Another JSF interview

Here's another JSF interview. He talks a great amount about what he feels a book should (and shouldn't) be. Here are some parts:

JSF: A book is an intimate object whether you are conscious of it when you are writing it or not. A book is something that is seen with the eyes on a shelf, pulled off the shelf with the hand, taken home. What percentage of people do you think read a book in bed? 80? 90? People read books in bathtubs. People read books in their easy chairs with their glass of wine or their coffee, their cat.

RB: If the books could talk.

JSF: Thank God they can’t. I really love that idea. Books aren’t just vehicles for print. If you believe that, then you read books off the internet. Or e-books, or whatever they are. I really like books as objects, as a little intimate sculptures that you have a real interaction with, and a bookstore that encourages that is great. And I think publishers encourage it by just paying attention to the details of how something is put together.

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RB: Are there reading-club guides for the paper edition of Everything Is llluminated?

JSF: No.

RB: Why wouldn’t you?

JSF: I would keep that out of for the same reason I would put visuals in. A book is an organic thing. Everything should be in the service of making it just as forceful as it can be. It’s not—listen, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t have a bar code on the back. I wouldn’t have blurbs on it. I wouldn’t have an author photo.

RB: [laughs]

JSF: I mean, forget it. I don’t even like page numbers, to be honest, if you are getting really pure about it, in the abstract. That being said, a book isn’t just a pure organic thing. It’s something you want to share with people and in the interest of doing that you make certain compromises or you form it around, you make it into something that is more easy to share. Rather than less easy to share. But there are limits to it. That kind of information doesn’t belong in a book.

http://www.themorningnews.org/article/birnbaum-v.-jonathan-safran-foer