1)
Reading in Rothenberg's and Clay's 'Editor's Foreward' from
A Book of the Book, they mention the material book being in
danger of being superceded by the non-virtual book.
From Mlodinow's A Drunkard's Walk, Pierre-Simon Laplace
wrote in 1814:
'If an intelligence, at a given instant, knew all the forces that animate
nature and the position of each constituent being; if, moreover, this
intelligence were sufficiently great to submit these data to analysis,
it could embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest
bodies in the universe and those of the smallest atoms: to this
intelligence nothing would be uncertain, and the future, as the past,
would be present to its eyes.'
This was Laplace's view on determinism, an idea that the state of the
world at the present moment can determine with precision the manner in
which the future will transpire. Essentially, what we do now with the
properties of any given situation or environment will/can lead absolutely
to future consequences.
Determinism isn't a term society uses loosely. No one is walking around
discussing it in everyday conversation, but doesn't this apply to publishing?
An example: The Sunday Times of London conducted an experiment with
editors submitting opening chapter manuscripts (that had won the Booker Prize)
to 20 major publishers and agents. One manuscript was from Nobel Prize winner
V.S. Naipaul's In A Free State, the other Stanley Middleton's Holiday.
Chances are the manuscripts would have received wonderful praise had the
agents and publishers been told who the authors were, but the manuscripts
were submitted under the guise of new wannabe authors. All but one of
one of the 40 replies were rejection letters.
Stephen King invented Richard Bachman as a test because he feared
readers wouldn't pick up his books as fast as he was writing them. No
one really followed Bachman, but as soon as he announced that he was
Bachman himself, all the books under his pseudonym rose in sales
immediately.
In addition, determinism deals with the creation of an outcome.
Mlodinow discusses how many success stories are deceiving, much of the
time by fortunate happenstance. An event transpires by chance and
someone who has struggled catches a break and becomes successful by
happenstance, and therefore the populace believes that this person is great
at what he or she does, is successful at their profession, but, and just as an
example, are James Patterson or Stephanie Meyer fantastic writers, or do
people see their success as the reason why they continue to be considered
great writers?
Is this what is happening between material book sales and ebooks? Is
the populace determining the publishing route? Is the media determining
for the populace what route to take? How did the demand change?
2)
Being interviewed by Alvin Toffler, when asked how he chose the
names of the two main characters in his novel, Lolita,
Vladimir Nabokov said this:
For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the
most limpid and luminous letters is 'L.' The suffix 'ita' has a lot of Latin
tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should
not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta,
with a heavy, clammy 'L' and a long 'o.' No, the first syllable should be as
in 'lollipop,' the 'L' liquid and delicate, the 'lee' not too sharp. Spaniards
and Italians pronounce it, of course, with exactly the necessary note of
archness and caress. Another consideration was the welcome murmur of
its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in 'Dolores.' My
little girl's heart-rending fate had to be taken into account together with the
cuteness and limpidity. Dolores also provided her with another, plainer,
more familiar and infantile diminutive: Dolly, which went nicely with the
surname 'Haze,' where Irish mists blend with a German bunny-I mean
a small German hare... It is also a kingly name, and I did need a royal
vibration for Humbert the Fierce and Humbert the Humble. Lends itself
also to a number of puns. And the execrable diminutive 'Hum' is on a par,
socially and emotionally, with 'Lo,' as her mother calls her.
3)
Being left in libraries in Scotland are these fantastic paper sculptures.
Link: Mysterious paper sculptures blog
4)
I found the first of the five works in the Brazil JAB issue quiet
interesting regarding the first Pan-American exhibition, "Perspective
of the Artist's Book," at the Federal Univ. of Minas Gerais. There are
great tidbits all throughout the lengthy piece, including page 9,
where they discuss that artists' books are often considered by their
authors to be a special production, even 'secret.' I can agree with
this, though I don't necessarily hide work in the closet or at the
bottom of a drawer to rarely see the light of day. The exhibition was
to make the public aware of such works, but I kind of feel that those
that keep their work ultra secret are those that won't have their work
before the public as often. Writing is of course a private thing, but the
work has to make it out there at some point... if you want it to be
out there.
