Saturday, September 02, 2006

i am waiting for the cloth version



A couple of days ago Finn had his first sit-down on his own with a book. It was a cloth number called "Fluffy Chick & Friends". (I would have taken a picture but our camera is missing. I know! Everybody send vibes that we'll find our camera. You know, find-y vibes.) It was so great! He was crinkling the crinkle business on the front cover, grabbing the pages in his little be-mittened hands and waving them back and forth.

And then I thought about cloth books, and went off on an imaginary tangent. See, I don't have a lot of time to read these days. While I was breastfeeding Finn the other day, "Fluffy Chick & Friends" was lying on the couch next to me, and since there was no grown-up reading material at arm's length, I grabbed it and read it.

The blah blah horse is in the stable. Give her a wave (or something), her name is Mabel.

I imagined some old friend coming up to me, maybe at the reunion, and asking me what I've been reading lately. And I imagined replying, "Oh, well, I'm been, um, sort of into cloth books? Um....let's see....I just read 'The Big Moose'...and that was pretty crinkly...there's a goat in it whose horns were sort of vinyl and pointy and you could grab them, so...yeah, um, it's got a lot of good textures, you might give that one a read...."

Texture is something that just gets left behind in adult literature*! And I think that should change. I'd love, say, a cloth version of Anna Karenina, where there could be interludes with different textures for various parts of the story.

*I speak not of porn, freaks.

****Anna Karenina Spoiler Alert, because I ran these ideas past Dave and he was like, I was going to read that.....******************

It could be like:

Feel Anna Karenina's black dress!
(and then you pat it with your big fat hand and you're like, oh, velvety.)

This is the wheat that Levin is growing!

(Stalky...wheaty....I can feel it with my fingers.)

Feel the icy indifference as it increases in Vronsky's heart towards Anna!

(Oh...it's cold...and hard...I can poke his little heart...(stroke, stroke)...it feels cold on my hand.)

Here's a puff of steam from the train that Anna throws herself under. Feel the steam!
(.....feels poufy.....)

****************************

I think that this is an idea whose time has come. And I'd like to hear some of your ideas for the textures we can enjoy from famous books when the cloth versions come out.

6 comments:

bladio said...

I can't read the rest of your post because I'm in the middle of reading AK for the first time! I will come back to this post when I'm done. Like in 6 more months.

Christopher said...

Interesting concept. However, I can also imagine there are many books for which such tactile accoutrements would probably not be beneficial; most of the works of Truman Capote for example, or H.P. Lovecraft - I mean, does anyone really WANT to know what a Shogoth feels like?

Kathryn said...

any of the Harry Potters would be fabulous in cloth

Eve said...

OK, this would be a LOT of cloth, but...

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
(Angel with cottonball wings, playing harp)

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
(Glittery tin foil sun)

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
(Strawberry Scratch n Sniff sticker)

...You get the idea. If I am struck by lightening and killed now, it was nice knowing you! ;)

Anonymous said...

Can you imagine Ayn Rand in cloth? Or Michael Foucault? (shudder)

Michelle de Seattle said...

Pride and Prejudice would be awesome in a cloth version... I also loved my book with the little scratch and sniff patches, I specifically remember strawberry jam and pine...yummy