An Ode to Paper
Ian Sansom, author of Paper: An Elegy which went on sale yesterday, has very nicely stopped by to guest blog. In an age where digitization can seem relentless, it's good to be reminded just how important paper is.
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For the past few years I have been writing a series of novels about a librarian, The Mobile Library series (published by Harper Perennial). My new non-fiction book – Paper: An Elegy – is a history of paper. I guess there’s probably a theme emerging here, to do with books, and the power of books, and the beauty and meaning of books as objects and as things. I suppose I’m just a bookish kind of a person. I am also a paper person.
Paper: An Elegy is my attempt to study and understand the world’s most ubiquitous and versatile man-made material in all of its many forms and guises, from bank cheques and ledgers, to banners and bunting, and board games, and book marks, and business cards, and cartons and packaging, and menus, and cigarette papers, and paper clothes, and paper coffins, and confetti, and coupons and tickets, and election ballot papers, and greeting cards and post cards, and identity cards and passports, and magazines, catalogues, newspapers, maps, stamps, posters, wallpaper, wrapping paper … And so on and so on. And books.
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