So! You've written a book! What's in it?"

When Hamlet was asked what he was reading, he replied "words, words, words." That's what's in it. Imagine words being "in" anything other than the making mouth, the interven- ing air, the receiving ear. For formerly they were no more substantial than the rainbow, an arch of tones between you and me. "What is the matter, my lord?" Polonius asks, to which Hamlet answers, "Between who?" twisting the meaning in a lawyerlike fashion, although he might have answered more symmetrically: pages, pages, pages. . .that is the matter. . . paper and sewing thread and ink. . .the word made wood.

Early words were carved on a board of beech, put on thin leaves of a fiber that might be obtained from bamboo and then bound by cords, or possibly etched in ivory, or scratched on tablets made of moist clay. Signs were chiseled in stone, inked on unsplit animal skin stretched very thin and rolled, or painted on the pith of the papyrus plant. A lot later, words were typed on paper, microfilmed, floppy disked, photocopied, faxed. As we say about dying, the methods vary. Carving required considerable skill, copying a lengthy education, printing a mastery of casting-in every case, great cost-and hence words were not to be taken lightly. (They might have been, indeed, on lead.) They were originally so rare in their appearance that texts were sought out, signs were visited like points of inter- est, the words themselves were worshiped; therefore the effort and expense of writing them was mostly devoted to celebrating the laws of the land, recording community his- tories, and keeping business accounts.