The End Of Books

by Octave Uzanne

  “Notwithstanding the enormous progress which has gradually been made in the printing-press, in spite of the already existing composing-machines, easy to run, and furnishing new characters freshly moulded in movable matrices, it still appears to me that the art in which Fust and Scheffer, Estienne and Vascosa, Aldus Manutius and Nicholas Jenson successively excelled, has attained its acme of perfection, and that our grandchildren will no longer trust their works to this somewhat antiquated process, now become very easy to replace by phonography, which is yet in its initial stage, and of which we have much to hope.”

  There was an uproar of interruption and inquiry among my hearers; astonished “oh’s!” ironical “ah’s!” doubtful “eh! eh’s!” and mingled with a deepening murmur of denial such phrases as “But that’s impossible!” “What do you mean by that?” I had some difficulty in restoring silence enough to permit me to resume my remarks and explain myself more at length.

  “Let me tell you that the ideas which I am about to open to you are the less affirmative that they are not ripened by reflection. I serve them up to you just as they come to me, with an appearance of paradox. However, there is nothing like a paradox for containing truth; the wildest paradoxes of the philosophers of the eighteenth century are to-day already partly realized.

  “I take my stand, therefore, upon this incontestable fact, that the man of leisure becomes daily more reluctant to undergo fatigue, that he eagerly seeks for what he calls the comfortable, that is to say for every means of sparing himself the play and the waste of the organs. You will surely agree with me that reading, as we practise it today, soon brings on great weariness; for not only does it require of the brain a sustained attention which consumes a large proportion of the cerebral phosphates, but it also forces our bodies into various fatiguing attitudes. If we are reading one of our great newspapers it constrains us to acquire a certain dexterity in the art of turning and folding the sheets ; if we hold the paper wide open it is not long before the muscles of tension are overtaxed, and finally, if we address ourselves to the book, the necessity of cutting the leaves and turning them one after another, ends by producing an enervated condition very distressing in the long run.

  “The art of being moved by the wit, the gayety, and the thought of others must soon demand greater facilities. I believe, then, in the success of everything which will favor and encourage the indolence and selfishness of men; the elevator has done away with the toilsome climbing of stairs; phonography will probably be the destruction of printing. Our eyes are made to see and reflect the beauties of nature, and not to wear themselves out in the reading of texts ; they have been too long abused, and I like to fancy that some one will soon discover the need there is that they should be relieved by laying a greater burden upon our ears. This will be to establish an equitable compensation in our general physical economy.”

  “Very well, very well,” cried my attentive companions, “but the practical side of this? How do you suppose that we shall succeed in making phonographs at once portable enough, light enough, and sufficiently resisting to register long romances which, at present, contain four or five hundred pages, without getting out of order; upon what cylinders of hardened wax will you stereotype the articles and news items of journalism; finally, with the aid of what sort of piles will you generate the electric motors of your future phonograph ? All this is to be explained, and it does not appear to us easy to make it practical.”

  “Nevertheless it will all be done,” I replied. “There will be registering cylinders as light as celluloid penholders, capable of containing five or six hundred words and working upon very tenuous axles, and occupying not more than five square inches; all the vibrations of the voice will be reproduced in them; we shall attain to perfection in this apparatus as surely as we have obtained precision in the smallest and most ornamental watches.

  “As to the electricity, that will often be found in the individual himself. Each will work his pocket apparatus a fluent current ingeniously set in action; the whole system may be kept in a simple opera-glass case, and suspended by a strap from the shoulder.

  “As for the book, or let us rather say, for by that time books ‘will have lived,’ as for the novel, or the storyograph, the author will become his own publisher. To avoid imitations and counterfeits he will be obliged, first of all, to go to the Patent-Office, there to deposit his voice, and register its lowest and highest notes, giving all the counter-hearings necessary for the recognition of any imitation of his deposit,. The Government will realize great profits by these patents.

  The Author Depositing his Voice at the Patent-Office, to Prevent Counterfeiting.

  Having thus made himself right with the law, the author will talk his work, fixing it upon registering cylinders. He will himself put these patented cylinders on sale ; they will be delivered in cases for the consumption of hearers.

  “Men of letters will not be called Writers in the time soon to be, but rather. Narrators. Little by little the taste for style and for pompously decorated phrases will die away, but the art of utterance will take on unheard-of importance. Certain Narrators will be sought out for their fine address, their contagious sympathy, their thrilling warmth, and the perfect accuracy, the fine punctuation of their voice.

  The Author Making Cylinders of his Own Works.

  “The ladies will no longer say in speaking of a successful author, ‘What a charming writer!’ All shuddering with emotion, they will sigh, ‘Ah, how this “Teller’s” voice thrills you, charms you, moves you ! What adorable low tones, what heart-rending accents of love! When you hear his voice you are fairly exhausted with emotion. There is no ravisher of the ear like him!’“

  My friend James Whittemore interrupted me. “And what will become of the libraries, dear friend, and of the books?”

