Books are not magic

Books are not magic.

If the magic is not in the book, where is it? Not in the writer! She is like the rest of us. 

No, the magic is in the idea. Every inspired writer is an unconscious platonist. Effecting and affecting into substances the essential idea that possesses him, the magic is not "in" anything. Things cannot inspire. The magic is in the idea.

The materials of books - the design and paper and ink - can partake of the mystery of knowing and story, insofar as they express only the magic of the idea. Marketing was never the main consideration in book design, since only the idea makes the book of value anyway. Only the idea ever matters in any book.

In the idea is the magic and music and madness of knowledge, the dream and dram and drama of the story.