The Smell of a Good Book

Here's this month's ACRE FourThought blog. My contribution is below, and you can follow this link to see the original page with the contributions of the other fellows undertaking this magnificent literary/bloggerary effort.

*****

I have a kindle, I like gadgets, and I embrace progressive technology enabling books to be read in a progressive way. As technology improves, books as a medium will evolve. It was noted on Stephen Fry's Planet Word documentary that as handheld e-readers improve we will see books that incorporate video and extensive footnotes, clips of music and similar. There are already books rife with hyperlinks, and it isn't difficult to imagine the benefits of textbooks where the references in the bibliography lead to the actual articles or papers themselves. These improvements would make studying easier and reading more fun.

Already on the kindle it is possible to see sections of text underlined if they have been highlighted by a number of readers. I'm not sure how I feel about that, hopefully it's a feature that can be turned off; I'd like to come to my own conclusions, and how I read a section of text will definitely be affected if I am aware many people felt it noteworthy.

As much as I enjoy e-readers, for me, personally, they are currently missing something. However this is not informed by practicality or sense, rather it is a hipster coolwank pretention. Much like musos who prefer cds to mp3, and the older who prefer cassette to cd, and the older who prefer vinyl to cassette, and the yet older who prefer music boxes to vinyl, I prefer books. I think it's likely a preference which will take longer to shift culturally, for in comparison to these evolving music recording formats which evolved over a comparatively short period the book has existed in a largely unchanged format for a large number of years.

So, in what ways do books differ to e-readers? In every material dimension the variety of books make them artefacts I delight in, and while the all-in-one nature of e-readers is also something that pleases me, books of paper and ink stimulate so many more of my senses. I have a colossal gospel tome of the Lord of the Rings, with tiny print despite its giant size, a long bound bookmark fraying at the edge, bounteous illustrations taking up entire pages. It is a beautiful book. It frustrates me somewhat as its size excludes it from one of my favourite pastimes: reading in the bath, however it makes up for this by sitting unused for months, years, and then upon re-discovery it has amassed a layer of dust, allowing me to blow it off, imagining that this is an ancient text I have discovered in an ancient ruin or storehouse. On the other end of the scale I have books from the Penguin Popular Classics series, which were printed cheaply in order to make them more available. Old plays and novels have in this way been shrunk into tiny, thin volumes that suit my pastime magnificently. In this way old bastions of literature stand pamphlet sized, and are a far more valuable and rewarding than anything committed to a flyer. I'd be more likely to frequent a pizza place or an indian restaurant which posted The Picture of Dorian Gray around the neighbourhood instead of their own tacky lists of food.

As well as their dimensions, the texture of books are also wildly varied. The plastic smoothness of dustsheets, the childish joy of running your hands over raised title text, like finding a shiny Ole Solskjaer in a packet of stickers. The simple pleasure of running your finger down the edge of the body of pages, watching them flick quickly back, enjoying the whirr of the motion and the breeze created. Joy. There is no better way to up the anticipation of a new journey about to begin within the pages.

But of all our senses, the most strangely powerful is smell. The olfactory stimulus can drag us back in time like no other. Perhaps that's slightly exaggerating; a film watched in childhood rewatched much later can warp us as well, and an album or a song repeatedly listened to can warp us back to the time and place when we hear it years later. For example Ghostbusters 2 turns me into a child as I watch it, and Tenacious D's Tribute takes my back to my teenage bedroom, playing Championship Manager 01/02 on an old PC. But from my experience so many more books can achieve this effect.

And regardless of this effect, I fucking love the smell of a good book. Even the smell of a shit one. I was shocked when I smelt a Twilight book, as despite knowing that it was a collection of written parp, I was shocked to discover that it smelt like a real book. Such is the power of smell, it can positively augment a good book, and it can even cover the reek of a poor book and bestow upon it the credibility of paper, glue and ink.

I recently re-read the first R.A. Salvatore book, The Crystal Shard, and as well as being pleased at how well it stood the test of time and very much enjoying it, I was surprised by its smell. 'Oh yes' I thought, 'this is the smell of fantasy'. And I was surprised by how right I was. Perusing the limited stock I have at my disposal, I am right now smelling Weis & Hickman's Dragon Wing (raised golden title text - delicious) and though it is, of course, the smell of paper, ink and glue, it also smells of fantasy. Also at hand I have Raymond E. Feist's Magician, and it smells exactly the same way. Why should this be!? All these books are from different publishers, and yet they smell exactly the same way. It is as though a secret council of fantasy elders convened and decided "this is how we want fantasy to smell", and so it does.

Koushun Takami's Battle Royale has pages which are unusually white. It has a cold smell, slightly sanitise and lacking in personality. Like a hospital ward or a government building. The cover is a deep red, glossy with a dimpled title. It fits the story magnificently. I have a number of Haruki Murakami books, mostly through the Vintage label, and to me the smell of them is the ultimate smell of comfort. It is the nasal equivalent of putting on the comfiest of pyjamas and hibernating deep in bed. Final Fantasy VII is my gaming equivalent of this. Thanks to the portableness of books, and FF7s release on the PSP I can have this sensation whilst actually in comfy pyjamas and in bed, but I daren't risk it lest I slip into an eternal coma of comfort. Or die as it is also known.

