Book Around the Corner

Encyclopaedia of Snow by Sarah Emily Miano 2003. Not available in French.

Encyclopaedia of Snow by Sarah Emily Miano is a quirky little book about snow, with articles going from Angel to YHWH, all somewhat related to snow. Some are short biographies, some are literature, some explain a word or a concept. It’s really hard to describe. The book is well constructed, the style is poetic, the content literate. All literary techniques are used here: classic narrative in the short stories (WINK AND WHISTLE), verses for poems (NAGA NAGASHI YO), dialogues, epistolary fiction for the letters between Butterfly and Moth (HARMONY), theatre (POLAR-ITY). For some articles, the layout is original, bringing back poets like Appolinaire or writers like Raymond Queneau.

Some articles or passages have footnotes to enforce the idea of encyclopaedia, like here:

I could smell him before he even got there. Not because of potency but because of extreme familiarty—I saw Marc every day at school, and oftentimes after school, and his cologne always travelled with him. It was a fresh cool water smell that reminded me of scuba-diving and Acapulco, though I’d never experienced either.*

(…)

* The male Danaide butterfly travels from one flower to another, collecting scents in a pocket on each hind leg until he creates the ultimate perfume to attract a female.

 The general impression is as disorienting as being in a middle of a snow storm, flakes flying around you. Each article linked to snow plays its part to create the global snowy atmosphere. It’s lovely, artistic but not exactly agreeable. Snow is cold, remember? I liked parts of the books, was nonplussed by some articles, and totally lost in others. I enjoyed the short stories but struggled with the rest. Clearly, I lack the cultural background to understand everything. The book’s variety resembles snow: you can lose yourself in a blizzard, be swallowed by an avalanche, slide slopes on skis or on a sled, build a snowman or have a lot of fun with snowballs. Snow can bring peace, as its blanket muffles sounds like nothing else and early morning in a city covered with snow has an eerie and peaceful sound. Snow is stressful when you have to drive. Snow is fun when you’re a child or a skier. The book mirrors all these emotions through the various themes and forms of its articles.

If Encyclopaedia of Snow belongs to a specific literary genre, I don’t know which one it is. It unsettled me because I was left behind, lots of time. You know the feeling of contemporary art exhibitions? It’s supposed to be art since it was chosen by more knowledgeable people, you stare and you wonder what the hell the artist meant by that thing. I usually feel stupid in front if these works of art. Well, I also felt stupid reading Encyclopaedia of Snow. I still don’t know what Sarah Emily Miano meant to achieve with this book. It’s been carefully put together but what does she mean by it? The next question is: does a book have to mean something or can it just be beautiful and nothing else?

This is the Humbook Stu picked for me last Christmas and I thank him for the challenge. This is not a book I would have chosen by myself. But like when I read Sleeping Patterns by J.R. Crook, I liked that it forced me to follow another literary path, for a change.