The Infinite Library (54 page)

I remember this because of what I became: an architect of the letter. I resided as a consultant on the executive planning committee for a brave new project commissioned by a wealthy eccentric (that felicitous merger of peculiar obsession made manifest by the opportunities of a deep pocket). It is known as Alphab
e
topia, but I will return to that later.

Prior to becoming an architect proper, I had attended a prestigious art and design college, and so I felt myself to have fostered both the aesthetic and practical dimensions of my skills. My first big project involved letters, and I had lobbied hard and perhaps dishonestly to get it over the other applicants. It took place in Arizona, and I was to erect all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet in stone, each of them a uniform 26 feet high. It was decided that we would use the capitals since the miniscules have too many awkward descenders and both the i and the j would prove impossible without joining the dot to the main body by means of supports. The specific instructions stipulated that the letters had to be free-standing, which meant that
it
was not permitted to
s
imply erect rectangular blocks with the letters inset as if we were littering the desert with enormous movable type monuments. Although there was an able team of stone carvers (I would not call them sculptors as such), I elected to undertake some of the tasks myself so that I could get a feel for each letter, each of their harsh edges or slicing curves, their geometric perfection and precise angles.

The letter A was by far one of the easiest, most secure of the letters. Its triangular shape ensured it would stand stable without any assistance. B, on the other hand, proved an enormous difficulty (as did for the same reason D, G, J, O, S, and U). The issue being that the rounded bottoms of these letters would not make them free-standing, and so would require either a deeper foundation (impossible: we were already going over budget), or the use of wedged stoppers to keep them from rolling. P was a very difficult problem given how top heavy it is. F And V were equally engineering nightmares, and I spent a disproportionate amount of time figuring out how to solve the issue, easily more than the 1/26
^th
of the time so uniformly
all
otted to each letter. The man who wanted this project done, and done under budget and under time, was not what you would call very understanding of problems arising from the real world of physics and engineering. When I once suggested that we could circumvent the problems by changing the font, he nearly threw me off the project. Due to budget overrun, and the initial specs for each letter demanding more thickness that simply could not be afforded, I had to employ some quiet shortcuts, such as gradual thinning toward the top to retain some semblance of balance. Letters like L seem to be ideal to most folk who think simply because the letter has a nice, long, broad base, it will stand fine. But regular folk know little to nothing about proper weight distribution, balance, and structural integrity; the letter L could effectively topple despite its base because nearly all the weight is a bolt directed down the left side, thus putting weight on the ground that would eventually lead to a depression, throwing it off balance one day. The letter E was a similar problem, but with another added: the upper arms of the letter were a bit long and heavy to be sustained, and one has to imagine if you used a piece of wood and nailed three beams across it: eventually the arms start to dip. The project was rushed, and I doubt that these letters are all still standing despite my efforts. But the alphabet, vertically without a support base or other assisting devices, is impossible.

I am a font geek by design. This is a tag line I feel is about as clever as I can get in describing my intertwining of my interest and occupation. Most of my lovers had found it an odd quirk, and all eventually found it an irritant – and even then for Christmases or birthdays they might buy me a book on pre-Gutenberg scribal fonts or some other book filled with endless lurid plates of various font styles with the same A to Z, 0 to 9, plus special and common characters. I'm a Bembo and Cardo man myself, and I suppose it is these styles that influence my other hobby, which is font design. So serious am I about the importance of fonts that I've turned down purchasing a book everyone tells me is a gripping read simply on what I deem a poor choice of fonts. I simply cannot read a book set with an inferior font any more than I can eat dinner in a restaurant with smokers –
i
t just ruins it for me. Worse, it causes me something near to pain. Alphabets and their component parts, from their history, formation, and aesthetic variations, are my life. As an architect, some people dream of being the next Frank Lloyd Wright in designing some eco-ergonomic-whatzit piece of building art, or to be like the Bauhausians or Le Corbusier in building houses like machines for living in. My drafting table and so many AutoCAD files are simply the meticulous reworking of the alphabet.

With the Arizona project tucked in my CV, I felt confident when the millionaire Egon Denoel had put out a call for someone to act as a consult
an
t on his newest and purposeless scheme of designing a new suburban tract, a subdivision where the roads would resemble a tightly packed alphabet from an aerial perspective. To me, this would be an easier project to plan since the letters would be horizontally hugging the earth in the natural way that letters generally lie flat on a page. Denoel seemed the indifferent and preoccupied person so many wealthy eccentrics are who get bored easily and can't seem to spend their
c
ash fast enough. Sounds a bit like some sort of dare against fate to me. He was the Howard Hughes type, and a bit of a wandering polymath who did all sorts of things with both time and money. His indifference to me dissipat
e
d when he learned I shared one of his thousand obsessions: the alphabet. In fact, I had not put together the coincidence of his name: this was the same Denoel of the Denoel font family, the one he designed in his spare time between one prodigious act and another, perhaps between revolutionizing a new dance in New Guinea and inventing a new dish in Mongolian cuisine. I, of course, appreciated the daring of his font, but did find it a bit dated (not to mention his Q and W were a misfit with the overall aesthetic in my opinion). When I asked him what font we'd be using for the subdivision, I was disappointed when he said boring old Times New Roman.

He had purchased 26 miles of land at a width of two miles. It was a considerable chunk, but one he acquired at a discount from the city which thought allowing this to go forward would redeem their pitiful image as a backward, anti-cultural, uninspired box store splotch on the highway. The land was to be parcelled at exactly one by two miles, every section to be the site for a letter done as the road. The project took a year to add the piping and drainage, and the roads. We worked systematically letter by letter, and by the time we had hit Z, all the pre-fab housing had been completed up to N. In lieu of full payment for my services, I was given a house at any point in this subdivision, so I chose the exact middle of the alphabet: at the dipped centre of M (technically, I am listed as living in section M, number 1 M3 avenue – there are four streets in M).

