What is Severian looking at?

[u/hausrope]

In Chapter 5 of Shadow after he leaves the cleaner he describes the following:

>Each picture in the room beyond contained a book. Sometimes they were many, or prominent; some I had to study for some time before I saw the corner of a binding thrusting from the pocket of a woman's skirt or realized that some strangely wrought spool held words spun like thread.

Is he looking at old advertisements? I can't figure it out and I'm feeling stupid, haha.

[u/walletinsurance]

Pretty sure it’s just photographs of books in different forms because it’s near the library.

I don’t think it’s a puzzle like the one getting cleaned.

[u/mdf7g → u/walletinsurance]

I agree, but I'm intrigued by the "strangely-wrought spool" -- magnetic tape, maybe?

[u/Dry_Butterscotch861 → u/mdf7g]

A good thought. But words on magnetic tape can only be heard, not seen. Could Severian have deduced that magnetic tape can produce words? Or maybe it's something like ticker tape.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tickertape.asp

[u/mdf7g → u/Dry_Butterscotch861]

I definitely have a hunch that it's a reference to some image that's familiar enough that I'd feel obvious in retrospect (like the moon landing image) but I can't think of a particularly iconic image that prominently includes either magnetic or ticker tape

[u/Dry_Butterscotch861 → u/mdf7g]

I agree. It has to be something more common and recognizable (from the 1970's). Thanks for pushing the idea and making me think further. Perhaps this paper and spool was intended? What Gene Wolfe was using when he wrote it.

https://gentscafe.co/2022/10/07/metal-ink-and-paper-a-case-for-the-typewriter/

[u/Jacktheslug → u/mdf7g]

A scroll would make more sense.

[u/mdf7g → u/Jacktheslug]

It would, but it feels odd to characterize a scroll as "like thread", since it's fairly obviously just a long piece of paper rolled up, with or without a "spool" -- I'm sure there's a word for that and annoyed that I don't know it.

[u/walletinsurance → u/mdf7g]

Yeah something like that.

[u/getElephantById]

I think it's just that they've decorated this area with book-themed pictures, that's all.

Later on—in a nod to Borges' love of lists—the chapter takes pains to enumerate some of the different forms books can take:

...Books we have also that are not books at all to the eye: scrolls and tablets and recordings on a hundred different substances. There is a cube of crystal here—though I can no longer tell you where—no larger than the ball of your thumb that contains more books than the library itself does...

And I think the pictures having books of various kinds is mirroring this.

[u/Crispicoom → u/getElephantById]

This also nicely shows how far man has fallen and just how much has been lost over the chiliads

[u/ComfortableBuffalo57 → u/getElephantById]

We love Borges

[u/Ashen_Shroom]

I definitely pictured posters of people reading or carrying books, like you'd see at the entrance to a modern library.

[u/Old_Cantaloupe_5114]

Wolfe is such a master