I grew up in a world of Words and Books.  I capitalized the words to convey the extent to which printed matter had a sacredness about it.  As a result, in Poland the world of words was controlled by state censors. They made sure that no words published in books or newspapers or uttered by state broadcasters contravened the Party-held view of  the universe.  I suspect one of the reasons so many writers hold left-of-centre ideas is because words and ideas receive so much attention in left-of-centre states.  No one paid more attention to writers than state censors in Communist countries.  A political system built on nothing more than  words understood their importance and danger.

 

How does a writer get attention in a capitalist society?  One of them is to be read by a celebrity caught in a scandal. That’s what happened to the author of a book on physics which was found in the car Tiger Woods crashed into a tree.  The book shot up more than 350,000 places on Amazon's sales rankings.

 

Will there be books found in cars of compromised celebrities 25 years from now?  That’s what we will be discussing tonight.  Here you will find Mike Miner’s helpful blog offering a useful summary of  some of the recent developments  in publishing.

 

The cultural shift that is difficult to measure is the extent to which the disappearance of the singular book represents a major step towards  a post-biblical society.  When more and more of us read screens rather than pages, we are saying goodbye to the single book which, however tawdry, had one thing in common with the Bible - the original printed book – two covers. Between the two covers writers tried to offer a facsimile of completeness. No two covers, no completeness.  Perhaps that’s why Alberto Manguel  warns us  in the last episode of  Empire of the Word about the coming of the age “gibberish”.