Anne Carson's 'Nox: An Epitaph for My Brother' (New Directions Press)

In the last year, U.S. publisher New Directions released two irresistible books: Nox: An Epitaph for my Brother, by Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson, and Microscripts, by Swiss modernist writer Robert Walser. They’re irresistible by virtue of their content, of course, but also their presentation: Nox is a striking accordion of a book, made up of photographs, drawings, and anecdotes printed on a giant strip of paper folded into just under 200 pages, and housed in a beautiful box. And Microscripts, one of a handful of Walser’s works recently made available in agile translations by Susan Bernofsky, collects 25 microscripts—short pieces Walser wrote in his unique, shrunken-down shorthand—reproduced on narrow strips of paper in full colour, along with more legible translations. These books are beautiful, sophisticated, and most of all, fun. Fun to touch, fun to read, fun to share and give away.

They’re also a merciful reprieve from the current gloomy atmosphere of the book business, which lately has been stuck on repeat, obsessed with the spread of e-books. Book-industry and mainstream media alike have perpetuated a conversation in which the discussion of books has been replaced by a lament for them.

To be clear: e-books are great, and getting better. As standards rise and technical knowledge spreads, e-books will only become more relevant—more experiential, interactive, engaging, and innovative. But as we’ve seen in the music industry, the shift to mass-market digital has also spurred a return to small print-run, high-quality physical editions—vinyl LPs, special editions, original artwork. The growing ubiquity and quality of e-books doesn’t need to come at the expense of the quality of print. We can have better-produced books all around.

Recently, a coalition of small Canadian publishers launched the Handmade Campaign, which aims to promote books with exceptional production values. Featured titles include Migration Songs by Anna Quon (Invisible Publishing), The Sleep of Four Cities by Jen Currin (Anvil Press), and Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip by Lisa Robertson (Coach House Books). These publishers continue to release high-quality print editions of their books, using textured cover stock and paper and superior typesetting, while also making them available in digital form. In doing so, they’re meeting two very distinct needs: permanence, tactility, and quality on one hand, and ease of access on the other. These two market demands are coexisting, not mutually exclusive. The growing prevalence of e-books should pave the way for an increase in demand for, and availability of, handcrafted, limited-edition book objects. As readers have greater digital access to a greater number of titles, including longburied back-catalogue and public-domain titles, they will become choosier about what they want to give shelf room in their homes.

These days, I find myself acquiring new books in one of three ways: from friends, from the library, or from digital retailers like Kobo, the e-reader backed mainly by Indigo Books & Music. When I’m smitten with a book—whether because of the story or the design—I’ll go out and buy the print edition for my shelf. I’m not buying fewer books; in fact, in some cases, I’m buying the same book twice. I’m building a collection, and I’d prefer that it be comprised of beautiful artifacts, not $10 mass-market paperbacks.

The new world of e-books presents an opportunity for publishers, not a limitation. As Kassia Krozser wrote in a July 2010 post on publishing blog Booksquare, “Print becomes more valuable when it becomes less disposable.” E-books can be used as a way to facilitate different release schedules by allowing publishers to introduce titles as limited-edition advance releases, or responding to the popularity of certain e-books by issuing post-publication collectors’ editions.

Compared to most other forms of entertainment, books are terribly cheap. Let’s use some of the conversation about e-books to reopen the door to a more mainstream appreciation of and dialogue about beautiful print editions—to redevelop a wider appreciation of books instead of bemoaning a change that’s inevitable. The fight between the two isn’t really a fight: given the choice between print and digital books, I choose both.

“I know what I wanted to tell you,” she said both times, “so-and-so died.”

The first unfortunate object of forgotten conversation was a dear old great aunt in Vancouver I hadn’t seen in a decade. The second was my childhood family doctor, whose last prescription for me was filled at least 20 years ago. My mother is the meticulous and dedicated reporter of demise in our family. She spreads the detailed news of death and disease, and these are usually the lead stories in any call from her. In this, she shares a curious simpatico with a writer of whom both she and I are fond, Michael Ondaatje.

Is there another writer anywhere who makes sickening violence and death into beauty with such regularity and skill? I hear someone shouting—perhaps wailing—Atwood!, and indeed, Peggy and Mike can be justly seen as the twin pillars of Canadian moroseness. Why bring a character’s life to a satisfying conclusion amid doting pets and darling grandchildren when you can murder, beat, maim, dismember, explode or burn them beyond recognition? But while Atwood hurts her characters as object lessons in the indifference of the universe, Ondaatje’s cruelty has the air of fetish about it. It is violence for art’s sake. His is a stunningly beautiful landscape of suffering.

In Divisadero, the reigning Governor General’s Award champion, Ondaatje cripples one character with childhood polio, has a horse kick the stuffing out of the same girl and her sister, induces a father to attack and nearly murder his daughter’s lover, and has that same daughter stab and almost dispatch the attacking father.

Later in the book, the almost-murdered lover is beaten into amnesia by some gambling colleagues and must undergo a second round of recovery and recall. As well, a literary flashback takes us through the life of a French poet who is blinded in one eye when glass shards pierce his cornea, and who later witnesses his one true love die of diphtheria. In an Ondaatje novel, not even a poet is allowed a life of quiet. Then again, this is the same writer who flung a nun from the Bloor Street viaduct, blew up a nurse with a roadside bomb and forced a lovestruck archeologist through the agonies of body-wide third-degree burns.

When we were younger, my writer friends and I made a game of Ondaatje sightings around town. Someone had spotted him in a liquor store, buying a wine that screamed of excellent taste. Another had a long, uncomfortable conversation with him at a book launch. Yet another is proud to report he used the urinal beside Ondaatje’s not once but twice in his travels. In each instance, the tellers of the tale escaped literary harm despite their proximity to this genius of personal disaster. So far, Ondaatje has not clubbed a character with a wine bottle, talked one to death or had him painfully assaulted during urination.

I note a brand-new Coach House title, Girls Fall Down by Maggie Helwig, brings potential bio-terrorism to the Toronto subway. Helwig’s characters drop to the tiled platforms in delightfully Ondaatjean style. Of course, Ondaatje began his career as a Coach House author. Is Canada’s hippest small press the source of all this pain and morbidity?

In my student days I edited and handmade a literary magazine called ink, and we printed the covers and trimmed the final books at Coach House. I did the trimming myself on their diabolical-looking industrial book cutter, an awesome machine that can straighten the edges of 20 magazines or more with one precise machine-driven cut. I never passed my fingers beneath the blade without visualizing the horrible damage it could visit upon me.

Once, deep in concentrated trimming, I was interrupted by someone standing beside me. A voice asked me to trim a pile of Brick magazine covers. As I handed back the trimmed pile, Michael Ondaatje gave me, and the deadly cutting edge, a grateful smile. I realize now I’m lucky to have escaped with my life.