"The Smallest Book in the World"
A Core Book Review
by Natalie Ng

Book info:
Title: The Smallest Book in the World
Author: Josua Reichert
Publisher: Die Gestalten Verlag, 2002

I set out to write the shortest book review in the world, appropriately, I gathered, on The Smallest Book in the World (Die Gestalten Verlag, 2002; US$110). But then I realized the conceptual nature of the review would render it somewhat non-printable (I use the term "printable" loosely to include the electronic version on the Internet). More importantly, the idea of such a review, perhaps much like that of its subject, would likely be superior to the final outcome. Which is not to say, however, it is not worth the effort, as evidenced by the German typographer Josua Reichert's latest "book," which invokes a number of interesting issues pertaining to book design, typography, print medium, and the current publishing market.

In terms of timing, the release of The Smallest Book is both logical and odd. It arrived the market at a time when the opposite extremity in its various manifestations, from the largest conglomerates to the tallest buildings, in one way or another carry certain negative associations. The Smallest Book, measuring 2.4mm by 2.9mm, seems to be very much in sync with the popular consumer aesthetics and obsession with everything portable and light weight. Yet, exactly because of the advanced technology in manufacturing and ubiquitous computing that have made products even more unwieldy than a traditional set of encyclopedias available in a gadget the size of a palm, it appears that printing on paper twenty-six alphabets, which comprise the entire content of The Smallest Book, as minuscule as possible a rather peculiar mission indeed.

The exclusive fonts designed by Reichert exudes an unmistakable idiosyncrasy and playfulness. Nevertheless, readers would more likely find themselves overwhelmed less by the uniqueness of the fonts than by all that meticulousness going into presenting the content. If there is a case to be made about judging a book by its cover, or in this case, the case, this is it. Delicately safeguarded under a square of magnifying glass centered in a polished mahogany wood box with four green felt cushion dots precisely place at the corners of the underside, the leather-bound, full-color illustrated edition, manufactured in the traditional book city, Leipzip, Germany, bears all the traits of an exquisite item for collectors.

But since more writing has been scripted on less word-friendly tiny surfaces (e.g. a grain of rice), to lump the diminutive book with other miniature collectibles, one would risk missing a quaint statement -- perhaps quite inadvertently made -- hidden somewhere between the lines of A and Z. It's a statement that may not call for tracing the print history all the way back to Gutenberg, though one would almost certainly benefit from it.

Unlike the usual suspects coveted by bibliophiles, for instance, first editions and autographed copies bearing a patina of age, The Smallest Book emanates a distinct, if confounding, aura -- and let's not forget re-definition of aura has come a long way since Walter Benjamin's 1955 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" -- one that is layered with ambivalence indicative of the state of art book publishing in the new media age. The Smallest Book is at once the epitome and the antithesis of its form; it's a curious thing due in no small part to its dogged insistence of the book form and the time honored tradition of the art of printing and bookbinding belonging to an bygone era. Yet, more tellingly, when the print medium has been relegated -- or elevated, as some would argue -- to the status of sheer collectibles, when the print form attempts to evade its increasing irrelevance by emulating, at times wrong-headedly, its digital counterpart such as a microscopic computer chip, it doesn't take a good deal more than twenty-six alphabets to spell out the message that is, literally, the medium.