A story (slightly edited for this blog) from my
collection The Logogryph, about a utopian city of readers. I’m not sure, but it might be Moose
Jaw, Saskatchewan.
The city is
surrounded by a wall two thousand paces in circumference, and by an encircling
moat as well. The houses of the citizens are roomy and comfortably adorned,
solid and strong in construction. Everywhere there are wide doorways and broad
courts, with benches and shade trees. The houses all have tall windows of fine
glass let in the light from all sides.
The streets
themselves are made of the hardest flagstones, which are frequently replaced,
as the nightly pacing of the city’s numberless insomniacs and sleepwalkers
swiftly wears them out.
The grand temple, dedicated to those
few citizens who have attained transfiguration, is both imposing and splendid,
built of ornately carved stone, full of lit candles, and admirable for its
polished and immaculate shelving. The numerous relics of the Transfigured are
laid out with simple dignity in alcoves: most moving are the pairs of bent and
tarnished wire spectacles, which give silent testimony to many diligent hours.
Adjacent to
this temple is an enclosed hermitage, in which literary agents, publishers and
other sinners are received as penitents. If any of them, however, is found to
have relapsed into their former vices they are weighted with broken inkstones
and thrown into the moat. Thus these functionaries learn to adopt a modest and
a holy life; evil rumour is rarely heard of them.
There is
also a university in this city, but scarcely a book is to be seen in its halls
and residences, and indeed the students make a great show of their own
ignorance and laziness, so much so that young people have flocked from far and
wide, upon report of the great orgies of time-wasting to be enjoyed here. And
it would seem that the parents and older citizens not only tolerate but
encourage such behavior, for, as was explained to me, how else will the young
acquire the discipline needed to idle away the rest of their lives with books?
It is
believed that within the city there are at present over five hundred
optometrists and sixty thousand librarians. Eighteen of these latter, usually
the most capricious and heterodox, are chosen yearly as anti-censors, whose
duty it is to ensure that no book is ever banned or prevented from reaching any
reader. There is also a body of officials whose function is to ensure that any
disturbing or scandalous volumes are distributed at random through the city, in
order that the wrong reader may come
upon them by accident, and so complicate and deepen her reading life with
matter that she may otherwise never have encountered.
You may well
ask how such imposing walls and grand houses are constructed in such a
city. Whence comes their obvious wealth?
The answer is that the people do as much work as is required to maintain life
and enjoyment, and as the rest of their time is given over to reading, they
squander neither a moment nor a penny on dubious pursuits like gaming, whoring
or investing. Surplus funds go into a public trust which is meant to be shared
out equally amongst all, although it is true that this ideal is seldom
realized: not because those in charge of the funds are avaricious or deceitful,
but simply because they are too wrapped up in the latest novel to be diligent
with tallies and figures.
Even though
many people here print and publish their own books, carts of volumes arrive
daily from many lands. From China arrive slim chapbooks of poems and
philosophical fragments, the pages woven of fine embroidered silk, or painted
in tiny hand on plaques of delicate porcelain. From Italy are brought
collections of tales both fabulous and bawdy, the pages of which smell strongly
of pepper and cheese. From the northern lands come a great many heroic epics
wrapped warmly in the skins of fox, ermine, sable and lynx, or stowed among
salted herring. The English ship their famed tragedies and comedies in amongst
casks of ale and boxes of silverware. From the new world, by way of Spain, come
books of magic spells and fat novels, inked with leopard’s blood and bound in
precious stones from the beds of poisonous rivers.
It is also wondrous how much produce
is brought into the city day after day. Trains of wagons come in through the
gates loaded with eggs, meat and fish. Flour, bread and pastries arrive in
tremendous masses; nonetheless, by evening nothing is left in the marketplace
to be bought.
It is not the citizens themselves
who devour all of this bounty of the earth, however. Instead, they purchase it
for the numerous household guests who visit at all times of the year, in order
to escape their own clamorous, hectic lives. As anyone who devotes a life to
books well knows, tranquil solitude is a kind of vacuum that attracts the noisy
and the inquisitive. Rather than struggle against this law of nature, almost
every citizen operates, from out of his own house, a tavern for feasting and
wine-bibbing. When friends and relations arrive on the doorstep with their luggage,
their sunburns, and their sticky children, the inhabitants heat up the stoves,
prepare succulent dishes, fetch in musicians and harlots, and let all proceed
as it will, while they themselves retire to some sheltered spot, where the
enjoyment of a book is perhaps given even greater relish by the adjacent din.
Of course, for such a large and
noble city, this means that there is much licentiousness and vandalry. Brawls
erupt often between rival mobs of visitors vying for the spoils. Hardly an
evening goes by without a skirmish or an ambuscade, and when such clashes
occur, there is no one to separate the contending parties. There are no
magistrates such as we know them, no officers of the law, no collectors of
revenues other than those who collect the tax on wine, which everyone must pay.
If outright robbery is committed, or murder, or any other disruption of the
civil peace, the ire of the citizenry at having their reading interrupted by
the necessities of law and order leads to swift vigilante trial and justice,
though most often even the rumour of one of these avenging mobs of disturbed
readers is enough to drive an offender from the city in terror.
Truly any city would be better off
without such evils, but you will find few here beset with worry about the
matter. Books are made of paper and ink, they will remind you, but also of
foolishness and immoderation. And so those whose lives are the most plagued by
tumult and trouble are those in whom most often you will see the signs of
approaching transfiguration: the pallid, almost translucent skin, the soundless
step, the fading shadow. On faces lined with long forbearance and great
suffering you will find the light in the eyes that comes from another place,
from the knowledge that one day soon, their loved ones will awaken to find them
gone from their beds, from their sofas and benches and hammocks, and will then,
with mingled contentment and eagerness, begin the search for them in the pages
of books that they have not yet opened.