The Book of Form and Emptiness

“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.

“Our trust in you is deteriorating, and our belief in your wisdom and integrity is crumbling as we watch you mine, instrumentalize and lay waste to our home, this Earth, this sacred place.”

During the Book’s explanation of the stratification of objects—into Unmade, Made, and Books—the Book explains their loss of faith in the human race due to its consumption, pollution, and role in speeding up ecological degradation. The Book’s reflections characterize books as resenting humans for the ways that capitalism has changed the order of natural things.

“Human language is a clumsy tool. People have such a hard time understanding each other, so how can you even begin to imagine the subjectivities of animals and insects and plants, never mind pebbles and sand?”

As the voices of things become louder for Benny, he tries to translate their words to other people in order to help them get what they need. In this quote, the Book explains that language itself is the problem. Benny will never be able to adequately translate what he hears using only human language.

“Benny found there were fewer voices here, as if the walls and ceilings and floors had been wiped clean of the residual suffering that was allowed to accumulate like dust in the corners and edges of rooms in ordinary homes.”

While staying in Pedipsy for two weeks, Benny finds relief from the voices he hears. He believes this is due to the orderliness and cleanliness of the ward, tying together Benny’s mental health experience with the decluttering themes Annabelle finds in Tidy Magic.

“It was as if the words on the pages of the books had given the voices in his head something to think about, to contemplate in silence, and so the summer passed.”

After being released from Pedipsy, Benny spends the summer before high school at the library. He discovers that reading helps him to quiet the voices in his mind, contributing to his desire to skip school and seek refuge away from other people his age.

“A contagion of sly texts and surreptitious chats ensued as rumors about her and Kenji spread, and by the end of the first week, it was understood by everyone, even the most clueless, that Benny and his family were to be their ostracized Other, against whose strangeness they could define their collective normalcy.”

Once Benny starts high school and Annabelle visits with his guidance counselor, the students at Benny’s high school band together against him. He is kept out of social groups and bullied with text messages because of his family’s tragedy and his recent stay in Pedipsy. Distancing themselves from Benny reinforces other students’ feelings of normalcy, which means that in school, he can never find community and acceptance.

“What makes a person want so much? What gives things the power to enchant, and is there a limit to the desire for more?”

The Book questions Annabelle’s tendency towards consumerism and why she attempts to cope with Kenji’s death and Benny’s recent issues by purchasing more things. Since books have a collective identity—and therefore have access to the past, present, and future—the Book does not understand why current society motivates people to purchasing more objects when it can remember a time when consumerism didn’t compel people as strongly. 

“And maybe I was already a little bit in love with her, too. Is that weird? I’d never been in love before, so how would I know?”

After meeting Alice in the library when she helps him calm down from a panic attack, Benny speaks to the Book about the strength of his emotions. He believes Alice is the girl he dreamed of the night he first began hearing voices. Though Benny thinks their love is fated, he acknowledges that he is still too young to know definitively if he is in love.

“You had an important philosophical question to answer—What is real?—and were so preoccupied with the nature of your own reality you were oblivious to how your mother might be experiencing hers.”

Following a mysterious rearrangement of the fridge magnets, the Book speaks to Benny directly and points out that as he grows more distant from Annabelle, he becomes less aware of how she might be struggling to cope with life following Kenji’s death. Benny is invested in Alice, Slavoj, and his new philosophical question so much so that he becomes oblivious to Annabelle’s growing belief that Kenji’s spirit remains in their home.

“The world is creative, endlessly so, and its generative nature is part of who you are. The world has given you the eyes to see the beauty of its mountains and rivers, and the ears to hear the music of its wind and sea, and the voice you need to tell it. We books are evidence that this is so. We are here to help you.”

After Benny says that he is not a creative person and struggles to form consistent memories while on his psychiatric medications, the Book reassures him that their relationship protects Benny’s creativity. Benny is creative because of his basic human nature, which cannot be damaged by any negative aspect of society.

“’Poetry is a problem of form and emptiness.’”

While explaining his process of writing the epic poem “Earth,” Slavoj states that he views poetry as a balance between the form required of poetry and the emptiness that adding words to this form creates. This phrase gives the book its title, signaling the importance of the theme in the novel.

“Books will always have the last word, even if nobody is around to read them.”

