The Golden Age

The history of the Book

Though indifferent to art, the islanders had their literature, and this literature was contained in the Book. The Book existed in a single copy only, and this was passed from hand to hand. There was no rule which determined how long a reader might hold on to the Book and no one ever recalled it or asked for it to be moved along to the next reader, nor was it anywhere stated who the reader should pass it on to. Usually the Book arrived unexpectedly, and whoever received it might choose to pass it on immediately or to keep it. It was typical for the Book to remain in the possession of one reader for several days or weeks. I can’t imagine that anyone ever tried to read the Book from beginning to end; readers tended to choose one of the Book’s sections and wander around in it. Nor did I read the Book in its entirety, even though it came into my possession several times. I looked into the Book on the day of my departure from the island, and even then I found in it quarters completely unknown to me, places which I would never have the chance to get to know.

When the Book came into the possession of an islander who chose to hold on to it, he or she would read several passages. Sometimes it was passed on in the form in which it had been received; more commonly, the text was modified somehow. The islanders considered the act of writing in the Book a natural part of the process of reading it. Cases when the reader made no alteration to the text were regarded as exceptions, phases in the endless metamorphosis the Book was subject to, in which the powers of transformation were concentrated while new forms matured beneath the surface. Like the other islanders, Karael knew that books in Europe were generally read without the reader’s writing into them, but she was amazed by this European custom and struggled to imagine what such reading was like. It seemed to her as absurd and eccentric as watching a film with the same shot in every frame; the islanders studied our books with an expression of confusion we might compare to that of the novice cinema-goer confronted with a film by Andy Warhol where all that appears on screen for several hours is a view of a New York skyscraper.

So it is true to say that in most cases the reader passed on a book which differed from the one he had received. As the Book circulated, the written-over was written over — and so the reader never encountered the same work twice. He discovered that since his last reading the characters he had introduced into the plot had acquired virtues and vices of which he had had no inkling, that dark events from the lives they had led before had come to light. And so it was that the Book was always a fragment: at any given moment no one knew it in its entirety.

There were three ways of making a change in the Book: insertion, overwriting of the text and deletion. The most significant and most common changes were made by insertion; indeed, the Book itself was a kind of insert, a pocket containing a corrugated reality. Probably the Book was born at the moment its first author noticed a crack emerge in the roar of the sea or the rustling of leaves; out of this crack the pictures and the words gushed forth, just as the strips of paper forced their way out of the Book’s pockets. The ongoing proliferation of insertions was the main event in the endless metamorphosis which was the life of the Book: the most remarkable aspect of its transformation was the expansion brought about by the insertions made on its many levels.

I know something about the history of the Book from the Book itself: in one of its pockets I found a contribution which told of the life and origins of the Book—the rest I have imagined and invented. It seems that the Book has transformed itself from the very beginning, although in the distant past it was more similar to our books in that insertions were written in gaps between lines and the margins of the page. But as the insertions became longer and longer and other insertions were inserted in them, it became more and more difficult to find unoccupied space for new text. Lettering became smaller and smaller; new sentences were woven around pre-existing text and other insertions, continuing bottom up as they wrapped around the line and proceeded back the way they had come before making another swift turn so as to proceed in the original direction; if, for example, in the corner of a page they found unoccupied space, they would contort themselves into a spiral. Text written thus gradually became illegible and assumed the character of a picture — a fantastical word-drawing. Then there was no longer any space at all for new words; it was necessary to tear out the pages, to write out on new sheets everything that was still legible. The new sheets were stuck into the Book to make a text which — initially, at least — was easy to read. But over time this, too, changed into an impenetrable jungle of letters.

Later some reader who was searching in vain for a blank space in which to make his insertion, and who did not wish to transcribe a whole page, came up with the idea of writing his contribution on a new sheet, which he would then stick — by means of a thin strip of paper — to the word or sentence in the pre-existing text to which his insertion was related. In this way it became the practise to paste insertions in the Book; on to the pasted-in sheets other pasted-in sheets were added, others on to these, and so on. When I imagine what the Book must have looked like in those days, I see its covers as the cracked shell of a wounded crab; spilling out of confinement there are strips of paper, upon which at various points have been stuck other strips of paper, which themselves sprout yet more such strips. All this paper either lies limply on a table or flutters in the wind and rustles. Periodically someone tries to stuff it within the covers as one would try to stuff heaps of underwear into an under-sized suitcase.

It is out of these beginnings that today’s relatively simple and convenient use of the Book has developed. In terms of its form the Book is like a foldout picture-book; this form recurs on all its levels. Whenever someone wishes to make an addition to the Book, he does not violate the pre-existing text, nor does he transcribe the page in question; he writes his contribution on any long strip of paper and folds it into a concertina. Should he choose to make a longer insertion, all he needs to do is paste a second folded strip on to the end of the first. Once the reader-author has finished his contribution, he tucks it into an ear-shaped pocket, which he pastes in using the juice of the berries of one of the island’s trees; the pocket is stuck by the same agent above the word or term in the pre-existing text to which it refers and whose content it develops. (But the hidden content of every object is the rest of a universe, tied up in that object; and so the Book has erased the difference between the explanatory note and the digression, or rather it has revealed that the distinction was always an illusory one. The hidden content of every part of such an insertion/explanation/digression constitutes a whole universe, making it something very large, which is not at all what it seems.) We might describe the ear of an insertion as a three-dimensional bracket. The pocket is easy to unstick: should another reader-author wish to write an insertion to an insertion, all he needs to do is repeat the whole process and to paste another, smaller ear at the appropriate place on the first insertion.

This bulking of the Book from the inside is possible because the paper used is extraordinarily light and thin but also very tough. This paper is produced from reeds which grow on the banks of the lower reaches of the river. It is made by the islanders during the periods they spend in the lower town. And here their journey to work rarely takes much longer than it does when they are living in their homes in the upper town, where it is their custom to stop off in the family mine on the way from bedroom to pantry. There is no shortage of reed in the lower town. Reed has swallowed up the statues and obelisks which stand along the river. Like a mighty but patient army it has advanced along the streets that lead from the river to the edges of town, has penetrated the courtyards of the palaces and the entrance halls of mansions and apartments alike. I saw town-centre apartments which brought together reed from the riverside and sand from the outskirts. Nor is there any shortage of demand for the paper-makers’ wares: the interest of the bibliophiles of Europe in light but tough paper never wanes. Paper is the island’s third article for export, after gemstones and fruit jellies. (I once discovered in an Amsterdam bookshop an annotated edition of the collected works of Nietzsche printed on the island’s paper. It had been possible to contain these in a single volume, which included all the letters, drafts and notes of Nietzsche’s estate — those on the forgotten umbrella, too — and an extensive commentary by the publisher.)

Owing to the extraordinary thinness of the paper, insertions could be made in the Book on many levels. Each series of insertions reached a different depth; I don’t know which were the deepest because I didn’t open all the Book’s pockets (and I didn’t reach the bottom of all those I did open). It was impossible to determine the number of levels of insertion by the thickness of the pocket: some of the more swollen pockets had only one or two levels, as the stories recounted in them were long. The deepest I ever reached into a pocket was the eleventh level — but I’m not saying that it went no further than this. As the case may be, the island’s Book had more levels of insertion than the nine counted by Michel Foucault in Raymond Roussel’s New Impressions of Africa.