Page 2: Andrew Piper – Book was There
Incarnation—in fleshness—is inexorably bound up in the binding of books. Piper’s opening chapters (hand, face, turning) suggest as much; Piper sees beyond what we see. He looks at what we glace at, what we take for granted, holds it up, allowing us to consider what we assume. The atomic nature of the page, importance of quotation marks, even the spaces between words, and the weaving of pages are full of significance. Handwriting and manuscripts go hand-in-hand (pun intended). There is a “mutuality, an interdependence between handwriting and print” (67). I wrote this review by taking notes in the margins of pages. Notations are the refrigerator to my supper table: the raw ingredients to the food of my review. Or, as Piper says, the spark of creativity is ignited by “the silent embers of notes” (67).
Piper returns consistently to a subtle theme: we have seen critique of technological advances before. If we complain about crowded screens we must acknowledge the history of crowded pages (46). Instead, we might consider that pages in both book and screen provide windows to our world, frames by which we build our thinking, pieces which form a whole, mirrors which reflect our nature and folds which show our development. The ideas of roaming, zooming, and streaming have returned (they had a past life) to describe the activity of reading of reading monitors now.
Since books and laptop displays both have their place, Piper uses both. “I want my children to accept that there is a before and after in life” (61). Yet, ingrained within Piper’s argument is that process connects beginning and end. The physical act of handwriting encourages the synthesis of composition, what Steven Graham in an endnote calls planning and revising and the exertion of considerable processing demands (177). Writing encourages drawing. Drawing creates connections linked with other dimensions. Matter, space, and time take on new meaning: “Complex visual structures and relations emerge” (77). Some consider handwriting to be outmoded. Somehow technology has changed what is both fairer and faster. But Piper is clear. Handwriting is important because it is “embodied” (75-76), a labor.
The point of commonplacing [knowledge shared in common, in community] is not just combination, but repetition and, by extension, internalization. In copying the words of another writer word for word, early modern readers were learning how to internalize those words so they could use them later on, in new ways and new settings (76).
The incarnation of writing allows the internalization of reading. When we encourage children to become physical with their learning, learning expands. Pieces and parts become whole. Observation leads to analysis leading to application. Electronic collection of material reduces the importance of a document whereas pushing a pen (as I was did writing this review) cares for physical engagement. Piper’s son provides the illustration.
I don’t tell him how important this struggle is. He is learning to draw while he learns to read, and his is learning to write while he learns to draw. All of these aspects are being bound together in his brain. Were we to let go of handwriting he would lose a key piece of this mental puzzle. . . . There is a profound sense of person that comes through the work of one’s hand that cannot be fully replicated digitally (81).
Multidimensional ideas result from multi-physical learning. How we interact with knowledge and the materials which contain the knowledge both expand our horizons and deepen our commitments to each other. I asked a group of nine post-bachelor students about the difference between Skype and a round table discussion, all people physically present in the same room. To a person their responses were the same. Touch is important to conversation. Being with a person is reassurance. One spoke for all:
“I can be doing a multitude of other things when I’m online. My attention is much more focused when I have to look someone in the eye, sitting next to them.”
The proverb “better a neighbor close than a brother far away” (Proverbs 27.10) takes on new substance. Incarnation breeds a community and thus, accountability. My students will not rid themselves of their computers. They joined a city fellowship for two years knowing that tutoring a third grader to read or advocating for a single mom with a banker was an up close and personal commitment. In like manner, Piper agrees, “When we read we enter into a world of commonality, whether of language, story, or material object” (84).
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