The Book of Form and Emptiness

“That’s my Book, and it’s talking to you. Can you hear it? It’s okay if you can’t, though. It’s not your fault. Things speak all the time, but if your ears aren’t attuned, you have to learn to listen.”

In the opening pages of the novel, Benny addresses his readers directly and asks them to accept the fact that books, objects, and forces of nature have voices perceptible to the trained human ear. The prologue is metafictional in that Benny breaks the barrier between character, narrator, and reader, creating a collaborative reading experience in which the reader must consider the physical Book—in form, narration, and intent—as one of the novel’s characters.

“When a sound enters your body through your ears and merges with your mind, what happens to it? Is it still a sound then, or has it become something else?”

After Benny begins hearing the voices of objects around him, the Book questions the nature of sound and whether there are distinctions between exteriority and interiority. This reflects Benny’s initial confusion at where the voices are coming from, emphasizing that it is irrelevant if the voices are truly coming from outside Benny or if they are manifestations of his own mind: What matters is how Benny interacts with them.

“Actually, I don’t know if it was me who learned to tune into the voices, or if the things of the world learned to express themselves in a way that I could hear. Probably both. Probably we trained each other.”

Benny explains how being able to hear the voices of objects seems to encourage the voices to speak more. This quote introduces the novel’s theme of Books and Social Communities, as the interdependence of voices and their perception of being heard coincides with the Book’s understanding of books needing humans and vice versa.