Friday, December 16, 2011

And what has it meant for the bath library, may we ask


 It was bad enough,
 when every Tom, Dick
 and Harry could wan-
 der up to the front,
 with a portable cam-
 era. At least that
 came in handy for
 tracking Mr Waldheim
 through the Balkans.
 But now, cameras are
 entering the bath -
 and not just as cam-
 eras, anymore, but
 as personal devices
 of the broadest ap-
 plication. Something
 serious is at stake,
 or it isn't Friday.



Now, library designers tell me, cameras are also our book repositories. This would be fine, but for the camera's innate zeal to commemorate its user's every moment. It used to take a natural photographer 40 or 50 years to get through War and Peace. Now, is it even thinkable? Moreover, what would it matter, that Mr Baldwin had designed the snuggest library for your bath, if you're focusing on connectivity?


None too soon, designers are reviving the notion of borders, having first done so much to dissolve them. By using fixtures which are ever less com-modious, even less condu-cive to ease, to say nothing of that shrinkage in their compartments which has banished entire genres of bathing, the self excites less com-petition with the book.

5 comments:

  1. I read a paper book while soaking last night.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds wonderful! Scented books, the new "it" item ...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh, my. Now, Linnea, you HAVE opened a real Pandora's box, because I fail to see how the many branches of the scent industries can possibly resist leaping into what might not (upon close inspection) amount to an exploited breach or niche in the passion to derange our olfactory connection to real life. On the other hand, I grant you, "What WOULD a Dostoevsky novel actually smell like," is not one to which I necessarily grovel for an answer. I think I got the idea well enough. Possibly a light descending mist of Floris 127 would not do our rapport with Raskolnikov any real harm?

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