Are Books Alive?

[Svrtnsse]

I took this photo earlier today:

Do books die if they don't get around? Are books alive? Stories? What happens with the story when we've read it and closed the book and put it back on the shelf?

Do we make the stories come alive after we've read them, even just by seeing the book, or reading a favourite paragraph?

What are your thoughts?

 

[Gryphos]

Bruh......

 

[Zadocfish]

How high are you right now?

 

[Svrtnsse]

High?

Sure, that may not have been the most well written, most well thought out, post I've ever made. Coming at it from a purely logical and fact-based point of view it doesn't make much sense.

I figured that wouldn't matter.

I figured this is forum for writers who write fantasy, and I figured people would have a bit of imagination and a sense of romance. I thought it would be fun.

 

[kennyc]

Poetic!
and perhaps true in the memetic sense.

 

[Velka]

I believe they are alive in a metaphysical sense.

I don't just listen to, or read, a story - I experience them. When the words leave the page and enter my mind, they become pictures and meaning. They become entwined with my own memories and emotions.

The immense shock and misery I felt at the end of A Game of Thrones, the fear I felt for Kvothe when Ambrose was using malfeasance against him, the disgusted horror that still makes me squirm (nearly 20 years after I read it) of Blindness: A Novel are just as real as the emotions events in my 'real' life have evoked.

 

[Ban]

I'd like to state that i am not very poetic. I appreciate poets. We need them just like other people in the same category who can make us think while entertaining.

But no. Books are not alive. However the information in the book is alive to me at least. Some would say that the story/knowledge lives as long as it is read. I think that the story/knowledge lives as long as their someone capable of reading or some way for someone to learn to be capable of reading it. When we all collectively forgot how to read egyptian, i don't think the egyptian recorded knowledge was "dead". We still had the Rosetta stone which in turn could teach us egyptian (well partly).


Does this make sense?

 

[Heliotrope]

I like this. I'm very nerdy and poetic and after a glass or two I get philosophical. This is the type of thing I might contemplate for some time

I think ideas are alive, and books are the vessels of ideas. When I read a book the ideas/themes/messages live inside of me for forever. They can't be erased. They can't be forgotten. They shape the way I live and the way I see the world. In this way books are alive. If a book is forgotten or lost then the ideas and messages are forgotton and lost, and so that thread of thought will die out.

I'm reading Galapagos again right now, Kurt Vonnegut and so I can't help but think of natural selection. Books that no longer hold the ideas of a certain generation will be discarded or forgotten and so yes, the ideas held in those books will die.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

the ideas held in those books will die.

But ideas Mr. Creedy (Heliotrope) are bullet proof.

 

[Gryphos]

To answer this question properly, you have to define what 'alive' means. If you mean alive in the sense that a person is alive, then stories cannot be alive, per se, because they exhibit no consciousness and are simply a series of events. It would be like arguing that the year 2015 is alive. However, if you want to get really metaphysical, the discussion could be had over whether the characters within stories are alive.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Poetic!
and perhaps true in the memetic sense.

Good one. I wasn't even thinking about it from the memetic sense. I was just being a bit hippie-sappy and found it cute. I guess there's a real point to it though. If memes are real (which I can recall there has been some debate about), then books (meaning the stories within them), could very well be alive too - at least as long as they're read.
There was a time when if anyone answered "42" to a question, then everyone would grin and nod knowingly. That particular one isn't as common these days, but it serves as a good example. A more modern example might be "winter is coming" - although that gained popularity more through the tv show than the books I believe.

 

[kennyc]

To answer this question properly, you have to define what 'alive' means. If you mean alive in the sense that a person is alive, then stories cannot be alive, per se, because they exhibit no consciousness and are simply a series of events. It would be like arguing that the year 2015 is alive. However, if you want to get really metaphysical, the discussion could be had over whether the characters within stories are alive.

Life does not require consciousness.

 

[ThinkerX]

For whatever reason, this thread reminds me of Jasper Ffordes 'Bookworld' setting. A world where characters from novels live, act out their parts, and interact with characters from other novels. Characters from books that sit unread run a risk of getting 'remaindered,' a sort of death sentence.

 

[kennyc]

Or Fahrenheit 451 where people memorize and recite books essentially becoming the book.

 

[skip.knox]

kennyc mentioned Bradbury. I don't remember which story it was -- maybe a chapter in Martian Chronicles? -- in which not the books themselves but the authors remained alive so long as there was someone somewhere who was reading their book. A very romantic and typically Bradbury image, as one author after another perishes when the last of their books disappears.

 

[kennyc]

I remember a story like that but not sure of the title ....

 

[Heliotrope]

I don't think ideas are bulletproof... They change and adapt and are forgotten over time... Just like how the wolly mammoth can go extinct, but leave behind the modern elephant ... Traces of the idea remains, but not the idea itself... We don't still believe the world is flat, or that emotional women need their uterus removed to cure hysteria ( yes, this is why it is called a hysterectomy). And the older the ideas are the more we are likely to forget they even existed....

Another is American Gods by Gaimen, where the weak remnants of the old gods are being replaced by shiny strong new gods of tv and the Internet and media and shopping... Many of the old gods are already dead because they have been forgotten.

 

[kennyc]

kennyc mentioned Bradbury. I don't remember which story it was -- maybe a chapter in Martian Chronicles? -- in which not the books themselves but the authors remained alive so long as there was someone somewhere who was reading their book. A very romantic and typically Bradbury image, as one author after another perishes when the last of their books disappears.

Ah! Found it, in The Illustrated Man - The Exiles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illustrated_Man#Story_summaries

 

[Heliotrope]

"The words of wisdom invented by man were fleeting. Their values grew and thrived and died and were resurrected in new and more bloodless ways with every generation." (Nebula by..... Me. Lol)

 

[kennyc]

I don't think ideas are bulletproof... They change and adapt and are forgotten over time... Just like how the wolly mammoth can go extinct, but leave behind the modern elephant ... Traces of the idea remains, but not the idea itself... We don't still believe the world is flat, or that emotional women need their uterus removed to cure hysteria ( yes, this is why it is called a hysterectomy). And the older the ideas are the more we are likely to forget they even existed....

Another is American Gods by Gaimen, where the weak remnants of the old gods are being replaced by shiny strong new gods of tv and the Internet and media and shopping... Many of the old gods are already dead because they have been forgotten.

You'll appreciate this then (from my A Fleeting Existence collection):




Hysteria


I think I have a wandering uterus
and I’m not sure when it began.
Years ago I had trouble breathing
doc said a polyp in my nose.

Then the headaches began
on that same left side I knew the
polyp had grown and with no relief
from aspirin or drugs,
I had to endure the pain,
but it got better -- eventually.

Then as though I was in a movie
-- Aliens with Sigourney Weaver --
one of those buggers was in
my liver pounding and pushing
to burst free. Such pain I’ve
never felt since my gall-bladder
was removed. I could only figure
it must have grown back,
when the docs found nothing wrong,
but it got better -- eventually.

Now I have this pain -- dare I say --
in my right testicle as though
it’s clamped in vise-grips
and a strong man tugging hard
and God I want to die.

It gets better and worse
I hope it gets better
but still I wonder
if perhaps it’s not all due
to that polyp on my brain.



Kenny A. Chaffin – 1/28/2014