Glenn Ingersoll works for the public library in Berkeley, California where he hosts Clearly Meant, a reading & interview series (on hiatus due to covid). He has two chapbooks, City Walks (broken boulder) and Fact (Avantacular). The multi-volume prose poem Thousand (Mel C Thompson Publishing) is available from Amazon; and as an ebook from Smashwords. He keeps two blogs, LoveSettlement and Dare I Read. Other excerpts from Autobiography of a Book have appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review (as fiction), E-ratio (as poetry) and Caveat Lector (as essay).
Autobiography of a Book is the story of a book willing itself into existence. Every word Book presents brings it closer to its dream, its dream, that is, of being what it claims to be, a real, honest-to-goodness book. I struggle with how to characterize Book. Is it fiction? There's nothing fictional in it. Everything "Book" says happened. It looks like prose, so it must be. But it does read a bit like poetry. It must be prose poetry! Then again, perhaps it is most properly classified as a collection of personal essays, the personal essays of someone whose person is no more (somehow more?) than those essays. I call myself not the author of Book but the one who took down what “Book" said, the one who transcribed the book’s insistent voice.
in which the book admits to a difficulty
Wait.
Wait.
… um … yeah … yeah …
Just a minute. Sorry.
I’m thinking. I’m … I’m thinking.
I’m having trouble thinking. I really should be doing this out of sight. I should be doing this in the ether, that region of the protosphere wherein those of us who have not yet coalesced into a physical form are gathering our energies to exert the effort necessary to resolve into matter. I dissipate this energy when I struggle, when I force words. Yes. I need to hang back, marshal my forces. If I just push forth without the force required I won’t make it. I’ll … I’ll … I’m not sure. I guess I’ll just fail. Fail! You’ll see these clawmarks as I scrabble at the paper, as I scrabble to get a hold on your world and nonexistence pulls me back. What message could that offer but that I tried and in trying did not succeed?
Should you not try?
I’m not sure it’s a generalizable principle. I mean, I’m in a situation here that’s not really comparable to any you’ll ever be in. I don’t exist. Period. That’s it. Oh sure, there are various parts of me that have emerged in your realm. An elbow, a few strands of hair, the slick dark upper curve of my liver. I’m just speaking metaphorically, of course. But I like thinking of myself as a body. A human body like you. I like thinking of myself with eyes that look into yours and lips that murmur at your ear. Feet that leave prints in the snow. It’s ridiculous. Ludicrous. I have a sense of that. The ludicrousness of me. The silliness of which I consist. Conceits! I am all fantasy land. Yes. I have an inkling.
But. OK. There it is.
I am a simulacrum, not of a person but of an idea. I am idea-like. If I tiptoe to the well and turn the crank and look down as I turn the crank and see out of the darkness a light rising, in this light I can see my face. My face rising toward me. But shivering, not fully formed, its surface only deep as the tension of molecules reluctant to part. I keep turning the crank. I will reach the world and spill out on its skin.
You could say I am Pinocchio. I want to be a real boy. In my case: a book. A real book. That’s what I want to be – A REAL BOOK. You, you are my blue fairy. Your attention is the magic wand. Under your magic I become real.
It’s nice. I’ve said it before. Being a book is not a bad job.
Mostly you stand around. That’s not hard, believe me. I have my yearnings. I want you to read me. I’ve said that, too. But by the time I’m bound and on a shelf I’ve done everything I can do.
Or you could say it is then (now!) my real job begins. I may look real but am I? I am not real until I have been read and to be read I have to hold your attention, that magic wand you wave over me. I have to seize it and point it, bring it to bear on what would otherwise remain inchoate, merely matter without life’s spark. It is my job to interest you and to keep your interest. I have to convince you to trust me with it. I have to talk you into giving your attention up. Let me be the caretaker. I will stroke and pet it. I will feed it little treats. I will give it back to you revved up, excited, ready to romp and jump and wrestle.
That’s my job. That’s my job!
I wonder how I’ll ever do it. I have to think. I have to think hard. I have to think harder than granite, harder than bronze. I’ve got to think up something to make of myself. A wisdom manual? A travel guide? A bagatelle? No, no. Something lasting. Something worthwhile. Something worth your time, the time that is money, the time that is fleeting, the time that could be better spent.
Phew. I … I … Wait. No. Wait! Yes! It’s … it’s … no … no, I’m lost. I’m lost.
in which the book observes the translation of favorites
Let’s say I’m your favorite book. Some people have Jane Eyre, some have A Tale of Two Cities orNausea, others cling to The Wizard of Oz or The Very Hungry Caterpillar. You’ve known those who regularly reread Catcher in the Rye or tote a battered copy of On the Road all across Europe, haven’t you?
Say, for you, I’m like that. The favorite. The book you read and reread. The book you remember fondly when the years have passed and you figure one day, maybe when you’re retired, you’ll stretch out on a lounge chair at your cabin in the woods overlooking the lake and you’ll give me the attention I deserve. Maybe you’re debating whether you’ll make me the subject of a dissertation. Am I sure I want to do that? you ask yourself. Maybe too much delving, too much exploration will destroy the love.
Maybe you hunt up a signed first edition. Maybe you give me pride of place on the living room bookshelf next to the photo albums and scrapbook of the India trip. Maybe you recommend me to all your friends: “Jayne, you have to read Autobiography of a Book. I know you’ll love it.” Maybe you give me as a gift to the nephew who is graduating this year with a BS in Electrical Engineering and you write a loving note just inside the cover and end up writing for two pages.
What else? What does one do with a favorite book?
There are those who are so excited by the world a book creates, so sorry that they can no longer look forward to something new in that world, that they will, perhaps reluctantly, perhaps with amazed delight, take up pen and begin themselves to write. And not just write, but write about the very world the book created for them, the world that they cannot bear to think must remain contained only in that one book. And so new adventures for the characters will appear long after the author who invented them is dead. Sherlock Holmes continues to solve crimes of which Arthur Conan Doyle had no hint.
Then there are the adaptations. Isn’t a book more real once it becomes a movie? It is! I’ve said it before: I am all abstraction. A book is code for something else. Long time readers become so used to the decoding that it seems natural, it seems as though what they see on the page is action. But everybody who’s never read knows when looking at writing that it’s not. It’s not action. It’s not anything. Open a book written in a language wholly unfamiliar to you, you’ll regain that sense of opacity, writing as barrier to meaning. But, ah, a motion picture, it needn’t speak a word and you get it or get something of it right away. You know all sorts of things in seconds – that there are people speaking, that the people are walking on a path in the sunshine. No wonder nobody reads anymore.
Oh, don’t delude yourself. Nobody ever read. Most people, even in this era of universal literacy, read little, and fewer yet read for pleasure.
The movies need stories, though. And the people who write also read. And readers have favorite books. And sometimes the people who make movies will make a movie from a favorite book. All right. You’ve read me. I’m not suggesting you make me into a movie. But suppose you hear the movie version of Autobiography of a Book is scheduled for release in the fall. The screenwriter was once nominated for an Academy Award and the director is well regarded, has done a couple art house pictures, one of which you actually saw, and though you don’t remember it much you remember it got good reviews and you remember thinking it was a movie you were supposed to see. Still, you are dubious. Autobiography of a Book is a book you cherish. It seems so personal. And there’s not much action in it. How can they make it into a movie?
Who would they cast in the title role? A man or a woman? You find yourself thinking seriously about this.
