What is a book? Yesterday I would have agreed that this is an obvious question. However, after our book viewing today, I am not exactly sure what counts as a book anymore. Trying to make sense of all that I saw today and my previous schema of what a book is, I went to the Internet to find the definition. But to my surprise there were multiple, differing definitions to be found. Here are a few: def 1, def 2, and def 3. Although each definition has basically the same gist, there are small, yet important variations to them. As you can see, definition one includes blank bound pages to be books, while definition 2 does not. And definition three includes illustrated pages to be a book, while the other two do not.
One may think that by combining all those definitions you may get a solid definition as to what a book is, but I’m still skeptical. Judging from the range of books we viewed today, there are a lot of works that do not fall under those three definitions. For example, the skeleton book that cleverly only included text on the “skeleton” of the book (the covers- is that a book? The book essences- are those books? Or the unbound drawings of the turtles- are those books?…If such are not books, then what are they?
I think that these are hard questions to answer. And by no means do I think that there is even a correct answer. To me, this is a matter of opinion, so what do you think?
I am definitely one of those people that thinks of a “book” as a group of pages bound together. But the artists whose work we looked at yesterday challenged this assumption that I and others share. I think it is important to remember that a text in “book” form is a work of art (after all, how much have we read thus far about the artistry that has gone into book covers, book bindings, book illustrations, printmaking, etc?).
I think that the books we viewed in the library on Tuesday were very untraditional versions of books. Although the author obviously meant for them to be books, many people viewing them without this knowledge may have guessed otherwise. I know that personally, if I had not been told they were books at the beginning, I would have likely spent a large amount of time trying to figure out what the objects were I was looking at.
I’m surprised. Even the Oxford dictionary says a books is a written narrative or account. While that definition, close to yours, does not accurately describe artists’ books, it at least admits the freedom of medium. A book can be a scroll or a codex. Furthermore, I think that these definitions are all quite accurate and can still describe what we saw in the library. All the books in the library have all of those qualities – a complete narrative and bound in some way. Any visual art is simply an addition; it doesn’t take away from the definition of the book.
Tuesday’s class definitely made it much more difficult for me to define what a book is. I too think that there is no one correct definition. I had always defined a book as a complete work of some sort, somehow connected, whether on a scroll or in codex form. Seeing the book essences really challenged my definition. I was not sure where they would fit in. I now want to alter my previous definition, but how and to what, I still am unsure.
I think the binding part of the definition is also interesting. The binding gives the author some control over the sequence that the reader reads. The reader, however, always has control whether the book is bound or not as the person can skip ahead a few pages and then go back. Professor Phillip’s example about the children’s books on display at the museum was the first time I considered books as not needing to be bound and the impact that formatting of books has on the perceptions of what makes a book.