Abstract

This paper explores the book as central artifact and, therefore, trope in contemporary fiction and non-fiction. Jews and Christians are appropriately designated “People of the Book” by Muslims in the Quran, but all three major Western religions have at center a book: the Torah (Tanach) for Jews, the Bible for Christians, and the Quran for Muslims. This ability to collect all the inspired stories and reflections of a religion was made possible by the invention of the book. The book as we know it now began as a technological innovation 2200 years ago, displaced the scroll, and has dominated the West’s collective imagination: “This was one of the few times a new user interface was good enough to change the technological metaphor. Bear in mind that the scroll still survives, even to this day, as its own technological metaphor. But the book - the codex - became metaphor unto itself. It well may be the most powerful technological metaphor of them all.” (John H. Lienhard, “The Metaphor of the Book,” http://www.uh.edu/). Given this confluence of religion and technology, it is not surprising that a book (not the Bible) appears as a central artifact (and trope) in contemporary works of fiction and non-fiction. From Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which features Aristotle’s Comedy at the center of the action to Geraldine Brooks’ The People of the Book, which traces the history and reclamation of a 16th century Haggadah written during the Convivencia in Spain, contemporary writers highlight the centrality of the book in the West and its multivalent significance to the (post)modern world. In addition to these works, four additional works of fiction and non-fiction that present a book at the center of the story are explored and discussed.