The Book (Paperback)

123 artists, bookbinders, publishers, librarians, and scholars answer a deceptively simple question: What is a book?

In April 2018, after publishing The Book in The MIT Press’ Essential Knowledge Series, Amaranth Borsuk began to approach artists, bookbinders, publishers, librarians, and scholars to inquire about their definition of the book. This collection, originally published in 2021 with 101 definitions and now expanded to 123, documents the responses and decentres the author’s voice to draw attention to the many other formulations of what the book is and can be.

Some definitions from the book:

“The book is the physical limit at which we give up trying to contain a concept.”—Craig Dworkin

“The book, for a very short time, stabilizes what flows through it, with the proviso that some works do not flow, just as some bodies do not progress from one time to the next in fluid or malleable ways. In this case, the book functions differently. It becomes the ground, a nearby or volatile ground for what lies down: upon it. Throw a charnel next over the book Set out a bowl of water for the unseen beings, the animals and birds, that gather at its boundary. Or brink.”—Bhanu Kapil

“What is a book? It stinks. B.O…O. K. Like a drunk. L’IVRE. Each one is a long island, brother. L.I. BRO. A kit full of As and Bs. KITĀB. Latin. LIBERation & Saxon BOG. The Taíno language would not have had a word for it but is had GUAROCO = to know, but also to remember (see petroglyphs). A book is a way of knowing, re-membering what is forever lost in translation.”—Urayoán Noel

“A book is the flesh between flesh, a hard text sculpture from soft text immensities, a staged performance of time, a tangible glance of minds, the desire to speak other.”—Lisa Samuels

Amaranth Borsuk is a poet, scholar, and book artist working at the intersection of print and digital media. She is the author of 7 books, both individual and collaborative. Her most recent book, W/\SH (Anhinga, 2026), is a work of speculative poetry created with poet and artist Terri Witek. Her contribution to the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, The Book (2018), offers a concise introduction to the book’s changing technologies that bridges book history, artists’ books, and electronic literature to reconsider an object we think we know intimately. She has collaborated on installations, interactive artworks, and poems, and is Associate Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell.