The book they lost

Stories are living creatures. They, as our children, emerge through human flesh - in recent times through technologies as well. Although they emerge distinctively different from what we usually accept as living creatures, books share features that does, seen as were they the entire picture, provide convincing evidence that we should treat them as living creatures. The reason being that the way human beings relates to books resemble the way we relate to children in some very unique and important ways.

We have a habit of speaking of stories as were they some immaterial intangible "something-out-there-in-the-world-but-I-don't-quite-understand-it"-phenomena. Academic researchers holding high positions in the champion's league of research institutions worldwide have spent incredible amounts on theorizing stories in disciplines known as "literature studies", "linguistics", "theories of language", "narratology", and so forth. Disturbingly close to everyone of these distinguished ladies and gentlemen reach the same general conclusion: Stories are intangible, they are made of some stuff that is impossible to trace with technologies currently known and available. Then they go on to (and I try to catch up) discussing how we can develop a vocabulary that enables us to at least talk about what they are. I fail to catch up because I am stalled by what appears, per intuition, to be a revelation of common sense: Time has come to end this shift our focus and begin taking seriously the fact that lost from sight in the intangibility-debates went some important and disturbing reasons for treating our stories as we treat our children.

In the book they lost I drew the first examinations of the combined concepts of "stories" and "children".