Jonathon Safran Foer's Tree of Codes

I am both frightened and stimulated by Jonathon Safran Foer's Tree of Codes. Cutting up books is, instinctively, a facist and not artistic act; making something whole and with meaning out of somebody's book is creatively challenging and interesting. He is finding hidden (or never was) meaning in a classic text; he is challenging conventional concepts of fiction and creativity; he is asking the reader to step out from the traditional one book one writer paradigm. What is fixed and finished? Who is the maker? Is there meaning in these words?

So, this video illustrating the creation of Tree of Codes stimulates the creator within me. But this only balances the sense of loss the reader within me feels. Foer's stated argument, that there are plenty of other copies of the original book that he hasn't cut up feels slightly facile, because it is not like he is cutting out the crossword from a newspaper, or doing collage using magazine photos - he is disfiguring a book, a precious container, each one that I have ever held being the original.

This is not me as librarian, asking students to use bookmarks rather than dog ears - rather, it is I as reader, a man who holds books as almost holy, almost a life source, who is torn up. If it was my tv he was tearing apart and putting back together as a transmogrifier, or the Google code as a page of scripture, I'd be thrilled. But my books (and my cricket bat and jar of vegemite) are whole, finished, complete, precious and inviolate in their original form.

That said, today my students are cutting up photocopies of Carl Sandburg and Prufrock to create their own poems. Librarian as hypocrite? Or the fine line between real, whole books and what they mean, and a faded facsimile on A3?