James Essinger's Spellbound: The Surprising Origins and Astonishing Secrets of English Spelling (Bantam, Dell, Delta 2007) actually discusses to some extent the magic of the written word.
Writing is the best and, perhaps, the only real form of magic humans have ever possessed, or are ever likely to possess. Merlin, Houdini, the Wicked Witch of the West, Gandalf, Harry Potter, and any other wizard you may care to mention have never performed any magic that comes within a light-year of being half as magical as the technology of writing. And writing is not only magical in itself. It also has the power to confer a kind of immortality on a writer, or on the person or thing being written about...As well as being a form of real magic, writing is also a universally important invention; very likely the most important invention of all time.
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