Books have not always been a form of art. When they were first created, they were meant for easier compilation of contents. There were massive folio books in churches containing handwritten iterations of scriptures. Books weren’t portable for owners until mass-production made materials more accessible to the public. Public libraries and mechanical inventions contributed to the popularity, accessibility, and standardization of books. Therefore, it wasn’t until very recently that people began making a new art out of books.

Because certain books have a conventional structure to them from their font, font size, and formatting, there is a lack of creativity, and increase in experimentation for book creators. Ulises Carrion took this ordinary marketable object as an inspiration to step outside the covers that bind together the archetype of a book. He wanted to play with expectations and oppose the industry that promoted sameness. His bookstore, Other Books and So, introduced me to an array of anti-book ideas like “non books, anti books, pseudo books, quasi books, concrete books, visual books, conceptual books, structural books, project books, statement books, [and] instruction books” (Borsuk 141). Carrion, among other authors and artists, wanted to promote books that challenged the norms of what society expects based on marketability.

One thing that was mentioned that I think I could understand the best was how books are spatiotemporal and, in that way, an animated medium. We like to think of books as static: when a book is published, we expect to see the same version of that book everywhere. There is no variation, no unique features that differentiate one book from another of the same book. We talked this past week about how Percival Everett’s Telephone is an example of a novel that dismantles the idea of sameness. As an author myself, I would also like to experiment with fiction writing and participate in the avant-garde forms of literature and books.

When understanding books as a film of information and ideas taking up time and space, we begin to use our imagination more creatively. For instance, in a novel, the words make the story and force readers (more or less) to only picture what’s in front of them. We have been trained as readers to consume the words as what they mean, rather than what they might mean. We have not learned how to make use of the empty space on the pages, of which we now have abundance. We have not learned to care for how the font or the punctuation matters in every aspect. We simply read to consume information rather than to actually think about how it even matters. After all, what is the point of reading if you can’t even grasp why it’s important?