Concentric lock of regression

Hesus Markomalo tells such a story. In the middle of the fifties, Hulio Cortasar with his wife Auror Bernards traveled to Italy. They did not have much money, the desire to carry with them a weighty suitcase is even less. As you know, in those days an important part of the baggage of the enlightened traveler was made up; The longer the journey, the more books had to be taken with themselves (or the thicker the only one that was supposed to make up the comfort and joy in long crossings, ah, it’s still an era when traveling longer rode than stood in lines on securities or passport control!).

So, the Cortasarov couple came up with a great way to manage this problem. At each railway station, they bought one book in soft binding for two. Having settled down in the car, they took the reading as follows: first, Hulio read the page, after which he pulled it out and gave it to Aurora. After studying the sheet, she threw him into the open train window. It turns out that the path of Kortasarov in Italy was dotted with the petals of books - both beautiful and useful (a lot of things to read), and conveniently (do not carry weighty volumes with it), and economically (one cheap pyperbek for two). To all these pluses we add another - and two disadvantages. From a sociocultural point of view, such an experience is very useful - reading what is sold in the forecourt of book kiosks, much speaks of both society and the economy of the state.

For example, in the zero years I was delighted with a literary assortment of German railways: here you have Kafka, Muzil, Gunter Grass, not to mention translated things (for example, I quite often met Sorokin’s book). It seems that the presence of Sorokin is the only thing that unites Germany and Russia in this sense; The variegated hell of Russian book publishing, revealed at stations and trains, is waiting for a special study. There are attempts for wealth (indispensable gold and silver on penny covers), and a strange idea of ​​an ongoing fun in acidic colors (which is why it is impossible to pick up any of the current publications of Russian classics), and the set of garbage authors with their gloomy Ephesbash heroes, whore heroines, stray historios and naive The postmodernism of the unfinished PETEUSHKI. However, back to the Italian reading of Hulio and Aurora.

We note between the case a few sexist, even the Mashcht nature of the reader's technology of this couple. Hulio was the first to open a book; As a matter of fact, he is the only one who reads it precisely as a book , Aurora gets only separate sheets. Of course, you can see in this some inequality, however, if you reflect on the situation longer, everything turns out the other way around. A man gets the role of a tasting and at the same time book Luddite. This is he - a gloomy bastard, an enemy of culture, mocking the legacy of the great Guttenberg. He methodically turns almost the main cultural achievement of mankind into pieces of paper, which then it is no longer a pity to let him go to the wind. Aurora, on the other hand, receives at his disposal miserable scraps of high book culture; She tries to consider from them a certain common meaning, laid down in a book destroyed by her husband.

Moreover, it is she who is the only real keeper of this meaning; Unlike Julio, she receives it not in a finished form (book), but with scattered sheets - which, after reading, launches into the last flight. This gesture - to send torn pages to swim in cow winds - gives out true romance in Aurora, not a couple being puffing in his well -made romanticism of Hulio. Finally, another very important detail. It is Aurora Bernards who can be considered the predictor of the present time of electronic reading. Indeed, on the screen we are dealing with one (or two, worst) pages, and not with a whole book. Cortasar's science fiction writer could not even imagine such a thing.

This story is instructive - and not only in the above sense. She opens something in our relationship with the book. And these relations, despite the incredibly long and rich story, have only one tendency-the reduction of the book, turning it from the subject of worship, admiration, respect, from an object that is bought for considerable money, collect, collect, stored, nothing, a trifle of a dentist brush or a pair of socks, repulsed and thrown out. This contributed, of course, a new time; Descalization of knowledge, the spread of education and literacy, technological revolutions, the development of the publishing industry, the overall growth of welfare - all this has introduced a book into a daily use of a huge number of people. In order to then bring her out of it.

The book became cheap, light, affordable, sacred horror and even respect for it disappeared; People clinging to these interpreted rectangular sheets, covered with typographic paint objects, gradually translate into the category of cute eccentrics, cultural conservatives, lovers of antiquity, if not crazy at all. In the West, this began before the current technological revolution; The intelligent resident of the USSR could not yet understand how it is possible - to read the book in a soft cover and then throw it away , leave it on a park bench, and give it to the charitable fund store. The book in the USSR was valued and (importantly) was considered even a good investment, in every sense, from symbolic to material.

But then the Soviet Union sank instead of all its features, both vile and cute; The solid, with love and persistence collected home libraries moved at best to the bucksmen, at worst - to a landfill. And today, the remnants of that great and funny civilization can sometimes be found from garbage containers: scientific masterpieces about entertaining everything, collected works of Melnikov-Pechersky and Jules Verne, Pikul. Trifonov, Bitov, Yevtushenko, Yesenin, the legendary propaganda rubbish of a certain Kukarkin about Western pop culture, oriental publications, where the Soviet intellectual in crumbs collected information about the mysterious "Buddhism" ... a modern Bulgarian detective. Latin American masters of modern prose. All common did not go fate.

The coming of electronic readers finished off the book in the form in which we know it. The point is not only that people began to prefer the intangible publishing products of the material, this is only a trend, but not ending (and not even reaching the middle); Another thing is important - the book finally lost its status as a material object, which should be stored, cherished, collected. I think that the army of paper books carries the main losses not on the front line, but in the rear; More and more often, people abandon existing home libraries when moving, receiving an inheritance, and so on. The recently made a lot of noise an article by Nick Bilton in New York Times, where he asks the readers a terrible question: “I am moving from New York to the western coast. Should I get rid of hundreds of books accumulated in the apartment? ” Bilton's reasoning is quite logical - if I do not intend to drag my CD and DVDs with me, then why should I carry books? They already fit in my iPad'e ...

The article caused a stormy controversy on the newspaper’s website, but the arguments of both one and the other side are banal. The former say that they will never abandon paper books, because they are reliable, they can read them slowly and thoughtfully - and the like. The latter indicate the inability to keep so many waste paper in the rise in price apartments, how it is good and pleasant to give the books to the local library and for the needs of charity, that the book is primarily its content, which is repressed until complete intangible under the screen of your kindla. Everything is so.

The inevitable should be recognized. Paper books come to naught. It is unlikely that this process will quickly reach the end; The foci of resistance, coupled with a genetic habit of leafing through real pages, will retain the dusty old volumes and elegant products of current European publishers for a long time (it would be nice to Italian and French first of all!). Nevertheless, I repeat once again: paper books come to naught. And no disaster. We will die all, sooner or later. The fact of individual death does not cancel the need to live - and even enjoy life. With a paper book - the same thing. The worst can be sacrificed by digital milk, the best should be saved for later. To this, another story about the book, told, this time, Hesus Marhamalo.

In 1773, the Jesuit Order was abolished. After that, the books from the Jesuit residence in Brussels were transferred to the Royal Library. It turned out that there was no place there, and they were dumped into one local old church, in which many mice were found. It was clear that the mice would sooner or later devour books. To preserve the most valuable editions, the librarians came up with a cunning plan - they placed them on the book shelves, which dragged them to the altar. Around, they built several concentric circles of defense from less valuable publications. While the mice gnaws not so significant pages, the main books continue to delight us with their presence - even if we do not open them.