A Portrait Of An Artist As A Serial Book Killer

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

In this long dark Brexit of the soul eve that it appears Britain will be dragged into, I didn't think that there would be another subject that would anger me equally as much, if only for a moment. But Twitter has the capacity for revealing something completely unexpected that would take you off guard and this seemingly incongruous blog post did that for me Monday evening.

https://www.boredpanda.com/old-book-recycling-paper-art-cecilia-levy/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic

So the artist Cecilia Levy takes old books and then proceeds to create paper pieces of art from them. Now as the above post shows Ms Levy has more artistic skill in her little finger than I will ever have and let me acknowledge it. But this is nothing to do with her artistic ability. It has everything to do with the slaughter of old books.

All readers should politely tell Ms Levy that old books are just as cherished as their pristinely new counterparts. If this wasn't the case why is it that second hand booksellers and charity shops are full of them? That discovery of an old forgotten classic of decades ago, or to reengage with an author who had been forgotten in the far reaches of your memory. It is the jolt to the system. Literary espresso.

Old books through either shops or family heirlooms are passed through from generation to generation. New readers are then created.

What Ms Levy is doing is simply this. She's creating new art by murdering old art. How can this be right? How can this be justified?

The blogger states that Ms Levy's work is a "loving testament to literature". How can murdering a book be described as that? The loving testament to literature is the book. A loving testament to literature is not ripping it up, thus denying a future reader the opportunity to see it as it was originally intended, and creating something else entirely.

No real reader will look at Ms Levy's work and say "Thankyou for murdering a book and creating a paper [insert object here] in it's place". An [insert object here] which incidentally will probably be in the long term less appreciated.

According to the blog Ms Levy is always on the lookout for old books to continue her work.
I would suggest that if you give Ms Levy old books it will be the literary equivalent of taking a cow to an abattoir.

So read the old books you have. Or at the very least give them to a good home. Otherwise they may be slaughtered in the name of art.

Until the next time.