Paulo Bruscky, starting at the end of page 9 and carrying forward,
had some very cool experimental theories he put into action that I
very much like. He placed art through the mail in order to circulate
his ideas, which apparently helped his work being left uncensored.
That's illegal in this country, unless you get away with it. He
incorporated unique materials he came across into his work to
'appropriate and defunctionalize.' He then produced a series of books
utilizing electrical circuits, 'in which the electronic components
function as characters linked to each other by wiring. In the case of
these books, the artist maintains the format of the codex, which also
contextualizes the signs linked in network, as scriptures.' How cool
is that?
The piece ends in agreement with Johanna Drucker's 'assessment
that difficulties do exist in defining the artist's book, precisely
because the artists' book are situated in a hybrid zone, in some
place at the intersection, on the frontier, and at the limits of
other artistic activities.'
Amazing what a dictatorship will do to one's creativity.
5)
One of my favorites pieces in "A Book of the Book" is about the
creativity of Blaise Cendrars and Sonia Delaunay, and the masterful
marketing and brilliance of the work's acceptance.
A poem-painting an a sort of advertising poster had to be a fairly new
concept. Cendrars relates the luminous billboard (the poster to the
tower itself) that 'the flower of contemporary life is the warmest sign
of the vigor of today's men-indeed, one of the seven wonders of the
world.' Little doubt that the art at the bottom left of the piece showing
the Eiffel tower protruding through the orange O-ring an invitation to
man's vigor.
The manifesto Cendrars published in the September 1913 Berlin
periodical, "Der Strum," was bold and exquisite and a fine taste of the
literary work for which he wanted the audience to see. The fever he
states he has is a perfect statement. Life and art are inseparable to
him, with poetry full of violence and energy, yet I actually found the
work, at least in its origin and beginning, to be full of colorful ambiance
and dream-like. I feel his words and her art are a painted unification
that justify their invention wholly.
The Invention of their work, 'La Prose du Transsiberien et de la petite
Jehanne de France,' or 'Le Premier livre simultane,' was exhibited in
what I find a fascinating way... an event. In St. Petersburg,
Victor Smirnoff gave an accompanying lecture. In Paris,
Mme Lucy Wilhelm stood on a chair to recite the hung piece, finally
bending to her knees to read the final lower lines. This was
performance art, though not at its beginnings, as we have discussed
that the Aztecs were possibly doing so long before, but this was
surely a new audible and visual combination of art and poetry, and
given that the French and the Aztecs and other poetic civilizations
around the world didn't communicate daily at that time over such
exhibitions (did they?), perhaps it was a new form of performance
art in Paris.
To contrast Cendrar's words of the war and the lonely Transsiberien,
Delaunay used 'great splashes' to emphasize the interpretation of
'life, movement, energy, and color rather than its darker undertones.'
Even if not illustrating Cendrar's word, her work certainly complements
them. Perloff's relation is accurate that if Cendrar's sun is a fierce
wound, then Delaunay's sun is a gorgeous, golden ball. Their view is
that contrast is a resemblance, and both have put their 'two sexes'
contrast on the folded page in a compatible idealization of
contrast itself.
The folded work sets an unimaginable height of wanderlust. I like the
contrast at the top of having the title over the art and the map over
the words, only to have them switch for the remainder of the work.
The tower small at the bottom is a contrast to his announcement
that the copy production of the work would equal the true height of
the Eiffel Tower. And then rising above the tower the length of the
work is a colorful pallet of swirls and circles and waves and strokes
that illuminate, not only the words that are descending, but the world
above the words and the landscape. As the isolation of war and the
Transsiberien falls, the beautiful aura of art and poetry and Paris
and futurism rises.
What of the print contrast of the words poetry against the backdrop
of these color shapes? What of the use of printing manifestos across
Europe to announce publication at that time? Is Perloff right in
stating there is not a one-to-one correspondence between typeface
and a particular emotion or theme?
6)
Can we really say enough about Borges? The same for Neruda?
Were these guys best friends and experimenting in some type of
South American writing drug?
I wanted to post on Martha Carothers' essay on novelty books from
"A Book of the Book," mainly because the first illustration reminded
me of my E6-B flight computer, which is a tool you can attach to
your thigh-strap during flight or use beforehand to measure such
things as gas and density and wind variable and airspeed and altitude,
etc. The circular piece is on a slide rule and just as confusing looking
upon initial viewing as the illustration on page 319.
