For today’s screed, I considered relating the talk between the bishop and the monk.
“Come in, Brother Johann. Sit down. I have some good news and some bad news.”
“Thank you, Your Grace. I confess your words fill me with anxiety.”
“Let your heart be peaceful. Which do you want to hear first?”
“I prefer the bad news.”
“Very well. The bad news is that your labours copying the Scriptures by hand on vellum and illuminating them with gold, silver and other colours, to the greater glory of God, are over.”
“Oh, Your Grace, this has been my and my fellow monks’ life mission! What good news can compensate us for this loss of our holy work?”
“Be of good cheer. You will continue to serve God. I show you this apron. Put it on. Now, here is a tray of letters. See, they are made of metal.”
“But of what use are they, disconnected from one another?”
“They are arranged in a certain way called the California Job Case. You place them in this tray to spell words. When you get enough words to fill a page, you put them in this form and tighten it.”
“What is this wine press doing here?”
“It is not a wine press. You do not put grapes in it but ink and paper placed over those metal letters. Then you turn this crank. See, you print a page. You can make more Bibles in a week than a hundred monks can in a lifetime.”
“But they will not be beautiful! They will not lift hearts like our illuminated works.”
“Brother, face up to it. It’s what’s happening, baby. We no longer live in the 14th century. This is a marvellous invention by a German, named Googleberg or something. It will transform the world. Stay, Brother – where are you going?”
“Goodbye, Your Grace. I’m going to get my card from the International Typographical Union. If this is the future – ‘Extra, extra, read thou all about it!’”
But I decided not to write this. The issue is too painful for frivolity.
Mighty daily newspapers are hurting – the might ier, the more hurting. The book business is shrinking. Who would have predicted they’d be battered by words on a screen, many of the what-I-had-for-breakfast variety, others brewing poison that once flowed from a pen?
The democratization of ignorance? A new Dark Age of illiteracy? The electronic path to fraud and seduction? The student plagiarist’s best friend? A purveyor of games stuffing fresh boredom into meaningless lives?
All that. But also indispensably helpful. How did mostly reliable, swiftly accessed information get along before Wikipedia, brainchild of the under- recognized Jimmy Wales?
Last month, Vancouver’s four-store Book Warehouse closed and the Encyclopaedia Britannica stopped the presses, going totally online. Unequal losses, to be sure, one a local retailer of mostly overstocks and ex-copyright classics – retiring co-owner Sharman King, 65, said business was still good but, notably, no buyer surged forward – the other the magisterial compendium of knowledge since 1768.
I realized that the print Britannica was doomed when, a few years ago, the West Vancouver Public Library offered a 1995 set so pristine that it looked as if it had been owned by a little old lady who only read it on Sundays, new cost $1,146 – for, shockingly, just-get-it-outta-here five bucks.
The Canadian book trade was profoundly shaken by last year’s bankruptcy of major distributor H.B. Fenn. The magazine of the trade, Quill & Quire, has become less-trade, more book-reviewing.
Time moves on. My wife went over to the dark side – reading books on one of those slim gadgets. But print isn’t quitting. There’s still Victoria’s superb Munro’s Books. You’re reading this, words on paper. Aren’t you? •