The book which has most moved me nasally recently is Richard Dawkins' The Magic of Reality. Ostensibly a book for older children it is, frankly, utterly majestic. Each page is glossy and rich with colour, and smells of recent redecoration. If you like reading and sniffing paint, I would suggest firstly that you stop sniffing paint, but while you're going cold turkey you can work your way intellectually and olfactorily through this tome. With it's dustsheet off it is a pleasing pale yellow, and at the risk of looking like a lunatic I could very easily simply touch it for an entire hour and be pleased. I would argue that e-readers simply aren't a substitute for that.

E-readers are cool and functional, but they simply don't (yet) have the capacity for exciting me fully in the material world. My kindle doesn't smell of anything. Of course, being human beings we are problem solving animals and we, as we have always done, have thought our way around the problem. We have covers for these e-readers. I have three, for reasons which parallel the Goldilocks tale. One came with the device, a cheap black leather case, and was functional but a little loose and it did not please me. The second, which I bought, was a purple latex sheath which attracted dust like a bugger and was therefore unpleasant to the touch. My final purchase, which so far has pleased me, is a brown hemp cover which is delightful to the touch, and also to the nose.

I am sometimes moving with the times, but I hope that it will be awhile yet until the smell of fantasy is eradicated.

E-Recycling

I thought I would celebrate the passing of another milestone, (a dubious milestone of 40 posts), I thought I would be lazy and plunder my own archives in order to pull a blog out of the past. This is my first true burst of blogs, though I did post an interesting (possibly) blog on MySpace, when it was still acceptable to be there. Technically this blog may not actually be serviceable, and it certainly is in a less sophisticated style than I am able to command now, boo-yah, but I feel it is, at the very least, interesting.

The story I tell in this piece came about when I had my face brutally wounded by an umbrella-swipe to the face, it is the farcical lies to explain away the scratch as something more epic.

The piece has been left mostly unaltered, though I have corrected the spelling. I was in the sixth form when I wrote this, so, from the distant mirk of Monday, February 20th 2006, here is my recycled tale:

Many people have asked me how I came about the scar which has appeared beside my eye awhile ago, and so to help everyone out I have decided to publish the official explanation.

It was a Tuesday when I decided that I would journey down the adventurous highway of the M4 to our fair capital city's airport, and depart on an exciting journey to the land known only as Japan.

The flight was eventful enough, but that is a tale for another time....

Upon landing in Tokyo I decided to take a stroll down one of the madly busy streets therein. There were many shops including a shop completely for the machines that you put money in and turn and a crappy ball with a crappy toy pops out, you know the ones, and also a shop where whack-a-mole machines went 360° on the walls. This trip was also eventful but is, again, a tale for another time.

I made my way to a shop which had piqued my interest. This was a smithy, stocked wall-to-wall with gleaming katanas. I decided that it was my destiny to purchase such a treasure, and so I persuaded the smithy, named Hakuya to allow me one of the aforementioned blades. I strode out of the smithy with a manic grin on my face. Little did I know that the blade I had come into possession of had bestowed upon me godlike skill in the bushido arts.

I proceeded back down main-street and embarked on an insane killing spree, visiting bloody death upon our eastern cousins. My love for the Japanese could not stop my manic fury.

Soon, I was brought down by a rag-tag band of heroes (as is customary in Japan) and I was shipped out via stealth fighter to a remote province of China which will remain unnamed. It is my belief that the Japanese had ulterior motives in shipping me there, deeply rooted political reasons.

Upon being dumped in the backwater wasteland that was this region of China I was struck unconscious. When I came to I regarded my surroundings with awe and shock. I was in a Panda's Nest. Never before have human eyes fell upon the legendary nest of the vicious giant pandas of China. Suddenly, 3 Panda's began hatching from their black and white spotted eggs. The newborn pandas were among the most brilliant things I have ever seen. I named them Kawaii, Mugen and Jonas.

Suddenly the nest was surrounded by a vicious horde of urchins, armed to the teeth with ridged bamboo weapons they planned on killing the pandas ironically with blades shaped from their source of food. I drew my hallowed blade and smote the grungy urchins where they pranced.

Although I was swift with my protection only two of the pandas were saved, my blade was too docile for Jonas to live. There and then I swore to spend my life travelling China, Japan, Thailand and surrounding lands honing my skill so I could one day be powerful enough to protect pandas everywhere.......

With my pandas at my side I am invincible........

This version of events differs from the spoken version as a published edition may cause slight offense to certain parties (such as orphans/pandas and Godzilla).

No pandas were harmed in the retelling of this tale....... the same cannot be said of urchins........

*****

I am quite proud of the way this story was told, though I wish I had written more of the 'tales for another time' since now I have no idea what they were. Similarly I have utterly forgotten what I said during verbal editions of this story. Ah well, you live and lose, some things are better left lost.

The idea of panda nests makes me smile, even now.