As the essays on Chinese end toward the second half of the section
"The Book Is As Old...," I feel a unique transformation in the essays.
The essay on the Kabbalah starting on page 339 struck a chord,
especially with the statement in the opening paragraph that 'it is said
that one word is the seed of a particular universe.' Further down the
page lies 'the meaning of each letter, each word, each sentence,
chapter, book, even each vowel-point, the Kabbalist hopes to
penetrate through the folds and veils to enter other realms.'
But moving in Borges' "On The Cult Of Books," I felt a culmination of
many of the statements throughout this book. The mentions of fire.
The Platonic universe. Philosophical dialogue. A teacher selects pupils
but books don't select their readers. Letters having power over air,
which over water, which over fire, then wisdom, then peace, then
grace, then sleep, then anger, which over life, served the sun, the
day of Wednesday, and the body's left ear (page 349). There's
something remarkable in that.
I'm actually surprised at how much religion is mentioned in this book.
I'm not sure I ever considered literature and words and vowels
between Kabbalists and Jews and Muslims and Christians and Mayans
and Russians and Brits and Catholics and the French (a collection of
religions and ancestries). I was probably more surprised at the
subject material of this essay after simply reading the title.
And in the notes at the end of the essay, No. 2 starts with
'Galileo's works abound with the concept of the universe as a book.'
Is anyone else feeling like the book is suddenly bigger?
7)
Also from "A Book of the Book," this is a very fitting piece to
end the book that we have all been engrossed in this semester.
Twas nice to find out some dates on some key moments in history
regarding language, and I agree with much of what
Bernstein discusses.
This post isn't necessarily a disagreement, but a thought-invoked
Reading in Rothenberg's and Clay's 'Editor's Foreward' from
A Book of the Book, they mention the material book being in
danger of being superceded by the non-virtual book.
From Mlodinow's A Drunkard's Walk, Pierre-Simon Laplace
wrote in 1814:
'If an intelligence, at a given instant, knew all the forces that animate
nature and the position of each constituent being; if, moreover, this
intelligence were sufficiently great to submit these data to analysis,
it could embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest
bodies in the universe and those of the smallest atoms: to this
intelligence nothing would be uncertain, and the future, as the past,
would be present to its eyes.'
This was Laplace's view on determinism, an idea that the state of the
world at the present moment can determine with precision the manner in
which the future will transpire. Essentially, what we do now with the
properties of any given situation or environment will/can lead absolutely
to future consequences.
Determinism isn't a term society uses loosely. No one is walking around
discussing it in everyday conversation, but doesn't this apply to publishing?
An example: The Sunday Times of London conducted an experiment with
editors submitting opening chapter manuscripts (that had won the Booker Prize)
to 20 major publishers and agents. One manuscript was from Nobel Prize winner
V.S. Naipaul's In A Free State, the other Stanley Middleton's Holiday.
Chances are the manuscripts would have received wonderful praise had the
agents and publishers been told who the authors were, but the manuscripts
were submitted under the guise of new wannabe authors. All but one of
one of the 40 replies were rejection letters.
Stephen King invented Richard Bachman as a test because he feared
readers wouldn't pick up his books as fast as he was writing them. No
one really followed Bachman, but as soon as he announced that he was
Bachman himself, all the books under his pseudonym rose in sales
immediately.
In addition, determinism deals with the creation of an outcome.
Mlodinow discusses how many success stories are deceiving, much of the
time by fortunate happenstance. An event transpires by chance and
someone who has struggled catches a break and becomes successful by
happenstance, and therefore the populace believes that this person is great
at what he or she does, is successful at their profession, but, and just as an
example, are James Patterson or Stephanie Meyer fantastic writers, or do
people see their success as the reason why they continue to be considered
great writers?
Is this what is happening between material book sales and ebooks? Is
the populace determining the publishing route? Is the media determining
for the populace what route to take? How did the demand change?
