Ellwood, Stephen. This Is What It Is Like to Be Like This. Toronto: Art Metropole, 2005.

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Anyone who knows me well can testify to the fact that I have a bit of a book fetish. Throughout my life, in all the times I’ve had to move, it’s been paper that has made up the large majority of what I own—in both weight and volume. I’ve been willing to part with practically any other material possession but books. I suppose that if we are what we consume and the medium is the message, I have no choice but to accept the fact that I’m a glutton clinging perilously to the past.

I despair at the closing of neighborhood bookstores. I steal furtive glances at the shelves of friends and strangers alike when entering their homes for the first time. And I moved at a snail’s pace through this year’s Art Book Fair despite overheated rooms and an eager throng of strangers pressed up against me. 

Curling up with a Kindle can never replace the tactile sensation of feeling the toothy finish of a paper stock between one’s fingertips. E-ink can’t replicate the show-through of a cheap newsprint or the fine craftsmanship attained by printers and binderies in Western Europe—both equally gratifying in their own right.

Earlier tonight, I spent some time with one of my most recent purchases, Stephen Ellwood’s This Is What It Is Like to Be Like This. Ellwood is that rare visual/verbal artist—his imagery is narrative; his language: evocative. This particular piece is small in size, roughly 5in x 7in, each page a vast expanse of white but for a single phrase, simply typeset and positioned at the same horizon line on each page. The book concludes with a few full-page plates of black and white photography of ambling streams and dense foliage at its close.

And while I had perused the pages of this piece a few weeks ago, only tonight did I discover that the signatures had been bound with a bright red thread. It was a deliberate act: a choice unto itself and a bold move in an otherwise rigorous and economical construct. A detail perhaps, but a small reminder nonetheless that we aren’t just sentient, but sensorial as well.

Bois, Ive-Alan; Bois, Yve-Alain; Macel, Christine; and Rolin, Olivier. Sophie Calle, m’as-tu vue. Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2003. 

Fischer, Mirjam. Beauty and the Book: 60 Years of the Most Beautiful Swiss Books. Zurich: Arthur Niggli, 2004.