  The Binding of the Future (Tubes de luxe.)

  “Libraries will be transformed into phonographotecks, or rather, phonostereoteks; they will contain the works of human genius on properly labelled cylinders, methodically arranged in little cases, rows upon rows, on shelves. The favorite editions will be the autophonographs of artists most in vogue; for example, every one will be asking for Coquelin’s ‘Molière,’ Irving’s ‘Shakespeare,’ Salvini’s ‘Dante,’ Eleonora Duse’s ‘Dumas fils,’ Sara Bernhardt’s ‘Hugo,’ Mounet Sully’s ‘Balzac;’ while Goethe, Milton, Byron, Dickens, Emerson, Tennyson, Musset, and others will have been ‘vibrated upon cylinders by favorite Tellers.’

  “The bibliophiles, who will have become phonographiles, will still surround themselves with rare works; they will send out their cylinders to be bound in morocco cases, adorned with fine gildings and symbolic figures, as in former days. The titles will be imprinted on the circumference of the case, and the most exquisite cases will contain cylinders specially copyrighted, editions of a single copy, in the voice of a master of the drama, of poetry, or of music, giving impromptu and unpublished variants of celebrated works.

  The Voice from Scotland

  “The Narrators, blithe authors that they will be, will relate the current events of current life, will make a study of rendering the sounds that accompany-sometimes with ironical effect. like an orchestration of Nature-the exchange of commonplace conversation, the joyful exclamations of assembled crowds, the dialects of strange people. The evocations of the Marseillais or the Auvergnats will amuse the French as the jargon of the Irishman and the Westerner will excite the laughter of Americans of the East.

  Manufacturing Books.

  “Authors who are not sensitive to vocal harmonies, or who lack the flexibility of voice necessary to a fine utterance. will avail themselves of the services of hired actors or singers to warehouse their work in the accommodating cylinder. We have to-day our secretaries and copyists ; there will then be ‘phonists’ and ‘clamists’ to interpret utterances dictated by the creator of literature.

  Phonographic Literature for the Promenade.

  “Hearers will not regret the time when they were read
ers ; with eyes unwearied, with countenances refreshed, their air of careless freedom will witness to the benefits of the contemplative life. Stretched upon sofas or cradled in rocking-chairs, they will enjoy in silence the marvellous adventures which the flexible tube will conduct to ears dilated with interest.

  “At home, walking, sightseeing, these fortunate hearers will experience the ineffable delight of reconciling hygiene with instruction; of nourishing their minds while exercising their muscles; for there will be pocket phono-opera-graphs, for use during excursions among Alpine mountains or in the canons of the Colorado.”

  “Your dream is most aristocratic,” interposed Julius Pollock, the humanitarian;” the future will be more democratic. I should like to see the people more favored.”

  “They will be, my gentle poet,” I replied, gayly, going on to develop my vision of the future; “nothing will be lacking for them on this head; they may intoxicate themselves on literature as on pure water, and as cheaply, too, for there will then be fountains of literature in the streets as there are now hydrants.

  The Automatic Library

  “At every open place in the city little buildings will be erected, with hearing tubes corresponding to certain works easily worked by the mere pressure of a button. On the other side, a sort of automatic book-dealer, set in motion by a nickel in the slot, will for this trifling sum give the works of Dickens, Dumas père, or Longfellow, on long rolls all prepared for home consumption.

  “I go even farther: the author who desires personally to bring his work to the public knowledge after the fashion of the trouvères of the Middle Ages, carrying them about from house to house, may draw a modest but always remunerative profit by renting to all the inmates of the same apartment-house a sort of portable organ, which may be slung over the shoulder, composed of an infinite number of small tubes connected with his auditory shop, by means of which his works may be wafted through the open windows to the ears of such lodgers as hung all around for the benefit the studious passer-by. They will of may desire amusement in a moment of be leisure, or cheer in an hour of solitude.

  “People of small means will not be ruined, you must admit, by a tax of four or five cents for an hour’s ‘hearing,’ and the fees of the wandering author will be relatively important by the multiplicity of hearings furnished to each house in the same quarter.

  The Author Exploiting his Own Works.

  “Is this all? By no means. The phonography of the future will be at the service of our grandchildren on all the occasions of life. Every restaurant-table will be provided with its phonographic collection; the public carriages, the waiting-rooms, the state-rooms of steamers, the halls and chambers of hotels will contain phonographotecks for the use of travellers. The railways will replace the parlor car by a sort of Pullman Circulating Library, which will cause travellers to forget the weariness of the way while leaving their eyes free to admire the landscapes through which they are passing.

  “I shall not undertake to enter into the technical details of the methods of operating these new interpreters of human thought, these multiplicators of human speech; but rest assured that books will be forsaken by all the dwellers upon this globe, and printing will absolutely pass out of use except for the service it may still be able to render to commerce and private relations ; and even there the writing-machine, by that time fully developed, will probably suffice for all needs.