Alphabetopia, as it was at first jokingly called and later officially named, was a gated subdivision. There were only two access points: at the bottom portion of A and the bottom portion of Z. I see now why we could have used a ring road, and why I lived in the worst possible section. There was no shopping or employment in Alphabetopia, which means we all had to commute out of it to do anything. This produced a significant problem when there were only two access points that serviced the area, and during rush hour, it was quite common to see traffic backed up as deep as G and U. The ideal locations to live would be, of course, A and Z, but there are also differences of convenience between the letters worthy of remark. Where I live, most traffic going from M to A or L to Z had to pass by my house, making it a very busy and noisy street. During the winter, snow removal services were not keen on the upper arm of F which was a dead end (yet one could see the top arc of G from the end of the street, and residents had asked for a connecting road to be built – something that Denoel rejected since that would have ruined the perfection of his Alphabetopia). The close connection between E and F, however, lent it a kind of grid look, and they were the only ones with a continuous road through the middle; going from the crossbar of H into G was pointless because the middle of G was a dead end). Anyone living right of M would tend to use the Z exit, but V and W could not be bypassed with a simple straightaway, but required driving in a long zigzag. Worse still was when one came to Z because one had to drive a full mile to the edge of its top where one could see the outside of the subdivision, double back in a diagonal that is about a mile and a half, and then another mile to the exit. All told, the distance of Z was 3.5 miles, or 2.5 miles more than a straight cut through it would take. To drive from point A to Z, although a distance of only 26 miles if measured end to end, was actually over 55 miles.

S is for scenic, and anyone driving through S would have to travel the entire distance of it to get to T (driving in the opposite direction to R was much shorter). Apart from V and W that must be driven in their entirety, my neighbouring section L also required this, but it seemed a much simpler path since it only required taking one right or one left at a straight angle, pending direction.

The division runs west to east through the alphabet, which means each letter is bisected into north and south. The twinned letter sections were B, D, C, E, H, I, O, and X (some people counted S, but that required a double flip: once vertical and once horizontal). Although income disparity was very slight at that time, the northern sections were just a hair more affluent than the south, and this showed by the quality of the lawn ornaments. I do not include those letter section where the mirroring occurs solely on a vertical axis since I have not seen much difference between east and west.

X was the only section with a four way stop, and thus also had the highest rate of traffic accidents. For this reason, and because of the longer drive through V, W, and Z, my commute direction was (and still is) A, and the only time I touched the north was in L, K, and J. And, for reasons I cannot understand or it being merely statistical coincidence, section J had the highest amount of crime (at 2 thefts in the first year, and one spousal abuse incident – court case pending).

Alphabetopia did attract the occasional tourist who made it his goal to drive through each letter, or otherwise snap a picture of himself in each section that spells his name. A brief-lived community action group in A tried to incite alarm by claiming that “alphabetourism” will increase traffic and crime. However, the number of tourists our little urban planning oddity receives every year is barely above double digits. Another failed bid by those living in H was to make Alphabetopia the Scrabble capital of the world. And, still others tried a variety of alphabet-based schemes to draw attention, make money, or both.

It has been seven years and our Alphabetopia bears only slight resemblance to its initial plan. Agitating voices lobbying city hall, mixed with declining real estate values as the area saw an increasing exodus, prompted the building of a two-lane road cutting right across the middle of each section. It passes by my house. Another road linking the beginning of Z cutting in a south-eastern direction has mangled the Z to make it appear like a triangular hourglass. Commercial zoning was permitted in a few areas, especially where roads intersect with maximum access such as at E, the middle of W, and X. There are plans to extend the bottom of F to make it a second E which will be the site of a new series of affordable high-rise apartment blocs. This may necessitate the laying down of another road that will run along the bottom from F to A. As well, many of
the
homes in O were bought out and demolished to accommodate a new garbage dump. This will mean N and P will soon become vacant, and people already speak derisively of those living “east of M.” The second generation of Alphabetopia transplants are urging the city to adopt a Hippodamian plan that would grid the plumping population and make the subdivision more traffic accessible. If this goes through – and I have no reason to suspect it would not – then I would find myself living in a gradually disappearing alphabet. Soon, there will be no alphabet in Alphabetopia, and in 20 years hardly anyone will know why this suburb was called this any more than one might question why a particular street is named Woodlawn or, another, Clarke.

Urban planning and art have been harmonious in the past, but art seems to be outpaced by need. At that point, urban planning and art have nothing in common but conflict, and the utility side of urban planning always wins. I end here with another memory, the one I hope to lay down on this page as I once helped lay down on an urban scale, this dream of Denoel of a place that was Alphabetopia in both name and meaning:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

25

Bibliotheca Prohibitorum

I
was entering that most sacred of places once again, this time without the supervision of the mad Librarian. Every answer and every question was housed right here, in this infinite space. I had found the portal between Setzer's realm and Castellemare's, aided only with my own methods. The death toll was now two: Setzer and the double-agent Angelo. Would there have to be three deaths so that three may live? I thought of the waiting people in the rooms far above... if I could say what was up or down in this space. But that was the real trick of the labyrinth: it was not a measure of space, but of timing, and those rooms I had wandered through were not adjacent to the Library, but before, subsequent to, prior in succession. Here I was, in a timeless space with no boundaries.