i first read this when i was homesick in london and it was raining. reading this made me forget all of that--it is beautiful. it's from jonathan safran foer's "About the Typefaces Not Used in This Edition" and it is brilliant. if you get a chance, read the whole thing. it will make you feel like you are soaring.REAL TIME, REAL WORLD, TO SCALE: This typeface began organically, with the popularisation of e-mail. Such symbols as :) came to stand for those things that words couldn't quite get at. Over time, every idea had a corresponding symbol, not unlike the drawings from the dark caves of early man. These symbols approximated what a word described better than a word ever could. (A picture of a flower is closer to the flower it describes than flower is.)
The evolution continued. The typographical symbol for flower became a sketch of a flower, then an oil painting of a flower, then a photograph of a flower, then a sculpted flower, then a video of a flower, and is, now, a real-time real-world flower. Henry exists: he blinks, he inhales, he tells his older brother, I love you more now than I did before, he stammers, he sways, he begs, Sophy, believe in me, always.
This typeface was not used because of the fear that it would be popularised, that all books would be printed in real-time real-world, making it impossible to know whether we were living as autonomous beings, or characters in a story. When you read these words, for example, you would have to wonder whether you were the real-time real-world incarnation of someone in a story who was reading these words. You would wonder if you were not the you that you thought you were, if you were about to finish this book only because you were written to do so, because you had to.
Or perhaps, you think, it's otherwise. You approach this final sentence because you are you, your own you, living a life of your own creation. If you are a character, then you are the author. If you are a slave to your own weaknesses, then you are unconstrained. Perhaps you are completely free.
3 comments:
Foer makes my heart sing. Thank you for sharing this.
i'm going to need to read this about 10 thousand more times.
and is it okay to have the biggest, maddest crush ever on jonathan saffron foer? like, fantasize eating candlelit dinners with him and wax in postmodern conversations?
I KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW! did i ever tell you about my adventure in london where we wandered, mapless, around london to meet jsf and like three hours later we finally came across this old mansion and the second story window was lit and all i could see was his profile? and then when we went in the reading was over but he was like, "oh please, please, come in!" and shook our hands warmly? it was the pinnacle experience of my life.
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