|
I'd like to write a two hundred page book so that two hundred pages fit into one word while one word would hold two hundred pages A brilliant idea or smashing bullshit? Let's check it. The hundred pages are beyond any doubt. Two hundred pages make one hundred sheets. This is clear and obvious. This can be imagined easily. It's easy to count down one hundred sheets and put them on the table or on the floor one on the other making a pile. It would be a bit more difficult to put them one next to the other. They would need a lot of space, probably more than this room can offer, and you couldn't cover them with one sight ..... So let reduce the number to eight pages only. Eight pages make four sheets. Now it's much easier. Although a bit different: eight pages is something else than two hundred pages. If we place a word PARADOX on them, in the case of eight pages most probably one letter would be printed on one page and the last page would remain blank, letterless however the letters could be of various sizes and various combinations would be possible then: one letter spread on seven pages while six others crowded on the eighth page – just to give an example, an extreme example, what is impossible in the case of two hundred pages because having the same size and being placed regularly each letter should cover then almost twenty nine pages and is would be really hard job to decipher those abstract black stains and smudges as letters, as P or A ..... One word on eight pages would be with no doubt a very big word, although radically smaller than the one on two hundred pages. However in spite of the hugeness or even giantness distorting the word so much that making the reading impossible, it would not be that hard to imagine and make such a book. One word is beyond any doubts, too. Although a book containing one word could seem a bit astonishing for a reader, even bizarre. But how can one word contain eight pages? This is hard to imagine. And two hundred pages? Well, it is simple impossible to be imagined: either this word should be very big or these pages should be very small ..... Should it be the same word? So, one word is not beyond any doubts. If it was the same word that the one written or printed on two hundred (or eight) pages how could it contain those pages? Can anything that is inside something be also and at the same time outside it? Can the containing be contained by what it contains, by the contained? And if the page had the shape of a letter – or if the sheet had the shape of a letter – or if the sheet was the letter itself ...... of course provided that one letter falls on one page, though not necessarily ..... We should rather think here of a page as a text unit, a measure of text. So, the word PARADOX should contain seven pages of text. Or: one letter would contain one page of text – in the most simple case ..... Would it be then just an ordinary two hundred (or eight – doesn't matter) page book where the only extraordinary thing would be a special layout: a text would be composed in one huge word. A superword? And is it anything brilliant and dazzling? It's just trivial and banal. And too real. It must have been a stupefaction rather than enlightenment. Something is wrong, is not like it was, like it should be. It was an illumination. It was a beautiful vision. Like a flash. While now almost nothing can be seen. Just some vague, misty, unclear outlines. What a brilliant headache . . . . . . <<< |