As If Through A Dense Forest

'The pleasures derived from the use of a paper knife are tactile, auditory, visual, and especially mental. Progress in reading is preceded by an act that traverses the material solidity of the book to allow you access to its incorporeal substance. Penetrating among the pages from below, the blade vehemently moves upward, opening a vertical cut in a flowing succession of slashes that one by one strike the fibers and mow them down—with a friendly and cheery crackling the good paper receives that first visitor, who announces countless turns of the pages stirred by the wind or by a gaze—then the horizontal fold, especially if it is double, opposes greater resistance, because it requires an awkward backhand motion—there the sound is one of muffled laceration, with deeper notes. The margin of the pages is jagged, revealing its fibrous texture; a fine shaving—also known as "curl"—is detached from it, as pretty to see as a wave's foam on the beach. Opening a path for yourself, with a sword's blade, in the barrier of pages becomes linked with the thought of how much the word contains and conceals: you cut your way through your reading as if through a dense forest.'

We do not need paper knives any more: the pages of our books come ready separated. I recently purchased a 1901 omnibus edition of 'Sartor Resartus' and 'Heroes & Hero Worship' by Thomas Carlyle. (It is the 2nd oldest book I own: the oldest is an 1896 edition of The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade.) However many people owned this book before myself, in the 115 years of its existence, none of them read 'Sartor Resartus' to the end. (All the pages of 'Heroes & Hero Worship' have been separated.) They gave up at chapter 10, 'Pause', as though they took its title as an imperative and never returned to finish the job. Cutting through a book, unlocking its words, being the first person to read its virgin pages, as though they have been waiting for me for over a century, has been a fun novelty. It also amuses me to have a big kitchen knife on my bedside for this purpose, because who owns a paper knife these days? I quoted Italo Calvino above, because DAT WRITING.