2)
Being interviewed by Alvin Toffler, when asked how he chose the
names of the two main characters in his novel, Lolita,
Vladimir Nabokov said this:
For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the
most limpid and luminous letters is 'L.' The suffix 'ita' has a lot of Latin
tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should
not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta,
with a heavy, clammy 'L' and a long 'o.' No, the first syllable should be as
in 'lollipop,' the 'L' liquid and delicate, the 'lee' not too sharp. Spaniards
and Italians pronounce it, of course, with exactly the necessary note of
archness and caress. Another consideration was the welcome murmur of
its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in 'Dolores.' My
little girl's heart-rending fate had to be taken into account together with the
cuteness and limpidity. Dolores also provided her with another, plainer,
more familiar and infantile diminutive: Dolly, which went nicely with the
surname 'Haze,' where Irish mists blend with a German bunny-I mean
a small German hare... It is also a kingly name, and I did need a royal
vibration for Humbert the Fierce and Humbert the Humble. Lends itself
also to a number of puns. And the execrable diminutive 'Hum' is on a par,
socially and emotionally, with 'Lo,' as her mother calls her.
3)
Being left in libraries in Scotland are these fantastic paper sculptures.
Link: Mysterious paper sculptures blog
4)
I found the first of the five works in the Brazil JAB issue quiet
interesting regarding the first Pan-American exhibition, "Perspective
of the Artist's Book," at the Federal Univ. of Minas Gerais. There are
great tidbits all throughout the lengthy piece, including page 9,
where they discuss that artists' books are often considered by their
authors to be a special production, even 'secret.' I can agree with
this, though I don't necessarily hide work in the closet or at the
bottom of a drawer to rarely see the light of day. The exhibition was
to make the public aware of such works, but I kind of feel that those
that keep their work ultra secret are those that won't have their work
before the public as often. Writing is of course a private thing, but the
work has to make it out there at some point... if you want it to be
out there.
Paulo Bruscky, starting at the end of page 9 and carrying forward,
had some very cool experimental theories he put into action that I
very much like. He placed art through the mail in order to circulate
his ideas, which apparently helped his work being left uncensored.
That's illegal in this country, unless you get away with it. He
incorporated unique materials he came across into his work to
'appropriate and defunctionalize.' He then produced a series of books
utilizing electrical circuits, 'in which the electronic components
function as characters linked to each other by wiring. In the case of
these books, the artist maintains the format of the codex, which also
contextualizes the signs linked in network, as scriptures.' How cool
is that?
The piece ends in agreement with Johanna Drucker's 'assessment
that difficulties do exist in defining the artist's book, precisely
because the artists' book are situated in a hybrid zone, in some
place at the intersection, on the frontier, and at the limits of
other artistic activities.'
Amazing what a dictatorship will do to one's creativity.
5)
One of my favorites pieces in "A Book of the Book" is about the
creativity of Blaise Cendrars and Sonia Delaunay, and the masterful
marketing and brilliance of the work's acceptance.
A poem-painting an a sort of advertising poster had to be a fairly new
concept. Cendrars relates the luminous billboard (the poster to the
tower itself) that 'the flower of contemporary life is the warmest sign
of the vigor of today's men-indeed, one of the seven wonders of the
world.' Little doubt that the art at the bottom left of the piece showing
the Eiffel tower protruding through the orange O-ring an invitation to
man's vigor.
The manifesto Cendrars published in the September 1913 Berlin
periodical, "Der Strum," was bold and exquisite and a fine taste of the
literary work for which he wanted the audience to see. The fever he
states he has is a perfect statement. Life and art are inseparable to
him, with poetry full of violence and energy, yet I actually found the
work, at least in its origin and beginning, to be full of colorful ambiance
and dream-like. I feel his words and her art are a painted unification
that justify their invention wholly.
The Invention of their work, 'La Prose du Transsiberien et de la petite
Jehanne de France,' or 'Le Premier livre simultane,' was exhibited in
what I find a fascinating way... an event. In St. Petersburg,
Victor Smirnoff gave an accompanying lecture. In Paris,
Mme Lucy Wilhelm stood on a chair to recite the hung piece, finally
bending to her knees to read the final lower lines. This was
performance art, though not at its beginnings, as we have discussed
that the Aztecs were possibly doing so long before, but this was
surely a new audible and visual combination of art and poetry, and
given that the French and the Aztecs and other poetic civilizations
around the world didn't communicate daily at that time over such
exhibitions (did they?), perhaps it was a new form of performance
art in Paris.
