Book Presence In A Digital Age

Description

Contrary to the apocalyptic pronouncements of paper media's imminent demise in the digital age, there has been a veritable surge of creative reimaginings of books as bearers of the literary. From typographic experiments (Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts) to accordion books (Anne Carson's Nox), from cut ups (Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes) to collages (Graham Rawle's Woman's World), from erasures (Mary Ruefle's A Little White Shadow) to mixups (Simon Morris's The Interpretations of Dreams), print literature has gone through anything but a slow, inevitable death. In fact, it has re-invented itself materially. Starting from this idea of media plurality, Book Presence in a Digital Age explores the resilience of print literatures, book art, and zines in the late age of print from a contemporary perspective, while incorporating longer-term views on media archeology and media change. Even as it focuses on the materiality of books and literary writing in the present, Book Presence also takes into consideration earlier 20th-century "moments" of media transition, developing the concepts of presence and materiality as analytical tools to perform literary criticism in a digital age. Bringing together leading scholars, artists, and publishers, Book Presence in a Digital Age offers a variety of perspectives on the past, present, and future of the book as medium, the complex relationship of materiality to virtuality, and of the analog to the digital. Cover......Page 1 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright Page......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 List of Plates......Page 8 List of Illustrations......Page 9 Notes on Contributors......Page 11 Chapter 1: Book Presence: An Introductory Exploration......Page 16 I......Page 17 II......Page 27 III......Page 30 Works cited......Page 35 Part 1: Theory and Overview......Page 40 Chapter 2: Pagina Abscondita: Reading in the Book’s Wake......Page 42 Notes......Page 56 Works cited......Page 57 Chapter 3: From Codex to Codecs......Page 59 Volume 1: Reading time......Page 61 Volume 2: Immersive reading and depth perception......Page 63 Volume 3: Pages turned—or detourned......Page 65 Volume 4: Book/s reading......Page 69 Works cited......Page 73 Chapter 4: Bookwork and Bookishness: An interview with Doug Beube and Brian Dettmer......Page 75 Works cited......Page 82 Part 2: Media Changes and Materiality......Page 84 Chapter 5: Infrathin Platforms: Print on Demand as Auto-Factography......Page 86 Infrathin platforms: Gauss PDF, Troll Thread, 0x0a, Traumawien......Page 87 “A genre unto itself”......Page 89 Notes......Page 100 Works cited......Page 101 Chapter 6: Genre and Materiality: Autobiography and Zines......Page 105 Autobiography: Genre or register?......Page 107 Materiality and genre......Page 110 Zines and the materiality of the frame......Page 111 new beginnings: Confession by the light of digital media......Page 112 YOU: The frame as a point of no return......Page 115 Notes......Page 119 Works cited......Page 121 Chapter 7: Doing Things with Literature in a Digital Age: Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler and the Material Turn in Literary Studies......Page 124 Empirical oblivion5......Page 127 Back to the work: The material turn in literary studies......Page 129 Reading as a multisensory skill?......Page 131 Conclusion: Taking things seriously......Page 135 Notes......Page 136 Works cited......Page 138 Chapter 8: “Book for Loan”: S. as Paradox of Media Change......Page 142 The Ship of Theseus paradox......Page 145 Bookish hermeneutics......Page 149 Conclusion......Page 152 Notes......Page 154 Works cited......Page 157 Chapter 9: Book Presence and Feline Absence: A Conversation with Mark Z. Danielewski......Page 160 Notes......Page 174 Works cited......Page 175 Part 3: Conceptual Possibilities of the Book......Page 176 Chapter 10: Learn to Read Differently......Page 178 Introduction......Page 179 The Royal Road to the Unconscious, 2003......Page 180 Utilizing Ed Ruscha’s Royal Road Test as a readymade set of instructions......Page 183 Re-writing Freud, 2005......Page 190 Getting Inside Jack Kerouac’s Head, 2010......Page 194 Pigeon Reader, 2012......Page 201 Works cited......Page 207 I......Page 210 II......Page 214 III......Page 219 Notes......Page 223 Works cited......Page 224 Chaper 12: The Demediation of Writing in Memory Palace and Fugitive Sparrows......Page 226 The end of writing and the end of times......Page 227 Making writing appear as such......Page 232 Literature, forgetfulness, and the future......Page 234 Notes......Page 236 Works cited......Page 237 Chaper 13: Revisiting the Book-as-World: World-Making and Book Materiality in Only Revolutions and The Atlas......Page 240 World-making and the book-as-world......Page 243 Journey to the covers of the earth: Vollmann trapped inside his Atlas......Page 247 Around the world in 360 pages: Only Revolutions as a non-totalizable totality......Page 251 Conclusion......Page 257 Notes......Page 258 Works cited......Page 259 Chaper 14: Books as Archives: An Interview with Ernst van Alphen......Page 262 Index......Page 270 2.pdf......Page 276