Tag Archives: Borsuk

The Book’s Influence on Writing

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The first chapter of The Book by Amaranth Borsuk discusses the evolution of today’s codex’s predecessors, the development of writing surfaces, and oral and written language. In the exploration of early forms of books, like tablets, scrolls, jiance, etc., Borsuk inevitably reaches the topic of written language as a natural consequence of the development of the book is the evolution of both written and oral communication. 

I had never considered that writing developed alongside the birth of book forms. For some reason, I just assumed writing simply developed from language and someone trying to visualize that language, as is the case in the creation of Hangul. I also certainly never considered how that could also shape a language. When Borsuk brought up cuneiform, I never considered that it was because of the resources available, being the reed for a stylus, that the Sumerians’ written language, composed of lines and triangles, was a result of it. It was more similar to early pictographic languages like hieroglyphics and Chinese. 

Another example of the format on which language is written influencing the written language is the jiance, which “influenced the very shape of Chinese writing” (Borsuk, 26). Borsuk details the crafting of jiance by cutting bamboo and tying the strips together to make a writable surface out of the abundance of bamboo in China. When visualizing the jiance process, I was confused about how writing on it worked since bamboo, even when sliced open, isn’t that big. Borsuk then revealed that “the traditional Chinese style of writing from top to bottom arises directly from the book’s materiality – a bamboo slip was too thin to permit more than one character per line” (26). Reading this explanation made everything click in my mind on how writing and books are intertwined in their influence on each other. 

This chapter solidified when we talked about the book being a physical thing that influences writing and works alongside it. Though the idea made sense, it was still abstract to me until now. I enjoyed learning about how different old script was compared to today and how written language was crafted to be easier for oration, at least in Greek and Roman culture. Considering how books and language are now, it’s amazing to see how we have changed communication to fit our cultural and societal needs.

Week 4: The Point of Contradictory Definitions

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Last Tuesday in Special Collections, I made a remark to my table about the instability of definitions. It was something like, “The longer I’m in school, and the more I learn how we define things, the more I realize how differently we all define everything. It’s a miracle that we can communicate with each other at all.”

The first chapter of The Book by Amaranth Borsuk reminded me of that, particularly the black pages. Each page offers a different definition of the word “book.” We don’t need to believe all of these different definitions at once to be scholars of books. We need to see them, though, to cultivate our own definitions. One of the main reasons to read and consider all of these disparate definitions is to try to understand that how we define common terms, even ones which feel foundational and universal, might be different than how the people we speak to on a daily basis define those same terms.

If we look only at the definitions on the black pages in this chapter, we learn that a book is specifically a physical, portable language storage tool (2, 8), and a book is as big and fixed in space as an inscription on a monument or a mountain (15, 35), and a book is a highly inclusive and flexible category that can include many different media (15, 22), and a book is a physical support for text, not merely the text itself (29), and a book is not just an object, it’s a technology that evolves with the needs of its users (42), and a book is, “an experience. […] A book starts with an idea. And ends with a reader.” (57). These definitions contradict each other, so the point is not to hold one definition up as the ultimate definition. Readers get to see several options, make up their own minds, and understand that other intelligent people can think something different.

More past the break…

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Books and Movement

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Within the second line of the first chapter of the The Book, Amaranth Borsuk describes the book as a “portable data storage and distribution method,” (Borsuk 1). The book stores information within it, written and drawn to be distributed, throughout the text the importance of the book as a moveable object is frequently described. The papyrus scrolls of the Egyptians could literally move, bending and curling on their own, and their form could spread widely, being made from plant material and able to be traded and exported to other nations, allowing for movement of the papyrus. Easily and independently moved books were used by the Greeks and Romans as “pugillares,” which were “portable writing surfaces,” that could be held in just one hand (Borsuk 40). In later centuries within monasteries books moved and duplicated, “each copying texts by hand…Monasteries monopolized book production,” allowing for greater movement of books and their circulation, even if it was only within certain places or for certain commissioners. (Borsuk 48). Throughout history books as objects have been physically movable, able to change place and be transported and shared, not etched only to walls and stuck in only one location. Books must be a portable object to hold information in, however although in a literal sense not all books are moveable, some have been chained to their shelves or keep only in archives, the writing, the ideas and stories that they contain are mobile. Even if not in actual motion, the purpose of books, as “portable,” will always succeed because the material within them can circulate and be shared without the object itself needing to be moved, its data may always be distributed, therefore the book is always moving.

I really enjoyed the reading this week, I loved being able to explore the history and progression of the book as an object, how it has change and yet how it has stayed the same, how it maintains the shape of the codex but is now produced at a much faster pace. I am very excited to continue reading the rest of The Book.