From Threshold, to Living Room, to Kitchen: On the Architectonics of Books

This article is the keynote speech given at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, The Book at the Crossroads of Diversities, 28–29 May 2018, Regina, Saskatchewan. Demers reminds readers of the joys of discovering books and stories for the first time and suggests that we should not forget that joy as adults, especially those of us who have chosen careers studying stories—either books or films or theatre—rather than just loving them as we did as children. As academics, critics, librarians, and the like, we begin to read new, sometimes forgotten writers, enter into the conversation about them and, if we are lucky, work our way into the kitchen to discover how their texts are made, finding ourselves on a journey “from curiosity, to revelation, to experimentation.”