To contrast Cendrar's words of the war and the lonely Transsiberien,
Delaunay used 'great splashes' to emphasize the interpretation of
'life, movement, energy, and color rather than its darker undertones.'
Even if not illustrating Cendrar's word, her work certainly complements
them. Perloff's relation is accurate that if Cendrar's sun is a fierce
wound, then Delaunay's sun is a gorgeous, golden ball. Their view is
that contrast is a resemblance, and both have put their 'two sexes'
contrast on the folded page in a compatible idealization of
contrast itself.
The folded work sets an unimaginable height of wanderlust. I like the
contrast at the top of having the title over the art and the map over
the words, only to have them switch for the remainder of the work.
The tower small at the bottom is a contrast to his announcement
that the copy production of the work would equal the true height of
the Eiffel Tower. And then rising above the tower the length of the
work is a colorful pallet of swirls and circles and waves and strokes
that illuminate, not only the words that are descending, but the world
above the words and the landscape. As the isolation of war and the
Transsiberien falls, the beautiful aura of art and poetry and Paris
and futurism rises.
What of the print contrast of the words poetry against the backdrop
of these color shapes? What of the use of printing manifestos across
Europe to announce publication at that time? Is Perloff right in
stating there is not a one-to-one correspondence between typeface
and a particular emotion or theme?
6)
Can we really say enough about Borges? The same for Neruda?
Were these guys best friends and experimenting in some type of
South American writing drug?
I wanted to post on Martha Carothers' essay on novelty books from
"A Book of the Book," mainly because the first illustration reminded
me of my E6-B flight computer, which is a tool you can attach to
your thigh-strap during flight or use beforehand to measure such
things as gas and density and wind variable and airspeed and altitude,
etc. The circular piece is on a slide rule and just as confusing looking
upon initial viewing as the illustration on page 319.
As the essays on Chinese end toward the second half of the section
"The Book Is As Old...," I feel a unique transformation in the essays.
The essay on the Kabbalah starting on page 339 struck a chord,
especially with the statement in the opening paragraph that 'it is said
that one word is the seed of a particular universe.' Further down the
page lies 'the meaning of each letter, each word, each sentence,
chapter, book, even each vowel-point, the Kabbalist hopes to
penetrate through the folds and veils to enter other realms.'
But moving in Borges' "On The Cult Of Books," I felt a culmination of
many of the statements throughout this book. The mentions of fire.
The Platonic universe. Philosophical dialogue. A teacher selects pupils
but books don't select their readers. Letters having power over air,
which over water, which over fire, then wisdom, then peace, then
grace, then sleep, then anger, which over life, served the sun, the
day of Wednesday, and the body's left ear (page 349). There's
something remarkable in that.
I'm actually surprised at how much religion is mentioned in this book.
I'm not sure I ever considered literature and words and vowels
between Kabbalists and Jews and Muslims and Christians and Mayans
and Russians and Brits and Catholics and the French (a collection of
religions and ancestries). I was probably more surprised at the
subject material of this essay after simply reading the title.
And in the notes at the end of the essay, No. 2 starts with
'Galileo's works abound with the concept of the universe as a book.'
Is anyone else feeling like the book is suddenly bigger?
7)
Also from "A Book of the Book," this is a very fitting piece to
end the book that we have all been engrossed in this semester.
Twas nice to find out some dates on some key moments in history
regarding language, and I agree with much of what
Bernstein discusses.
This post isn't necessarily a disagreement, but a thought-invoked
series of questions, starting with the second paragraph of the essay
where he asks who invented language? Based on many of the works
we've read in this book, such as the recent gravestone piece or ones
related to philosophy, language could have begun before any
recognized form of it, whether we recognized it as communication
or not. If it was written and understood as communication in a
civilization before recognized recording, then it was written
communication that was understood. It doesn't matter that the
N. Semitic, Phoenician, and Hebrew alphabets later on came up
with a consonant-based 22 letter script that erased the need to
memorize hundreds of characters, although I understand the
importance of that.
