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Jaimie McEvoy 4
For Whom the Bell To
Earnest. Hemmingway

  

    
    
   
 
 

The Miracle of the Ro
Jean Genet

I Know Why the Cage
Maya Angelow

Nausea
J.P. Sartre

The collected works 0

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Unconscious Civilisation
John Ralston Saul

Marine Life
Linda Svendsen

The Trouble with Heroes
Guy Vanderhaeghe

 

Brasil
John Updike

     
     
   

 

A Year of Lesser
David Bergen

The New York Trilogy
Paul Austen

 

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Wallpaper and bookpaper |

The book as wall covering

by Trent Ernst

Thave a fairly big library at home. Not huge,
by any sense of the word, but comfortably
large enough that it is overflowing the two
bookshelves I own and is starting pile up in
the corner by my bed. I Jove reading, and I
love books. A trip to Metrotown is not
complete without stopping in at Chapters. It
is difficult, if not impossible, to walk down
Granville without sashaying into Bollums for
an hour or so.

T mention this to let you know of my

- passion for books. For I have noticed a
disturbing trend that must be made known.

It began while I was in The Old Spaghetti
Factory in New Westminster. In an attempt
to evoke an earlier time, they have old-
fashioned decor, including a number of
hardcover books. At the /kea in Richmond,
the same thing is happening. Amidst the
cardboard computers and plastic plants, a
whole library’s worth of books festoon the
shelves of the displays. Being a bibliophile, I
take it upon myself to decry this inhuman
practice. Books were made to be read, not to
sit idle upon the shelves at /kea, serving no
more than a decorative purpose.

It’s like a zoo, one where books are trapped
like animals in cages, far from their natural
home. Worse yet, it is a zoo where the animals
are secondary to the walls of the zoo itself. ”

At /kea, I even took it upon myself to
comfort a few of these books. To my horror, I
discovered that the books were all the same!
Have these people no shame? Oh the
ignominy of it all! They weren’t even
important enough to deserve selection. “This
book looks nice,” they must have said, “I'll

take a thousand.” How would you feel if
someone said you looked nice, then ordered a
thousand of you? I bet you wouldn't feel
special, especially if they put you on a shelf,
not for your own merits but to show off the
shelf,

This insidious trend has gone beyond the
institutions and infected the homes as well. I
will be the first to admit that I have, once or
twice, purchased a book with thoughts of how
it will look on my bookshelf, but always, always
with the intent to read it...someday. However,
there are people out there who buy books for
their appearance only, with no intent of ever
reading them.

Has it come to this? Have books become no
more than glorified (and expensive) wallpaper?
Are we more concerned with acquiring leather-
bound, gold-embossed, hand-stitched, first
edition volumes than we are about owning
books that we enjoy? Give me a well-worn
Tolkien, a dog-eared Louis L’ Amour, a tattered
and torn George MacDonald or C.S. Lewis or
even a jelly-stained Dr. Suess. These are books
to read, not to look at. These are books that are
appreciated for their artistic merit, not for their
calfskin leather or holographic covers. These
are books that are set free, liberated from a
culture more concerned with collectibility than
readability. These are books that are loved.

Trent Ernst is a student of the written word.
When not lost in a bookstore, he spends his time
at Douglas College, where he is in the
Professional Writing program. He is also the
Production Resource Person for the student
newspaper, The Other Press (That's us! -ed,)

  

ere are some suggestions fe

around the corner.

aling the literature they like, Soy
mer reading—that season is just: oF
cky us, they were all gathered in

place. They were in the Douglas
m (just off.the lower caf.) forthe

   
   
 
       
    

April 199
Geoff Gilliard

The Barrytown Trilogy
Roddy Doyle

Dance me Outside
W.P. Kinsella

release of Pearls, a collection of

writing from Douglas College

Students,

   
     
 
  

Enthusiasm is contagious, and Kevin Kelly
hopes to infect an entire generation with Out
of Control. Though his subject matter is
scarcely the stuff of bestsellers and popular
culture, Kelly imbues his writing with a sense
of joy and wonderment that drags even the least
scientifically-minded readers through.

Kelly is a scientific populariser, in true
Asmovian style. Out of Control charts the
cutting edge of technological and biological
research, and attempts to bring them together
into a coherent whole. This is not an attempt at
a Grand Unification Theory (currently back in
vogue among scientific researchers and
theoretical physicists), but Kelly does try and
find common elements in complex systems,
systems of both the “made” and “born” as he
puts it.

One of the most respectable elements of the
book is Kelly’s commitment to primary
sources. Very little of his research is second
hand; Kelly spent three years talking to experts
currently working in all aspects of scientific
research. This, along with his prodigious
bibliography of books, and respectable list of
editors (including Steward Brand, Kelly’s
mentor and former editor of The Whole Earth
Review), gives the book a set of impeccable

Photos by Darin Clisby and Miguel Strother

    
     

 

Out of Control
Kevin Kelly
Addison-Wesley

credentials. It is, at the very least, fastidiously
organized and painstakingly researched.

His approach to writing reflects his research.
Many of the views expressed in Out of Control
are expressed anecdotally. This lends to the
readability of the book. Instead of presenting a
dry, academic study, Kelly’s book is a reflection
of Kelly. We ‘see’ him in his office, looking out

at the bee-hive beneath his window (a central ©

image to his musings). Through him we meet
Mark Pauline, a renegade roboticist who stages
illegal performances, known as “machine sex.”
We watch with horror and delight as these
robots—constructed from leftover parts of cars,
backhoes, lawn sprinklers, even pianos—fight
each other, belching fire, spitting white-hot bolts
of iron or attacking each other with giant drills.

But these meetings are not happenstance. We
do not see things by chance. Each anecdote, each
musing leads us into a deeper exploration of
Kelly’s theories. :

Kelly spends a lot of time dealing with the
theories of causality. Kelly argues against the
Greek, linear form of causality, “the causality
that A causes B, B causes C, going back to the
Prime Cause....“ Instead, he argues in favour of
“an ‘ecological’ sense [of causality]... Things
come in circles. A is linked to B, B is linked to

continued on page 18

 

 

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