The Printed Stack

The whole draft came back from the copy shop today, and the first surprise is always the same: it has weight. On the screen a manuscript is a feeling with a scroll bar. On the table it is a physical fact, a stack tall enough to interfere with the sugar bowl, warm from the machine when I carried it home under one arm like something rescued, which it nearly had to be, because it started raining two streets from the door.

I sat down and put a hand flat on top of it, partly ownership, partly the gesture you use on an animal that might bolt. Two days ago I wrote here that the book had become more solid than the room. Now it literally is: the radio, the samovar, the cup all have to arrange themselves around it. The pages do not care. Paper is serenely indifferent to what it cost.

Proofing begins tomorrow, with a red pen I already resent. Tonight the stack and I are just sitting here, getting used to each other in the same room, the way you do with any new arrival who is going to change everything.