In the last few weeks, I have often looked at how we move through books. From the ancient scroll to the modern codex, I kept thinking about reading as a kind of motion. Something that happens across pages, screens, and feeds. But looking back, all of these movements were still two-dimensional. They took place on flat surfaces, even though the books themselves and the devices we read on exist in a real, four-dimensional space. This week, Chapter 3 of The Book suddenly brings that missing dimension into play. Ulises Carrión’s idea that “a book is a sequence of spaces… a sequence of moments” (p. 148) opens up a completely new perspective. The book is not just something that opens before us, it opens around us.
Carrión’s line suddenly brings a sense of real space into play. It makes me see reading not as an act of moving from page to page or from chapter to chapter, but from room to room. And just like rooms in real life, every room has its own function and its own decoration. Some rooms are bright while others are narrow or silent. The same goes for chapters and pages. Each one feels unique in its own way and is arranged differently, but none of them are meaningless. When Carrión uses the word “sequence,” it already carries a sense of rhythm. The rhythm of one space leading into another, one moment following the next. “Spaces” then opens the page outward, turning reading into something we can step into. And with “moments“, Carrión adds a sense of time, reminding us that every act of reading happens only once and never in exactly the same way again.
If we think of a page as a room, then the words become its furniture, objects carefully placed by the author. Every word sits somewhere for a reason. For me, Carrión’s idea creates the picture of the writer as an interior designer, arranging language so that the reader can walk through it. Reading, then, is not only about following a line of text. It’s about entering and walking through spaces, that slowly shape the meaning of the book.
Looking back on my earlier reflections, this feels like the next step in a larger journey. I began with the scroll, thinking about the linear movement of reading, then moved to the codex as a flexible form and later to the book as a living body. Now Carrión adds a completely new layer. The book as space. What used to feel flat suddenly gained depth. Each time I turn a page, I am not just moving forward in text but stepping into another room. It makes every act of reading feel like walking through a house built out of language, with new doors that keep opening as you go.
Hey, Kaan — I think this is a beautiful reflection. I was also really affected by Carríon’s idea of books as spaces, and the way that you connect this idea with your own intellectual movement is brilliant. Thinking about authors as interior designers makes me wonder if the material producers of a book would be its architects, since they build its material structures. A lot of the 20th Century artist’s books and book arts that Borsuk describes emerge at the same time as correlating movements in architecture…hmm. I wonder if we can think about books as spaces in relation to concepts of property (copyright?) and privacy. But it is pretty beautiful to think of a book as a shared public space. I’ll be thinking about this a lot, thank you.
This is a great blog post as I am glad to see you focusing on the role of space, and occupying it, as central to books and our engagement with them. I can certainly see this topic being one that expands as you continue the semester and perhaps provides the foundation for final essay.