as made thing, as textual whole. What makes a book whole? When is the making of a book done? Done, past tense of do, from Old English don “make, act, perform, cause; to put, to place,” from West Germanic *doanan, from the Proto-Indo-European root dhe- “to set, put, place.” When is a book a thing that can be set on your lap?
To make a book is to arrive at an end which is a beginning, as a birth is the end of gestation and the beginning of life as an individual. As an editor, sometimes my role is like midwife or doula; sometimes I feel like a surrogate mother for days or weeks at a time, as I carry the book within me, nurture it and contribute some molecules of my own.
A book’s end is the end of its making but also the end of its utterance, the point after which no more need be said. The threads all reenter the warp and woof. Text from texture from weave. Text has been since the late fourteenth century the “wording of anything written,” having come to English with the Normans from Old North French tixte “text, book; Gospels” and earlier (12c.), from Medieval Latin textus “the Scriptures, text, treatise.” Earlier, the metaphorical, literary sense’s derivation from the physical life of the word appears: “style or texture of a work,” literally “thing woven,” from past participle stem of Latin texere “to weave, to join, fit together, braid, interweave, construct, fabricate, build” (from PIE root teks- “to weave, to fabricate, to make”).
When the text has reached its final form, woven, built to stand alone, boundaries hold the tapestry together—in the forms of covers and paratexts, those textual pieces Gérard Genette calls “thresholds of interpretation”:
A literary work consists, entirely or essentially, of a text, defined (very minimally) as a more or less long sequence of verbal statements that are more or less endowed with significance. But this text is rarely presented in an unadorned state, unreinforced and unaccompanied by a certain number of verbal or other productions, such as an author’s name, a title, a preface, illustrations. And although we do not always know whether these productions are to be regarded as belonging to the text, in any case they surround it and extend it, precisely in order to present it, in the usual sense of this verb but also in the strongest sense: to make present, to ensure the text’s presence in the world … in the form … of a book. (1)
This is a thrilling moment for any writer or editor—when the book has its own presence in the world. It becomes something almost magical, a substanceless substance that can change minds and evoke strong feelings and live on as part of the fabric of collective consciousness. It is an utterance and its texture, adorned by thresholds of interpretation.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is used not of books but of people. We all have senses of self, social masks, bodies, and clothing; essentially, we are ungraspable, existing differently in the mind of everyone who encounters us. Sometimes we’re mistaken for texts “endowed with significance” (by author and reader both)… “She’s like an open book.” But is she? “I can’t read you…” says the longing lover. “But you implied ...” Have you had the uncomfortable experience of being overinterpreted? “You’re reading into it too much!” Tone, facial expression, gesture can all be read as signs of subtext resonating from beneath the surface, where the truth resides, when sometimes there’s nothing there. Other times you’re underinterpreted, as you vaguely or obliquely communicate some felt inchoate reality, some seismic vibration deep down, and they can’t or don’t read the details that signify, forcing you to declare in bare, basic words what you really feel, and then only words hang in air like carcasses in cold storage, waiting to be parsed with knives.
—“What do you mean?”—
I’ve written books to figure out what things mean. Or, no—I’ve written texts not ready to have a presence in the world. Or I wasn’t ready.
A book’s words live on. A book may say one thing—be identical to only one composition of words—but it means more than it says. It will go out into the world and circulate, having a different presence in each mind it passes through, with each set of fingers that leafs through its pages. In its origins as an object, and even now, a book is intimate with trees. Book, from Old English boc grew from the Proto-Germanic root bōk(ō)-, from *bokiz “beech,” “the notion being of beechwood tablets on which runes were inscribed. …Latin and Sanskrit also have words for ‘writing’ that are based on tree names (birch and ash, respectively).” The French word for book, livre, (related by root to library) is from “Latin librum, liber (from Proto-Italic *lufro-) was originally ‘the inner bark of trees.’”
A book is a walk through a forest where bark cracks and leaves whisper. Coleridge called his early book of lyrics Sibylline Leaves.
A book’s sentences will have ramifications. Ramification—a branching out, from Latin ramus, branch, which may stem from PIE wrad, branch, root (also root of Greek rhiza, which gives us rhizome); combined with Latin facere, to make (from that same PIE dhe-, to set, put). These derivations would mean that to set down roots is to branch out—which of course it is. A book, the inner bark of trees branches again as utterance budding ideas, as its meanings—mutually created—ramify through readers’ minds.
Quotes are from:
Genette, Gérard, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. J.E. Lewin, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Online Etymology Dictionary