Description
Book SynopsisContrary 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
Trade ReviewBook Presence in a Digital Age is that rare volume that reads as both the culmination and anticipation of a field. It reflexively brings together some of the most compelling critics and artists thinking about ‘the book’ as medium and cultural artifact – and the individual conversations, explorations, and interventions that result would have alone made for a worthy volume. But the cumulative effect is much more than this, for collectively they articulate the questions that will inform scholarship and artistic practice for some years to come. * Rita Raley, Associate Professor of English, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA *
Operating in the force field between literary theory, comparative media studies, and new materialism,
Book Presence in a Digital Age brims over with fresh, insightful, and nuanced explorations of the shifting contours of bookishness in the information age. By means of richly variegated points of entry, it demonstrates how print artifacts, far from hovering at the margins of the digital media ecology, have emerged as one of the defining laboratories for the elaboration of contemporary cultural forms. * Jeffrey Schnapp, Faculty Director of metaLAB, Harvard University, USA *
Table of ContentsList of Plates List of Figures Notes on Contributors 1. Book Presence: An Introductory Exploration
Kiene Brillenburg Wurth (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) I: Theory and Overview 2. Pagina Abscondita: Reading the the Book's Wake
John T. Hamilton (Harvard University, USA) 3. From Codex to Codecs
Garrett Stewart (University of Iowa, USA) 4. Bookwork and Bookishness: An Interview with Brian Dettmer and Doug Beube
Jessica Pressman (San Diego State University, USA) Section II: Media Changes and Materiality 5. Infrathin Platforms: Print on Demand as Auto-Factography
Hannes Bajohr (Berlin’s Center for Literary and Cultural Research, Germany) 6. Genre and Materiality: Autobiography and Zines
Anna Poletti (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) 7. Doing Things with Literature in the Digital Age: Italo Calvino’s
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller and the Material Turn in Literary Studies
Liedeke Plate (Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands) 8. ‘Book for Loan’: S as Paradox on Media Change
Emma De Vries and Yra van Dijk (Leiden University, the Netherlands) 9. Book Presence and Feline Absence: A Conversation with Mark Z. Danielewski
Kári Driscoll (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) and Inge van de Ven (Tilburg University, the Netherlands) Section III: Conceptual Possibilities of the Book 10. Learn to Read Differently
Simon Morris (Leeds Beckett University, UK) 11.
Emoji Dick and the Eponymous Whale
Lisa Gitelman (New York University, USA) 12. The Demediation of Alphabetic Writing in Memory Palace and Fugitive Sparrows
Kiene Brillenburg Wurth (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) 13. Revisiting the Book-as-World: World-Making and Book Materiality in
Only Revolutions and
The Atlas Inge van de Ven (Tilburg University, the Netherlands) 14. Books as Archives: An Interview with Ernst van Alphen
Kiene Brillenburg Wurth (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) Index
