Invisible Forms

I read a book on how to become invisible. Well that’s not really true, “if you want to become invisible come around for private lessons” as Brion Gysin said.

I read a book called Invisible Forms, about ‘paratexts’- the parts of books which aren’t really the main body of the work and are usually ignored, or not considered as really a part of the work - introductions, titles, dedications, epigraphs, footnotes, marginalia etc. I found it thoroughly enjoyable, Kevin Jackson’s style is wry and amusing – so you get the impression he could write about anything and make it interesting.

But I can see that this book would not be everybody’s kettle of fish, so why did I enjoy it? Can I blame it all on postmodernist literature already having blown my sense of text apart? Can I blame it all on psychedelic drugs having already blown my sense of sense apart? Or is it just because I’m a nerdy bookworm, so into books I’ll even read books that are about books, I’ll even read books about the part of books which people don’t usually think about when they read books? ‘There’s more to life than books you know but not much more, not much more’ sang Morrissey – out of the library and into life, how traumatic. Back on the postmodernist trip we could allude to the slight displacement of Words and Worlds, and make the entire world a text – a logos for interpretation. Without going all Madonna (or Esther) we could mention Kaballah and gematria… But this kind of rant probably comes from following this book with Philip K Dick’s Valis….