Books. Adrian Windowbook interviews Joaquim Dry, maker of books. "Interviewing Joaquim Dry I discovered an interesting contradiction: a man who loved his work, but did not respect it. He has lived for all sixty-five years of his life in a lonely house at the easternmost edge of the Falling Hills, but his name is well known throughout the country and thoroughly famous in Gooloo and Ex. Everyone wants a book from Dry. A Dry book is a work of art: cured, curled and painted with extraordinary, exquisite skill. The man has a better name than the authors whose books he crafts, many of whom are unknowns whose work is not noteworthy. I began the interview by congratulating him on his books and asking him what he thought of bookmaking today, generally speaking. Dry: Bookmaking today is no good. It is awful. We have not made a good book in centuries. Windowbook: I'm amazed. That's a fairly extreme way of looking at things. Dry: You forget that books were not like this once upon a time. In the beginning they were sensual objects, something you picked up, something you touched, something you took pleasure from touching, not like this - do you see how you are holding that book? Tell me how you are holding it. Windowbook: Out in front of me. Dry: Away from you, you see, you are holding it out so that you can read it. Windowbook: Actually, I'm writing - Dry: Write in it, read it, whatever it is that you are doing. You are holding it out in front. Why do you have to do that? Why not hug the book, eh? Because you have to see words in it, that is why! In the beginning books had no writing. Words were something we introduced later and then it was only one or two words, the ones that felt good to say, the ones with long vowel sounds, like room, food or the crisp ones that snapped like plant stalks between your teeth, crepuscular, perpendicular, and you did not need to read them out in front of you, it was enough to know that they were there and that your book had this crisp noise on top of the soft parts because books were softer then, softer to the touch, and covered with little indentations, little nicks, little inventions, lovely smells, maybe a spiky part to keep you alert and excited for we must have our excitment, eh? Windowbook: You use some of the old indentations, don't you? Dry: Yes, but it is not the same. Now we have words so you must hold the books away and the indentations do not press against you. Each indentation has a character of its own. I tell the people who buy my books to sleep on them: sleep on them! I say, but I do not know how many listen. They want the books to last for a long time. They want to read the stories. One man, he told me he wanted my books to last forever because they were such great works of art. Fuh. I took him off my list. I will make no more books for that man. He is not worth speaking about and now I will change the subject. I use an old technique to make soft parts in the book. They feel like bruises. See? I have put them here in this corner so that people will find them with their thumbs as they go from this part of the story to the new part. Ah! they will say. What a surprise! And there is a surprise in the story too. These days the texture and the colours must complement the writing if we are to make a useful book. Windowbook: But in the beginning it was different. Dry: There is no comparison between those days and the times we have now. Windowbook: If books only contained one or two words, how did people make sense of them? Or was that not the point? Dry: In those days people did not need the kind of sense we need now. They wanted the all-over nice experience where now we settle for words coming into our heads through our eyes and thinking, thinking while we read a book, always thinking in the way that splits the world into pieces. Windowbook: Pieces? Dry: Pieces. Words! This pillow, if I hug the pillow I have the full experience - ahhhhh! - without words. But if I am to put this pillow in a book it becomes 'a' 'soft' 'pillow,' all in separate small pieces. What is soft? A pillow is soft. What is the pillow? It is soft. Very good, very nice, but reading this I do not experience the pillow truthfully, the way it is in real life. I hear the writers today talking about about precise language. They know nothing. Either nature is too precise to talk about in words or it is not precise at all, but they are wrong when they tell me they can hold the world in their stories. Windowbook: You've mentioned two choices, too much precision or too little precision. Which one do you believe? Dry: Suggestion has the profoundest meaning and precision is nothing. It is an illusion. Windowbook: Getting back to the pillow. If a writer can't use words, how else are they going to describe a pillow to the people who read their books? Dry: The book should not be about the pillow. The book should be the book. The whole experience of the book should be the object that is the book. Writing was a small thing that got out of hand. Now it is everywhere. Fuh. A bad thing for books. I am perpetrating an evil art, but I am in love. Windowbook: You seem to know a lot about the history of bookmaking. Can you tell me more? Dry: I will tell you. When we first came to this country we had no books. The Ancestors began making these objects and they called them books. Then we had books. Some of the books were made of feathers and some were made of stone, oh, very high they were, some of them, and pointed like a needle. I have one of those old books here in the corner. Mine is made of stone and wood together. It was found frozen inside ice at the top of the Ranges. He shows me a sharpened flake of rock bound to the end of a long, straight pole. The rock is about as long as my hand. If he hadn't called the instrument a book I would have mistakenly described it as a weapon. Dry: They used their books for comfort. I imagine you have seen the jublet statues in Gum Gooloo. You see how happy the people feel when they touch the jublet. It is their healing object. The book used to be our healing object. Soon bookmakers were making books for everybody. Every book was personal. Then writing came. We not not know who had the idea, but the first one who made it popular was Margot Sweet. She made the Book of Evening Story. I do not say anything good about Margot Sweet when I say she was a revolutionary. After that, more and more books have more and more writing until we arrive where we are today. We still put our books together one at a time but they are not wonderful now. I am tired. I foresaw the end of our conversation and suggested that he might like to go to bed. He aquiesced. One of his apprentices let me out and I began the jouney back to my host's seaside home, battling a powerful Hills winds all the way. How welcome, I reflected, as the moisture was stripped from my eyes and torn away into the descending evening darkness, one of the Ancestors' comforting books would be right now!"