The Beauty of the Book

books are never words alone, plus the founding mothers of fairy tales

A photograph of some of my handmade books—the Kephart Keepers—awaiting their coptic-stitch bindings

In 1998, following the publication of my first book and its utterly unexpected appearance (to me and to everybody else) on that year’s National Book Awards nonfiction list, I sat among hundreds of finely dressed literati in the Mariott Marquis and listened as John Updike spoke about the “venerable product,” the book. “… a book,” he said, “is beautiful in its relation to the human hand, to the human eye, to the human brain, and to the human spirit.”

I thought of that evening two Saturdays ago, when my husband and I traveled to Chestnut Hill, PA, and visited 50 Watts Books, a newish and quite fabulous indie bookstore to which my friend Karen Rile (who, among other things, helms and illustrates the elegantly designed Cleaver Magazine) had introduced me (a gift!). From the shop web page:

50 Watts is a bookstore with a focus on visually-striking and unusual books from around the world -- incredible art books and artists’ books, surreal picture books, graphic design icons, underground comics, risograph zines, Writers No One Reads, deep backlist finds, odd vintage arcana, and funky gift books, prints, and ephemera. Expect to find lots of publications from Japan and Europe.

The book as object. The book as a thing held in one’s hand. The book as a thing made even if, maybe because, it will never show up on the bestseller list. I could be heard gasping at 50 Watts. Those cloth covers. Those color interiors. That graphically uniform series with those embossed red titles. Those fabulous oddments. Those books I carried home. (So many.)

Maybe it’s because I was the kid who watercolored the pages of my blank journals before I’d even consider wedging my poor poems between the covers. Maybe it’s because I had an uncle who handmade crazy-beautiful pearl+ ribbon Christmas ornaments (and set out a place for me at the card table so that I could help). Maybe it is that other fabulously mysterious uncle on my father’s side who designed the Waldorf-Astoria among so many other buildings and let me peek into the glory of his tool-stuffed, low-ceilinged, drafting-board world (and now, to my right, the fine triangle). Maybe it’s because I bucked my mother’s great desire that I marry “comfortably” (a lawyer, please! a tennis-club heir, how could I not! a financial planner! dare I resist?) and chose instead a man who can do exquisite things with his hands—lift clay vessels from a spinning wheel, paint beauty onto a canvas, doodle with purpose, render buildings, arrange type, speak of art in three languages, only one of which I understand. Maybe it is Updike. But oh, oh, oh: how outrageous is my love for a beautifully made book.

(What are your favorite beautiful books?)

Recently a new book-as-object-of-art came into my possession by way of my local indie, Main Point Books. It’s a book about stories and their makers. Permit me to set the stage:

It is the 1690s, France, toward the rickety end of the reign of King Louis XIV, and female storytellers who call themselves “conteuses” are gathering in salons to engage in the act of writing. Themes are offered, and the writers get to work. The stories—fairy tales whose heroines may be radically wise or heroically brave or entirely willing to buck social conventions—are shared, refined, and polished; some will soon be submitted for publication and slither past the eyes of censors.

Do the salon-goers go down in history as famed fairy tellers? Not exactly. Thanks to non-females like Charles Perrault and The Brothers Grimm, men have been given much of the credit for the origins of this species. But Jane Harrington, a teacher at W&L University, a novelist, and a creative nonfiction writer, is having none of that. She wants the conteuses and their stories to finally stand beneath the brightest stage lights. Hence: Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance: The Forgotten Founding Mothers of the Fairy Tale and the Stories That They Spun (Black Dog & Leventhal)—handsomely oversized, dreamily full color, brightly illustrated by Khoa Le, and wittily purveyed.

Within Harrington’s pages we discover surprising parallels between the publishing of more than 400 years ago and the publishing of now. There are writing workshops and literary awards. There are famed writers perpetually suffering financially. There are love affairs and broken hearts, exiles and returns, accusations of plagiarism, inventions of genres, stories as prompts, and familiar proverbs. There are great personal risks taken for the love of stories that may or may not reach stardom. Stories that may have to wait to be discovered centuries hence by beautiful-book-adjacent people (a writer, an illustrator, an editor, a designer, heck, the entire publishing team) who together craft a thing for the hand that shimmers in its many dimensions.

NOTE: Between now and October 15, 2025, new annual paid subscribers living in the United States will receive original signed art, up to 6” x 8,” mailed in a sturdy cardboard envelope. Those stateside readers renewing their annual paid subscriptions during this time period will receive the same (just let me know!). I’m custom making the art, specific to each person. Those who have renewed, please send me your addresses (if you would like some art).

I have written numerous books on the art of writing and of living a literary life. All can be found here.

My handmade journals, booklets, cards, and paper art are offered here, at the Bind Arts Etsy shop.