  The Romance of the Future. (With Kinetoscopic Illustrations.)

  “‘And the daily paper,’ you will ask me, ‘the great press of England and America, what will you do with that?’

  “Have no fear; it will follow the general law, for public curiosity will go on forever increasing, and men will soon be dissatisfied with printed interviews more or less correctly reported. They will insist upon hearing the interviewee, upon listening to the discourse of the fashionable orator, hearing the actual song, the very voice of the diva whose first appearance was made over-night. What but the phonographic journal can give them all this ? The voices of the whole world will be gathered up in the celluloid rolls which the post will bring morning by morning to the subscribing hearers. Valets and ladies’-maids will soon learn how to put them in place, the axle of the cylinder upon the two supports of the motor, and will carry them to master or mistress at the hour of awakening. Lying soft and warm upon their pillow they may hear it all, as if in a dream-foreign telegrams, financial news, humorous articles, the news of the day.

  Reading on the Limited

  “Journalism will naturally be transformed; the highest situations will be reserved for robust young men with strong, resonant voices, trained rather in the art of enunciation than in the search for words or the turn of phrases; literary mandarinism will disappear, literators will gain only an infinitely small number of .hearers, for the important point will be to be quickly informed in a few words without comment.

  “In all newspaper offices there will be Speaking Halls where the editors will record in a clear voice the news received by telephonic despatch; these will be immediately registered by an ingenious apparatus arranged in the acoustic receiver; the cylinders thus obtained will be stereotyped in great numbers and posted in small boxes before three o’clock in the morning, except where by agreement with the telephone company the hearing of the newspaper is arranged for by private lines to subscribers’ houses, as is already the case with theatrophones.”

  William Blackcross, the amiable critic and aesthete, who up to this point had kindly listened without interrupting my flights of fancy, now deemed it the proper moment for asking a few questions.

  “Permit me to inquire,” he said, “how you will make good the want of illustrations? Man is always an overgrown baby, and he will always ask for pictures and take pleasure in the representation of things which he imagines or has heard of from others.”

  “Your objection does not embarrass me,” I replied; “illustrations will be abundant and realistic enough to satisfy the most exacting. You perhaps forget the great discovery of To-morrow, that which is soon to amaze us all; I mean the Kinetograph of Thomas Edison, of which I was so happy as to see the first trial at Orange Park, New Jersey, during a recent visit to the great electrician.

  Editorial Rooms for the Phonographic Journal of the Future. (Dictating News Cylinders)

  “The kinetograph will be the illustrator of daily life ; not only shall we see it operating in its case, but by a system of lenses and reflectors all the figures in action which it will present in photo-chromo may be projected upon large white screens in our own homes. Scenes described in works of fiction and romances of adventure will be imitated by appropriately dressed figurants and immediately recorded. We shall also have, by way of supplement to the daily phonographic journal, a series of illustrations of the day, slices of active life, so to speak, fresh cut from the actual. We shall see the new pieces and the actors at the theatre, as easily as we may already hear them, in our own homes; we shall have the portrait, and, better still, the very play of countenance, of famous men, criminals, beautiful women. It will not be art, it is true, but at least it will be life, natural under all its make-up, clear, precise, and sometimes even cruel.

  Impending Maladies of the Ear

  “It is evident,” I said, in closing this too vague sketch of the intellectual life of To-morrow, “that in all this there will be sombre features now unforeseen. Just as oculists have multiplied since the invention of journalism, so with the phonography yet to be, the aurists will begin to abound. They will find a way to note all the sensibilities of the ear, and to discover names of more new auricular maladies than will really exist; but no progress has ever been made without changing the place of some of our ills.

  “Be all this as it may, I think that if books have a destiny, that destiny is on the eve of being accomplished; the printed book is about to disappear. After us the last of books, gentlemen!”

  This after-supper prophecy had some little success even among the most sceptical of my indulgent listeners;
and John Pool had the general approval when he cried, in the moment of our parting:

  “Either the books must go, or they must swallow us up. I calculate that, take the whole world over, from eighty to one hundred thousand books appear every year; at an average of a thousand copies, this makes more than a hundred millions of books, the majority of which contain only the wildest extravagances or the most chimerical follies, and propagate only prejudice and error. Our social condition forces us to hear many stupid things every day. A few more or less do not amount to very great suffering in the end; but what happiness not to be obliged to read them, and to be able at last to close our eyes upon the annihilation of printed things!”

  Octave Uzanne (1851-1931) was also the author of Le calendrier de Vénus.

  Albert Robida (1848-1926) was a prolific and celebrated French artist and writer. He was probably the first artist to specialize in science fiction. He was the author of numerous books, incuding La Guerre au Vingtieme Siecle (1887, War in the Twentieth Century) and La Vie Electrique (1892, The Electric Life).