J.J. Abrams – Doug Dorst: S. – Ship of Theseus (Canongate Books 2013)
Many thanks to Geopen Könyvkiadó for sending me the book!
A story within a story. The Ship of Theseus is the last novel by the once famous writer V.M. Straka. Its hero S. is a man without a past who takes part in both a symbolic and real journey. The other story is that of two readers, Jen and Eric, who send messages to each other through writings on the margins and try to find out the writer’s identity and at the same time solve the problems of their own lives.
The person who came up with all this is the film director, producer, screenwriter J.J. Abrams and university professor Doug Dorst. Together they created this work, the uniqueness of which lies not in its story, but in the fact that it is itself a work of art, an object to be exhibited. The book itself is a library copy of the Ship of Theseus, decorated by its two readers full of marginal messages while they corresponded with each other and filled with newspaper clippings, postcards and other attachments while they were investigating Straka. It is impossible to say which the main story is. The authors aim to pay homage to printed books, as this work cannot be read in e-book format.
The title, the Ship of Theseus, is itself a philosophical paradox. A question to which there are several correct, equivalent, but contradictory answers. The problem seeks to answer how long an object can be considered self-identical if it changes over time.
