Joseph Voelbel

That someone should endeavor to write a volume such as, ‘The History of Counter-Culture from Punk Rock to Ai Wei-Wei’, was beyond Petra, the post- graduate research assistant whom was hired by the eccentric (perhaps, one must admit, this adjective is redundant) Lit-Theory Professor at Nubes University, to scour its every line and letter in search of a reference to what he’d called, “a mystagogue-ical je ne sies quoi”. When Petra had attempted to seek further clarification the Professor exclaimed, “Don’t speak student! For fear that you should insult the mysterium tremendum with a categorical impudence!” He then rushed out of the room as if having become suddenly aware of a pressing appointment.

Petra had been awarded this assistantship to the illustrious and semi-infamous Professor, after winning a university wide essay contest, limited to 1,001 words, on why books mattered. She’d determined therein, and perhaps heretically so, that “book” as a word to describe writing, once typically compiled onto paper, and consisting of topics either fictional or non-fictional, and of varying lengths, was in itself, anachronistic. She proposed instead an alternate name for books, and then went on to defend her reasoning at length, to some success.

Petra wrote, “For the book itself, comes from the Old English Boc, meaning a written document or charter, and before that the Germanic Bocian, meaning to grant by charter, while it only bares passing semblance to the English Beech, a tree from which Runes were carved^[2].”

Petra argued and the English department at Nubes University at least democratically agreed, that “books”, and novels specifically as having reached the tallest imaginary heights of man, would better be termed “charters”, for authors are like sovereign creative powers, whom grant specific rights (such as the right to imagine, the right to hold dear, or the right to speculate), to its readers (which constitute groups, like brands or schools - even possibly the school referred to herein, or metropoles).

Petra asserted that this inherent contract was the only thing present in every book, and thus was far more intrinsic with respect to the raison d’etre of literature, than a vestigial reference to having once been printed on dead trees, (though charter is from Latin Chartula meaning, “little paper.”) She claimed, “The Great American Charter” will one day replace “The Great American Novel”. This new signifier (as Derrida lovingly referred to them), she continued, “was a superior choice for the signified in question, because it inferred the sovereign power of an author’s imagination, and the agreement with its readers whom pay it attention.” She went on at length about how the right to participate in an author’s imagination is like being hired, or chartered, and then added, “In the modern age, as we are less-and-less tethered to the physicality of matter, why not use a signifier that remains bound to spirit of its signified? Novels will always be charters between readers and writers.”

From there, Petra restated her thesis in the final paragraph of that essay, that books are charters because they hire the reader to pay attention, and that novels are stored in the minds of readers primarily, and in print secondarily. This last contention contained a flourish, which no doubt, heavily influenced the final decision on her essay. “The Latin word for Library, librum literally means, ‘the inner bark of trees’, but our Libraries are not kept in trees. They are stored in the hearts of readers. Can we not change - even today - the meaning of words to better depict our reality?”

Whilst perusing chapter three subsection four’s seventh footnote Petra looked toward the door near the back of the empty auditorium. From where she sat in the place The Professor typically orated from - albeit often with one shoe lace untied or the buttons along his front shirt off-kilter - but in a room now occupied only by the certainty of silence, it seemed to her, that she may have found something of what he’d been alluding to.

 

The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) by Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges, contains the following relevant passage, “I thought of a maze of mazes, of a sinuous ever growing maze which would take in both past and future and would somehow involve the stars.” ¹

Runes were considered a ‘divining’ tool, and thus to make them, a divine act in and of itself. It is mythologized that the first stones were cast by the mere pronunciation of the word which became a symbol inscribed upon it. ²