On the second page he discusses Havelock's perspective on
On the second page he discusses Havelock's perspective on
literate cultures. The fact that recorded text from ancient cultures
is rare could possibly dictate that as true, that the culture was not
a literate culture, but that is really only true compared to a literate
culture in today's society. Can we say that ancient cultures who
did deliver recorded text were above or equal to or below the
cultural literacy level of cultures around it, or on other continents?
In the day, some of those cultures were probably the kings of
written text communication compared to who they shared the
world with.
On pg 507 he discusses that language not only records language,
On pg 507 he discusses that language not only records language,
but it also changes language. I'm gathering this statement can
indicate that language can record its own perpetuation, the same
as a brain can learn from its own neurological mechanics through
new coding as we live each new day. This is cool to wrap a
thought around. He states on the next page that the alphabet
makes it's own mark to allow for greater reflection and abstraction.
Is this the same as saying the space program learns from itself and
grows from previous growth, which learned from previous growth.
We all create from what we know. We can say "A Book of the Book"
We all create from what we know. We can say "A Book of the Book"
is a creation from what was known at the time it was made by who
made it, and now it has evolved into something for us to grow from.
I think I think I know what I'm talking about. I think.
8)
I inter-loaned a book that came a week or so ago called "Futurism,"
by Didier Ottinger. Every one of us should view it at some point. Not
only does it include the Transsiberien piece by Cendrars and
Sonia Delaunay, the book discusses Marinetti at length and much
about Delaunay, who seemed to actually work against the attacks
of futurists, which left me a little confused.
The book is some 350 pages, with mainly pages 100-330 showing
the artwork of the time from some of the futurist greats like Carro,
Severini, Villon, Boccioni, and plenty more. There are many Picasso
pieces and a full chronology of futurism at the back, including much
discussion on 'Poesia,' Marinetti's main handywork at presenting
the movement.
Delaunay was quite an artist. On page 106 is his 'Tour Eiffel,' a
remarkable piece centered on the tower in red, with the white smoke
of industrialism meeting the sky and cloud rising all around it. It is
similar to many of the works throughout the book that show people
and buildings and trains as blocked particles coming together to make
a new vision of something old.
On page 184 is Delaunay's 'La Ville de Paris,' showing three naked
ladies surrounded by the marveling growth of Paris. The skyline,
housing, tower, and bridges are all growing, still blocked, including
the three ladies, as if they are advancing into something new. He is
remarking on vast expansion and grand schemes, two themes
of futurism.
On page 190 is his 'L'Equipe de Cardiff,' which is one of the few
pieces in the entire book where I actually see anything related to
a flying machine, which comes over the ferris wheel and tower with
boys or men leaping to catch a football wearing the new clothing of
the time. I take it as advancement of the city into modern times,
with the new machines of the day taking over the feel of the city.
Many who viewed it at that time said it was a perfect example of
simultaneity, which was a new tendency in Cubism.
This book is incredible. There is some fantastic artwork in this book.
Many a many name we have read about in 'A Book of the Book' are
prominent through this book's pages, and the chronology at the back
is very interesting to sift through.
9)
A very elongated book, 'Printing and the Mind of Man: The Impact of
Print on Five Centuries of Western Civilization,' edited by John Carter
and Percy H. Muir, is an interesting book to be hold, and full of history.
From its shape and the bold red on the facing title pages to the 424
books or so that it discusses regarding enormous impact on the world,
the book is a faucet of early dedication.
A very cool thought arrives in the introduction, that "the bondage of
words was broken by writing them down," and a page later comes a
sequence on the availability of the written word allowing mankind the
ability to forget since the storage of words was then made possible.
People could make lists of those who owed money, of those who
donated money, of those in a parish, of those who swam on New
Year’s Day as members of the Polar Bear Club.
That’s remarkable to me to think that the world changed that much
with the origin of the written word, and not always with the correct
consensus words. We have discussed cave marking and other forms
of communication in class less semester, but with organized wording,
with printing, with the placement of letters on paper in certain orders,
the world grew dramatically in a very short amount of time.
I don’t doubt that literature developed across the world like word of a
happy hour beer special spreads like fire on a college campus when a
new bar opens, and the world at the dawn of the printed word had
different lettering, of course, depending where you lived. Latin
originally had 21 characters, which was derived from Greek and
Etruscan, and alphabets that were born from it, such as modern
English, but none carried the weight of the Chinese character total,
which was upward of 6,000. I can picture the literary giants sitting
around the Yellow River with their satchels full of character printouts,
merely there in case someone wanted to write a thought in their journal.
