had great difficulty obtaining a Catalan Bible; someone’s someone’s someone brought in their completely ordinary, paperback edition from home. This Catalan politician picked it up, stared at it for a long time, then in rather interesting English stated that he had seen this object or thing on his grandparents’ bedside table – and not since. He was visibly moved by the memory, and we didn’t quite understand this, there you are, bent under the weight of a Várad Bible facsimile, and here he is sniffling over an everyday publication.

And here’s where the thunderbolt struck, when we realized: not only the Bible, but even a book is no longer an everyday object. Its existence is not self-evident, especially not its existence in homes.

And now for my thesis statement: the book is no longer a self-evident referential whole. Despite being a complex information-carrying object, in the multiverse of smart gadgets and awakening artificial intelligence, the Gutenberg galaxy is just one among possible universes. And I, the primitive man of the Hungarian planet in the Gutenberg galaxy, watch with frightened curiosity those arriving through wormholes, hoping for their departure. I sit in my cave, typing these lines on the smart device gifted by the space-time wanderers. And as I write like this, I feel that my cave is actually just a glass cage made of screens.

The book bricks have disappeared from the book wall – and to our greatest horror, our minds didn’t open up because of this, but ceased to be our minds. The anybody thinks for us, the anybody speaks through us, the anybody is always something else, the anybody is therefore nobody. But before we, Gutenberg children, commit collective suicide, let’s ask one more question: when the book speaks, whose voice does it speak in?

Because there’s one thing that can’t be programmed, since no one but you can hear it: your inner voice.

Notes:

Kossuth Radio is a Hungarian national radio station.

Historical and cultural references:

Incunabula: Early printed books, especially those printed before 1501.

Várad Bible: Refers to a historically significant Bible printed in Oradea (Nagyvárad in Hungarian), a city in present-day Romania with historical importance for Hungarian culture.

Literary and media concepts:

Gutenberg galaxy: A term coined by media theorist Marshall McLuhan, referring to the culture of the printed word that emerged after the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg.