at what point does reading stop being useful and start being insight porn?
Johannes Gutenberg was a very strange and secretive man. Before he developed Europe’s first printing press he had been involved in a scheme to mass produce concave mirrors. These mirrors would be set on a rack and arrayed such that their faces were turned towards holy relics. The power of the relics, it was thought, would shine on the mirrors which ever after would rebroadcast this healing radiation.
After the mirror scheme went belly up Gutenberg turned to printing. He did much of his work on an almond-shaped island in the middle of a river. When he unveiled his invention many people speculated as to the source of his inspiration. Some said it had been flatly demonic. Others said he was a Jew. The most interesting rumor involved a method of state torture and execution.
Pressing was a kind of judicial torture used to force a plea or a confession from a suspect who refused to speak. To contemporary legal minds a person was justly punished if and only if they had been convicted or if they had confessed. Because conviction must start with a plea and confession requires speech, a criminal could theoretically hamstring a court simply by remaining silent. To guard against this loophole, pressing was instituted.
The suspect was made to lie down on a wooden board and another was placed on top of their chest. Stones or metal weights were then arranged on the top board. Their number was increased day by day until the suspect pled, confessed or died.
In Strasbourg, where Gutenberg perfected his own press, this form of judicial torture had a local addition. A thick block of wood was placed between the top board and the naked belly of the condemned. The block was flat on one side and carved to high relief on the other with the seal of the city of Strasbourg. In this way, as the weights were added, an impression of the seal was made in the flesh of the person beneath it. This was to show, after the person had been killed and their corpse publically displayed, that the torture had been undertaken by powers legally entitled to command it.
It was said that this was the source of Gutenberg’s idea.
I think that reading is like this. It takes an exceptionally strong person to be exposed to the weight of truth that books can relate and for that person’s mind to remain unchanged. There is a crucial moment for us as readers which takes place just past the weight of truth that we can no longer bear. We die.
If we are lucky, and continue to read past the point at which our former self is crushed out of us, this will not be our last death. In this way, we will always be able to cry out for more weight.
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