After Benny writes his first story about the table leg, the Book explains the nature of stories as being born from pure experience. Ultimately, books exist as conduits for the experiences of others. Once a story is created, the possibility that someone will read it is just as important as whether or not someone does.

“He walked carefully among them, the way you might walk through a crowded hospital ward, careful not to brush against them in case their blankness, their emptiness, might be contagious. Words would give them features. Words would give them voices to speak with.”

In the Bindery, Benny confronts the limitless possibilities of words yet unformed. The Bindery also introduces him to his own Book, whose voice is so powerful it corporealizes in the air around him. Benny’s notion of contagious “emptiness” coincides with Slavoj’s statement that the emptiness of potential words must be given form in a story.

“He could hear the wind, and that was all—that was all—and it was so simple and beautiful, rising and falling, whistling and tapering off and then swelling again. It was real. It was the realest thing he’d ever heard, and when he opened his eyes, the Aleph was watching him.”

At the summit of a mountain preparing for TAZ’s funeral, Alice and Benny admire the view while listening to the wind. Benny’s preoccupation with the voices of things is soothed by being in a natural environment. Alice’s presence at this time contributes to Benny’s love for her, as he experiences this kind of calm only through her influence.

“And the second thing he thought was that he couldn’t imagine himself with parents, either. Not with two of them. Not anymore.”

While camping with Alice and hearing how she ran away from home, Benny realizes that he no longer considers himself a child with two parents. His grief over Kenji’s death has reached a point of acceptance. Benny is ready to move on and fully cope with his father’s death.

“How am I supposed to tidy completely, with love and compassion, when I have a broken ankle, a sick child, and a country that’s on the brink of disaster?”

In an email to Aikon, Annabelle asks her how she is supposed to balance the multiple stressors in her life while still maintaining the Zen attitude towards tidying up her life. Annabelle’s struggle to address the multiple demands on her emotions are complicated by the novel’s theme of Grief, as she continues to believe that all would be much easier to bear if she had Kenji’s help.

“For the first time you realized the power of books and what we might be capable of, and you were scared. Once a thought is thought, it cannot be unthought. Once riven, how can trust be regained? There are no easy answers.”

Once Benny blocks the Book from his thoughts following his disappointment over Alice, Benny comes to distrust books entirely. He believes their collective identity and ability to read anyone’s thoughts are invasive. The Book tries to assuage Benny’s distrust but is unable to find a way to regain his trust.

“The newsfeeds were muted, but you could feel a new tension in the air, as if the air itself were agitated.”

Upon waking the morning after the election, Benny perceives the voice of the world at large, distressed and angry at the results. His fever from the day before has broken, but he now feels disquieted by the fact that his own body is so deeply connected to events in the world.

“Because in the Bindery, where phenomena are still Unbound, stories have not yet learned to behave in a linear fashion, and all the myriad things of the world are simultaneously emergent, occurring in the same present moment, conterminous with you.”

On the night of the election protests, Benny spends the night in the Bindery connecting with the voice of the Book. The Book gives Benny access to the “Unbound” state, one that represents everything, all stories, and all impressions. In exchange, the Book binds itself to Benny so that it can collect his thoughts on what it means to have a human body.

“That day, my teacher gave me a priceless lesson in the impermanence of form, and the empty nature of all things.”

In Chapter 3 of Tidy Magic, Aikon describes how her teacher prefers to think of teacups as already broken as the nature of a teacup is to break one day. This allows a person to avoid becoming too attached to the teacup. Attachment to things is a problem that Benny and Annabelle must overcome in their own ways.

“At the risk of sounding full of ourselves, we are both the One and the Many, an ever-changing plurality, a bodiless flow.”

The Book explains how multiple interpretations of a text result from the collaborative nature of reading. Between Book, author, and reader, a single text can hold many interpretations based on the context and perceived agency of the individual interacting with it, whether through writing or reading. This quote introduces the possibility of multiple interpretations available for The Book of Form and Emptiness, depending on how the reader chooses to engage with it.

”So, yes, we’re your book, Benny, but this is your story. We can help you, but in the end, only you can live your life. Only you can help your mother.”

When Benny criticizes the Book for not intervening and helping Annabelle at her lowest point, the Book reassures Benny that he has the power to help his mother. Benny’s emotions towards his mother have started to shift from resentment and embarrassment immediately following Kenji’s death to a real investment in her happiness.