On preserving the status of the physical book as an aesthetic, social, and spiritual good.
I’m in the back of an Uber to the airport when dread sweeps over me. That feeling is accompanied by uncharacteristically vivid recall: me slipping into sleep, exhausted from three days of vacationing, the book in my hand sliding onto the floor.
The book is Neil Gaiman’s View from the Cheap Seats—over 500 pages long, 280-something of which I’d been making my way through while traveling by plane and train to and around southern France. I’d been thoroughly enjoying every essay, speech, and feverish opinion or note of praise. I’d underlined and bracketed things that stood out: wisdom on mythology and layering and what makes stories work. I’d taken it to work and to casual outings, squeezing bits of reading into the in-between parts of life.
I remember buying it at The Little Apple Bookshop in York on a chilly, late November evening. (I had remarked to the clerk that they were selling a nice edition of another Gaiman book for far cheaper than I would’ve expected.)
And now I’ve lost it. My copy of The View from the Cheap Seats. Left it behind, abandoned on the floor, shunted beneath the fringe of the bedspread for housekeeping to find and do God-knows-what with. I’d had it on the nightstand for sure but had picked it up in the middle of a phone conversation to relay something I’d read earlier that day.
“You’re always leaving some shit,” says my friend, who’s with me in the back of the Uber.
Always is a stretch. Usually, I’m agonizingly meticulous. But I had left his expensive-to-me camera in a friend’s car the day before. So I guess he has a point.
I have half a mind to tell the Uber driver to turn around, but my chronic need to not inconvenience others overpowers my desperation to retrieve what is increasingly feeling like car keys or an ID that I’ve misplaced. The closer we get to the Toulouse-Blagnac Airport, the more I feel I’ve lost something far more valuable than the £10 or £11 I spent to gain it. Yes, it’s just a book. There are probably several thousands in print. But I can’t get another one—not another one with my highlights, underlines, and hand-drawn emojis in the margins.
Read the full essay on my substack, Very Public Secret Society, and subscribe for free.