Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Good Letters

Home
Catholic
In Praise of the Printed Book, Part 1

In Praise of the Printed Book, Part 1

Last updated on: August 1, 2013 at 12:56 am by Guest Contributor

In Praise of the Printed Book, Part 1 2013-08-01T00:56:06-07:00 Guest Contributor

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

By Warren Farha

Guest Post

Note: This post and the one following it have been condensed from an address given by the author.

I’ve been charged today with the task of explaining in some coherent form “why books?”—that is, paper and ink between covers—rather than “books” in some digital format. This is a visceral issue for me and not just because my vocation is the selling of conventional books. It touches me at points of my development as a human being.

The very first book I remember reading is as a four-year-old who could not yet really read, narrating the story as best I could by looking at and interpreting the interspersed illustrations (wood-cut engraving style drawings). It was one of the small bookshelf of books my family owned called The Real Book about the Wild West, by Adolph Regli.

I remember hours lying on our green-carpeted living room floor with this book, in my initial stages of reading. There were of course hours more with this book after I really could read, absorbing the engrossing narratives and unconsciously developing a love for history.

At age seven, in second grade, I happened to check out from the school library George Washington, by the wonderful Norwegian husband and wife author/illustrator team of Edgar and Ingri d’Aulaire (their Abraham Lincoln won the Caldecott in 1939). The book’s combination of unforgettably vivid lithographed color illustrations and unabashed hero-worship and patriotism conveyed in a compelling narrative captivated me.

Fast-forward ten years: I was a high school junior, a cradle Orthodox Christian, caught up in the Jesus Movement of the early 1970s. I had a newfound enthusiasm for the faith, but few intellectual resources with which to undergird it. But I was a reader, and in a footnote I saw a reference to a book by C.S. Lewis called Mere Christianity.

I bought and read Mere Christianity—a cheap, mass-market paperback, green and white, the text of which I boldly underlined in blue ink. This book immeasurably formed my apprehension of the content and extent of Christian faith, excited my imagination, and expanded my comprehension of Christianity’s vastness and wisdom.

I went on to read a good portion of the Lewis corpus. It opened to me worlds of discovery not only in Christian apologetics, but in philosophy, mythology, literary criticism, and memoir. The foundations, as it turned out, of my bookstore.

A year later, I received a book by an Orthodox seminarian who’d been assigned for a summer to our local parish. He quickly became a mentor, and brought my Orthodox roots into closer connection with my Jesus Movement enthusiasms.

It was this book, For the Life of the World, by Alexander Schmemann (silver-covered with a lovely inscription on the title page from the giver), that interpreted all of salvation history through the lens of the liturgy. It laid down a template by which to worship, by which to comprehend worship, by which to aspire to a way of living as a fully human being.

One more way station, ten years later: I was married, working, but laid up for a few weeks with a slipped disc, contentedly lying in bed, enduring the pain with the prescribed Percodan. I read Dom Gregory Dix’s monumental The Shape of the Liturgy, learning that Schmemann’s For the Life of the World meditations converged with the actual history of the liturgy.

Dix’s reading of “every sentence of every Christian author extant from the period of Nicaea”—an astounding claim given the enormous number of books from the period—resulted in a book that permanently enriched my participation in the life of the Church.

I could go on. And I’m certain each of you has a comparable set of books and memories that have indelibly shaped your lives. But I hope you catch my meaning. Books—real, discrete objects—have been my own personal Bethels, “stones” that marked specific epiphanies for me. The object and the experience they mediated are inseparable.

Of course, there is also much to praise about physical books along more pedestrian lines, as marvelous technological objects in themselves. Listen to Robert Darnton, Renaissance scholar and director of the Harvard Library system, from his essay “E-Books and Old Books” in his The Case for Books:

Consider the book. It has extraordinary staying power. Ever since the invention of the codex sometime close to the birth of Christ, it has proven to be a marvelous machine—great for packaging information, convenient to thumb through, comfortable to curl up with, superb for storage, and remarkably resistant to damage. It does not need to be upgraded or downloaded, accessed or booted, plugged into circuits or extracted from webs. Its design makes it a delight to the eye. Its shape makes it a pleasure to hold in the hand. And its handiness has made it the basic tool of learning for thousands of years.

So now we turn from physical books to the digital world in which we have been immersed for the last twenty years or so. The blindingly rapid rise of the Internet is as momentous as Gutenberg’s press and the Industrial Revolution and all the electronic and communications revolutions that followed.

Nothing’s been the same since the Internet arrived: we do business, buy and sell, pay and receive, communicate, organize our schedules, and read differently now. It is changing in breathtaking ways the structure of our whole civilization.

Paleontologist Scott Sampson, in a short reflection in a collection called Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? sums up the fundamental pro and con of the Internet as the Great Source for Information and the Great Distraction fostering compulsions to stay connected. On the pro side, we must give the Internet its due. It is marvelous and almost magical, multiplying many times the store of knowledge available to anyone in mere moments, facilitating communication beyond our wildest imaginations, and simplifying and accelerating hosts of previously tedious tasks.

Yes, the Internet is a wondrous tool, indeed. The problem is—as is the case with many new technologies—we forget the Net is a tool. Instead of using the tool, the tool begins to use us. We become unconscious of being used, as we are numbed by immersion in a new kind of technological miasma.

To be continued tomorrow.

Warren Farha is a lifelong, contented resident of Wichita, Kansas, son of a Lebanese immigrant’s son and a Kansas farm girl. He grew up in his father’s business, until a pivotal moment in 1987 led him into a new vocation of bookstore owner. The bookstore in mind was interdisciplinary featuring classic, perennially important books in literature, theology, history, the arts, and children’s literature, one that also brought his native Orthodox faith into wider contemporary intellectual and cultural conversations. Eighth Day Books is now almost twenty-five years old. Warren shares this endeavor with his beloved wife Chris, three grown children, and a host of past and present friends.

Previous Post

July 31, 2013

Cutting Away the Noise

Next Post

August 2, 2013 In Praise of the Printed Book, Part 2

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A. G. Harmon Alissa Wilkinson Allison Backous Art Authors Brad Fruhauff Bradford Winters Bryan Bliss Caroline Langston Chad Thomas Johnston Chris Hoke Christiana N. Peterson Culture D.G. Myers D.L. Mayfield Daniel Bowman Jr. David Griffith Elizabeth Duffy Faith Film Greg Wolfe Guest Contributor Interview Jan Vallone Jeffrey Overstreet Jessica Eddings-Roeser Jessica Mesman Griffith Kelly Foster Lindsey Crittenden Morgan Meis music Natalie Vestin Nick Olson Peggy Rosenthal Personal Reflection Poetry Friday Reflection Relationships Review Richard Chess Richard Cole Sara Zarr Shannon Huffman Polson Sonya Bilocerkowycz Tania Runyan Tony Woodlief Topical Categories Uncategorized Vic Sizemore Writing

Select a Month October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 February 2008

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which prophet's wife died as a sign to Israel, and he was told not to mourn?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Amos Ezekiel Daniel Obadiah