In three and a half years since this blog first saw the light of a computer screen I have grown up not a jot. All hail to the panda samurais.

Bumming Herring: Nyum Nyum Nyum

The seemingly all-encompassing nature of the internet has had an unquestionably huge effect on the world of comedy. Anecdotes and retrospectives of the comedy of yesteryear suggest that acts would often keep the same material for many years, refining it maybe, but continuing to perform what was essentially the same set. The prodigious popularity of video streaming sites now goes a long way to ensure, or perhaps force, comedians to have a far greater turnover of material. Though the vast majority of viewers understand that a comedian's set is a pre-prepared batch of material, and will be performed many times, it is perhaps a bad thing for a comedian to have multiple 3-8 minute clips of them on the internet performing the same material. This is something that is not always possible for comedians to monitor, as a deft mobile recording from the audience is out of the comedians hands.

The comedian Rhod Gilbert discussed one effect of video streaming websites whilst on his radio show, explaining how, when appearing on Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow he had to decide whether to include certain material, luggage-based, in his set. The reason behind this decision was that the material already existed on YouTube, and has received a colossal number of views (it eventually went in, as a BBC1 audience was felt to be different enough from a YouTube audience).

Although the internet's effect can be seen to be troublesome, it has also offered many new avenues and opportunities for comedy to explore. I will take as my case study one Richard Herring, as he is an act who has a huge presence on the internet, amassing quite a splendid array of electronic notches to his internet-based bow. My familiarity with his works are, without doubt, down to this vast internet presence. I first became aware of Mr Herring several years ago, after being linked to one of his videos from a clip of a Stewart Lee appearance on Edinburgh and Beyond. My lack of awareness was soon quashed as a huge back-catalogue of his work is available online (and importantly - for free). The ready availability of a blog, scripts (both commissioned and not), plays, TV and radio shows ensured, and ensures, that for anyone who has an interest in his work, there is much there for the taking. The helpfulness of this possibility might only extend to more established acts however, as regardless of how much material you are able to link to, a newer act simply will not have the depth of material to offer.

The internet also offers more real-time comedy opportunities which, again, are able to be highlighted using Richard Herring as an example. Utilizing the sites and services of facebook, twitter and whichever new incarnations begin doing the rounds all help 'maintain a presence', and for the most part continued visibility is likely a good thing. The interactivity of these sites also help harbor closer relationships between acts and fans, which is, again, a good thing (but could lead to stalkerish behaviour but that's unlikely to happen ever I love you Richard). The appearance of the podcast as a format is another effect of further internet developments, and the efforts of Mr Herrin (and Mr Collings of course) still stand out in the bountiful podcast field as they are strictly 'for podcast' creations. (Audio) Podcasts are, by and large, excerpts from existing radio shows, and while these are still enjoyable, there is an added joy to be had from hearing a podcast recorded for podcast's sake. The most exemplary of these, in my opinion, include Collings and Herrin (surprise!), The Perfect Ten and Peacock and Gamble. The huge added effort put in by Adam & Joe to add new material to their podcast goes a long way to making it a splendid creature.

With the advent of iPlayer, alongside the monster that is YouTube, so much TV footage is now readily available legitimately, or at least without complaint, for free on the internet. As someone who often experiences the wonders of the BBC almost purely through the medium of the internet, I began wondering whether or not television and radio as we know them are on their way to becoming obsolete. There is certainly no need for a separate TV or radio systems when my computer could provide the exact same services (though I did once enter a strange place where I was using the internet browser of a PS3 to load up the iPlayer in order to listen to the radio - THIS IS THE FUTURE). One of the factors which suggest that the current radio and TV systems may prevail is the amount of money it takes to fund a show, which isn't there for people wanting to create things for the internet (though 'webisodes' are perhaps attempting to buck this trend), hence how the aforementioned formats are generally available for free. It is, yet again, Richard Herring who is leading the charge in this arena, with plans to create a sketch show in the autumn, which will be available for free on the internet, where the costs will be managed by having a live, paying, audience. Previous comments made by the man himself suggest that the monetary side of this would be in the same area as having a radio show commissioned by an organisation, with the added bonus of having full control over the content. No need for, perhaps, over-sensitive censorship, also the initial need for a commission is leap-frogged, though a sort of commissioning process would occur democratically, in terms of the need for a paying audience. Whether or not this system would work for other formats is even more uncertain.

I personally wouldn't be hugely upset to see TV and radio succomb to the same fate as VHS and his pals, as I am attached by the soul to the internet regardless. The internet has made it possible to see, hear and read the work of comedians with utmost ease (I am uncertain about forays into scratch-and-sniff internet) and also enabled cottage industries to safeguard and provide shows that would have been lost (the destined-to-be-legendary gofasterstripe).

Hopefully the advances of the internet will ensure that it becomes more and more the case that comedians will not have to be mainstream and bland/safe in order to see their ideas become a reality. And when that point is reached I hope caps will be doffed and heads will be dipped to the internet-content pioneer Richard Herring. Only time will decide whether he is the most groundbreaking comedian of this internet age, or a fucking idiot.