On Paperback Books and Impermanence; or, An Ode to the Imperfect and Ephemeral
I bought a good few books a few days ago. Upon returning home I immediately set to adding them to my already strained storage. I somehow managed to make room for all of them on my bookshelf. I spent probably twenty minutes rearranging my limited shelving space to accommodate the five new purchases.
Upon setting them all in their rightful places, I took a moment to observe the entirety of my shelf. It was then that I took notice of the books that comprise my collection. Japanese literature fills much of the first row, Haruki Murakami, Osamu Dazai, and Natsume Soseki placed at the forefront. These are followed by fantasy novels. The likes of Tolkien, Lewis, Le Guin, and Sanderson. Beyond those, Herbert’s Dune series sits alongside The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Don Quixote oddly enough sits alongside Joyce’s Ulysses and Dubliners. Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid rest beside Beowulf and the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The collection extends beyond these, but the point is not about what the specific books are. Rather, I noticed a commonality among the overwhelming majority of these books. They are paperback.
As I scanned my shelves, I noticed that there was, in fact, a scarcity of hardcover books. Of all the books that were in the room (aside from manga), there were only thirteen hardcovers. Meanwhile there were more than two-hundred paperbacks (based on an old count because it was late and I did not want to count all of them in the moment).
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When I was a child, I very much preferred hardcover books to paperbacks. Something about the rigidity of the books made them seem more real. As if the solid covers they possessed made them more grounded and steadfast in reality. More permanent and resistant to the uncaring winds of time than their soft-spined counterparts.
My experiences with paperbacks had been less than stellar by that point. I was obsessed with three different series of books at that age, and while two of them I read by borrowing hardcover copies from my library, the third I owned in paperback. I still do, in fact. I took a look at them the other day and remembered what exactly set me on an anti-paperback streak: the creases in the spine and the covers constantly remaining splayed open.
I was a child obsessive over details. Everything had to be neat and perfect. I would very rarely loan out my books to friends out of a fear that they might accidentally rip the pages or stain the book with Cheese-ball dust (at that age, these fears were not completely unfounded). Heck, if my book was left in a position that bent it out of shape even slightly, then I too would get bent out of shape. So, needless to say that when I took note of one of my favorite series’ paperbacks becoming creased in their spines after finishing said series, I was immensely unhappy.
I did not have much time to act on this unhappiness, however, as it was soon after that my friends got me hooked on multiplayer video games and my interest in books diminished for a number of years.
In my later years of high school, I bought Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami in a Barnes & Noble on a whim. When I got home, all of my friends were out partying or doing whatever almost-high-school-grads do, so they were not encouraging me to play games. Instead, I sat down and cracked open the paperback book. I was immersed immediately. When I returned to school the following Monday, I could not put down the book. I have never been a fast reader, so it was quite a feat that I finished a book as long as that in less than two weeks. From there, my love and appreciation for books was reignited, and I began to stockpile tomes once again.
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The collection I observed yesterday and which sits behind me as I write is the result of this reigniting. More than two-hundred books. It is likely into the three- or four-hundred range by now. So many books that I likely will not be able to read in my lifetime.
A lot of people decry paperbacks because they degrade with every reading. Nowadays I disagree with that sentiment. Yes, they wear out over long periods. Yet hardcovers do as well. Perhaps hardcovers are easier to repair, but they wear out just as much as paperbacks or any other medium for that matter.
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Time is an interesting thing to think about. We often like to think of the world around us as being in a sort of stasis. Things may move and shake things up, but our world always seems to return to an equilibrium or normality. What we don’t always see is that the whole world is actually change incarnate. Everything is always changing. Nothing is permanent. From the trees to the ground to the buildings we build and that nature demolishes; it all is in constant flux.
All that we are is minuscule in the greater view of time. If geologic time were compressed into a clock with the present being midnight, we emerged, at most, only a second from midnight. We cling to any sense we can of permanence and stability in a universe characterized by its antithesis. We hurtle around on a rock orbiting a star which orbits a supermassive black hole which orbits only God knows what and yet we still cling to the idea that some part of us will live on in a tangible, coherent, perceptible, interpretable, and decipherable way.
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Every form of media is just an attempted affront to time and entropy; a challenge to the ever-progressing and unrelenting continuum. We fight to preserve ourselves for the future in everything we create and leave behind. Even if that future is just long enough to share with someone buying a book in a bookstore. We don’t often see that the things around us will likely outlast us, but they will not outlast the universe. Earth will not outlast the sun exploding. The Solar System will not outlast the heat death of the universe. If one widens the scope enough, they will see that all of our attempts to preserve a piece of ourselves will eventually fail, and we will sink into the flow along with everything that came before and that will come after.
So, when I see a paperback book nowadays, new or old, I do not fuss over the creases in the spine, or the cover that never rests fully flat and closed. Nor do I fuss over the frays on the edges of the cover, or the occasional dog-eared page. I see a story beyond the words on the page or the meaning they attempt to convey. I see the story of the reader, whether it was my own story or that of someone else. I see the sections they lingered on. I see what may have been their favorite or least favorite page. Sometimes I see their annotations, and while I don’t typically like reading a book for the first time if it has notes not belonging to me, I do like seeing their thoughts scribbled in the margins. All books—but especially paperbacks—are not just a record of the story the author wished to convey, but of the people who have read that story, interpreted it, and passed it on to another in the very same bundle of paper and ink markings. It will not last forever. In fact, many owners of books will outlast the books they possess. The creases and wear are odes to the book. They are laugh lines that one gets from living a joyous life. They are the tan one gets from working out in the sun for years. They are the gray hairs one gets from living to an elevated age. They are the scars from events that change people and make them grow. They are a lasting mark on a form that does not last. They are an ode to the imperfect and ephemeral.