The see-through book

One of the essential characteristics of the printed book, as of the scribal codex that preceded it, is its edges. Those edges, as John Updike pointed out not long before he died, manifest themselves in the physical form of bound books - "some are rough-cut, some are smooth-cut, and a few, at least at my extravagant publishing house, are even top-stained" - but they are also there aesthetically and even metaphysically, giving each book integrity as a work in itself. That doesn't mean that a book exists in isolation - its words, as written and as read, form rich connections with other books as well as with the worlds of nature and of men - but that it offers a self-contained experience. The sense of self-containment is what makes a good book so satisfying to its readers, and the requirement of self-containment is what spurs the writer to the highest levels of literary achievement. The book must feel complete between its edges. The idea of edges, of separateness, is antithetical to the web, which as a hypermedium dissolves all boundaries, renders implicit connections explicit. Indeed, much of the power and usefulness of the web as a technology derives from the...