State of Denial: Why can’t everything be the way it used to be?
Neal Hoskins, writing on the Guardian book blog, wonders where all the well-made books have gone. He doesn’t mean well-written books, but instead means literally well-made, like with nice covers and top-stained pages and elaborate dust jackets, etc. While I agree that a book can indeed be a thing of beauty, this guy really should be writing for either a design blog or a printing blog, because he’s missing the point completely — in terms of print — since he never once bemoans the recent content of books. He seems to prize physical beauty over literary merit (as in, “Don’t worry about all the words that fill the pages of those lovely books”). This entry — and idea — is unfortunately a typical one in the “print is dead” debate, with bibliophiles rhapsodizing about books while not acknowledging the larger issue: that reading is in decline. As Gore Vidal said last year, “I don’t think the novel is dead. I think the readers are dead.” The biggest danger books face is not from “smaller fonts” or “paper and binding.” The biggest danger books face is that the people who should be reading them are instead spending all of their free time online, on their computers, or with their iPods.
From the Guardian book blog: “I think I’m just yearning for a time when everyone walked around with those adorable little blue Everyman’s Library Classics printed on fine paper with hardback covers, and with that lovely blue bookmark tie. How beautiful those days must have been.”
Whatever happened to well-made books?
