There’s a book on my shelf that’s been on my mind called Zero Mostel reads a book. My wife Kate was in Austin at Domy Books where shop proprietor Russell recommended it. It was originally a photo-essay in the June of 1963 New York Times. Zero Mostel was an actor and comedian best known (to me anyway) for his role in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. In this hard-bound photo-essay, photographer Robert Frank, known for his outsider’s perspective on the strata of American society, follows Zero with a camera while he reads a random progression of books. A dictionary, a comic book, novels, and an anonymous assortment of thick texts. Reading, he moves around his home from room to room, first on a chair, then on a sofa, then pulling more books from his shelves; he drinks, he smokes. Frank’s camera is all the while capturing Zero’s reaction to what is being read — he cries, laughs, sweats, uses a magnifying glass, is scared, horrified, enraged, makes hammy faces; he emotes.
Now that the iPad and its bretheren have ushered in the new era of fast-moving downloadable screen-reading, Zero Mostel reads a book serves as a reminder of the book-as-object, a singularly contained idea. It’s possible that now there are two genuses of books: screen-based and print-based where print-based have now been re-assigned to the category of the art-object. I don’t know. I do know that I kind of really like reading books on the iPad and liking that bothers me. I also know that I wouldn’t like this book nearly as much if it were instead Zero Mostel Reads an eBook on His Second Generation iPhone.
