47 pages • 1 hour read
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
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Chapters 15-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: The Library
Chapter 15 Summary: The Strangest Clerk in Five Hundred Years
Clay, Kat and Neel fly to New York and arrive hours before Penumbra’s train; they then stake out the Library and speculate about the Unbroken Spine. Kat is preoccupied because Google is going to announce the new PM and she hopes to be chosen. Soon, a middle-aged man with a round nose opens the library, after which a steady stream of people trickles into the building. At 12.29, Penumbra arrives in a taxi and Clay runs across the road to intercept him. Penumbra is shocked, but then he laughs and explains that he has “not come here to talk of punishment” (130), but rather to make his case for using computers to advance the work of the fellowship. Penumbra arranges to meet Clay and the others after his meeting with Corvina, the First Reader and head of the Unbroken Spine. While they wait, Kat learns that she has not been elected to Google’s PM. When Penumbra arrives, he tells them that Corvina has rejected his proposal, but he has a plan. He then explains that the Unbroken Spine was founded by Aldus Manutius, a fifteenth-century publisher who employed a designer named Griffo Gerritszoon who invented a new kind of typeface. According to Penumbra, Gerritszoon’s work “is the wellspring of our fellowship’s wealth” (135); they own the license for his eponymous font. Manutius published the Greek classics and was convinced that these works held the answer to humanity’s greatest question: how to live forever. When Manutius died, there was no body. Instead, he left behind an encrypted book—the first codex vitae—and gave the key to only one person, Griffo Gerritszoon. Manutius’s students—the Unbroken Spine—have spent centuries trying to decipher his codex, believing “that when this secret is finally unlocked, every member of the Unbroken Spine who ever lived…will live again” (136).
Chapter 16 Summary: Codex Vitae
Having explained the work of the Unbroken Spine, Penumbra takes Clay and his friends to the Reading Room, while making them promise never to speak of it or reveal its location. The Reading Room is guarded by the same round nosed man Clay saw opening the library, Edgar Deckle, who, it turns out, used to be Penumbra’s clerk. Clad in black cloaks, they enter a subterranean library that houses the fellowship’s codex vitae, including that of the founder Manutius and Penumbra’s own book. The books are created by the unbound and validated by their mentors and the First Reader. They are then required to make a sacrifice: the books are “encrypted, copied, and shelved” (147) and not read by anyone until after the author’s death. Kat asks what happened to the key to Manutius’s book and Penumbra explains that Gerritszoon did not pass on the key so they have had to try and decode the book themselves, and while Penumbra advocates for changing their methods, Corvina is determined to adhere to tradition. Penumbra proposes that they make a digital copy of Manutius’s book and attempt to crack the code using computers, the way Clay solved the Founder’s Puzzle. Just then, they are approached by Corvina, who announces that Penumbra is being summoned back to New York and that the Festina Lente Company will withdraw their support for the bookstore. Penumbra dismisses Corvina’s threats and is determined to see his plan through. This includes making plans to meet Edgar Deckle later that evening.
Chapter 15 – Chapter 16 Analysis
These chapters reveal even more about the workings of the Unbroken Spine and elaborate upon what is one of the novel’s major themes: immortality. The purpose of the Unbroken Spine is to decipher the codex vitae of the fellowship’s founder, Aldus Manutius, and reveal the secret to immortality. It seems significant that an organization in pursuit of everlasting life is structured around the reading and writing of books, given the long-standing association between art and immortality: it is thought that the work of art, whether a painting or a book, allow its creator to continue to live, in one sense, even after his or her death. Significantly, Manutius himself, who is believed to have discovered the secret and become immortal, searched for that knowledge in the works of the Ancient Greek authors he printed. The relationship the Unbroken Spine has to books is ultimately a relationship to the past. Even the books written by their members are not permitted to be read until after the author’s death. Only “old” books or “old” knowledge, it seems, are valuable to the fellowship.
This attitude to books and to knowledge is embodied by the Unbroken Spine’s leader, Corvina. In contrast with Penumbra’s desire to use new methods of deciphering Manutius’s text, Corvina is adamant that the organization will adhere to tradition. Despite his determination to eschew technology in the pursuit of immortality, Corvina is also the CEO of the fellowship’s public face, the Festina Lente Company. This is a particularly strange position for him to occupy, given that the F.L.C. partly makes its money by licensing the digital edition of the Gerritszoon typeface and by identifying e-book piracy. The hypocrisy of this situation suggests that Corvina’s opposition to change might be motivated by a desire to exert control over members of the Unbroken Spine.
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