I don’t usually yearn for Books As Physical Objects. I don’t have great detail vision, so I usually like the large-print, high-contrast of an ebook for comfortable reading. I can read a typical paperback, but it’s enough effort that it sometimes keeps me from drifting off into the bookworld.
But this description of the 90s Snow Crash paperback in Jason Guriel’s essay I Remember the Bookstore just hit me in the feels. I read this copy too, a heavy, thick paperback with that plastic-coated cover. I almost felt it in my hands when I read this description. It was lent to me by a high-school friend, just like Guriel lends his in this article, though I promise I returned this in better condition. I carried Snow Crash in my bag to read on my train commute on my way to work as a quest designer at an MMO. The book and that time in my life are so deeply connected for me.
For instance, I remember standing in Toronto’s World’s Biggest Bookstore—“long gone now,” to lift DeLillo’s line. It was around 1996, and I was considering a paperback copy of Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash. The cover, you see, had cried out to my teenage self. A ninja type, sword raised, stands before an arch of ancient brickwork, bulging with duelling bulls in relief. But beyond the arch, across a plain of circuitry, a futuristic skyline awaits. Above the title, a header declares the book to be “THE #1 SCIENCE FICTION BESTSELLER,” the definite article doing some work. Below the title, a blurb from something called Los Angeles Reader (also “long gone now”) is blunt: “Stephenson has not stepped, he has vaulted onto the literary stage with this novel.”
On the back cover, there’s a vote of confidence from William Gibson no less, maybe my favourite writer, plus other appealing endorsements. “A cross between Neuromancer and Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland,” says one blurb. A “gigathriller” sporting a “cool, hip cybersensibility,” says the publisher’s copy. Hey, it was the 1990s.
Source: I Remember the Bookstore – Longreads