The first book mentioned is Gutenberg’s bible, per se 1455, and the last
book mentioned is Winston Churchill’s 'The Lion’s Voice' from 1940. The
book was a random find in our library, improperly numbered I feel, with
a badly torn spine and plastic covering. The book has some odd
illustrations and lettering examples, and a rather massive index, and at
least one spacing issue on the front cover jacket.
The book is definitely worth viewing even if you happen to hate all 424
or so books mentioned inside it.
8)
I inter-loaned a book that came a week or so ago called "Futurism,"
by Didier Ottinger. Every one of us should view it at some point. Not
only does it include the Transsiberien piece by Cendrars and
Sonia Delaunay, the book discusses Marinetti at length and much
about Delaunay, who seemed to actually work against the attacks
of futurists, which left me a little confused.
The book is some 350 pages, with mainly pages 100-330 showing
the artwork of the time from some of the futurist greats like Carro,
Severini, Villon, Boccioni, and plenty more. There are many Picasso
pieces and a full chronology of futurism at the back, including much
discussion on 'Poesia,' Marinetti's main handywork at presenting
the movement.
Delaunay was quite an artist. On page 106 is his 'Tour Eiffel,' a
remarkable piece centered on the tower in red, with the white smoke
of industrialism meeting the sky and cloud rising all around it. It is
similar to many of the works throughout the book that show people
and buildings and trains as blocked particles coming together to make
a new vision of something old.
On page 184 is Delaunay's 'La Ville de Paris,' showing three naked
ladies surrounded by the marveling growth of Paris. The skyline,
housing, tower, and bridges are all growing, still blocked, including
the three ladies, as if they are advancing into something new. He is
remarking on vast expansion and grand schemes, two themes
of futurism.
On page 190 is his 'L'Equipe de Cardiff,' which is one of the few
pieces in the entire book where I actually see anything related to
a flying machine, which comes over the ferris wheel and tower with
boys or men leaping to catch a football wearing the new clothing of
the time. I take it as advancement of the city into modern times,
with the new machines of the day taking over the feel of the city.
Many who viewed it at that time said it was a perfect example of
simultaneity, which was a new tendency in Cubism.
This book is incredible. There is some fantastic artwork in this book.
Many a many name we have read about in 'A Book of the Book' are
prominent through this book's pages, and the chronology at the back
is very interesting to sift through.
9)
A very elongated book, 'Printing and the Mind of Man: The Impact of
Print on Five Centuries of Western Civilization,' edited by John Carter
and Percy H. Muir, is an interesting book to be hold, and full of history.
From its shape and the bold red on the facing title pages to the 424
books or so that it discusses regarding enormous impact on the world,
the book is a faucet of early dedication.
A very cool thought arrives in the introduction, that "the bondage of
words was broken by writing them down," and a page later comes a
sequence on the availability of the written word allowing mankind the
ability to forget since the storage of words was then made possible.
People could make lists of those who owed money, of those who
donated money, of those in a parish, of those who swam on New
Year’s Day as members of the Polar Bear Club.
That’s remarkable to me to think that the world changed that much
with the origin of the written word, and not always with the correct
consensus words. We have discussed cave marking and other forms
of communication in class less semester, but with organized wording,
with printing, with the placement of letters on paper in certain orders,
the world grew dramatically in a very short amount of time.
I don’t doubt that literature developed across the world like word of a
happy hour beer special spreads like fire on a college campus when a
new bar opens, and the world at the dawn of the printed word had
different lettering, of course, depending where you lived. Latin
originally had 21 characters, which was derived from Greek and
Etruscan, and alphabets that were born from it, such as modern
English, but none carried the weight of the Chinese character total,
which was upward of 6,000. I can picture the literary giants sitting
around the Yellow River with their satchels full of character printouts,
merely there in case someone wanted to write a thought in their journal.
The first book mentioned is Gutenberg’s bible, per se 1455, and the last
book mentioned is Winston Churchill’s 'The Lion’s Voice' from 1940. The
book was a random find in our library, improperly numbered I feel, with
a badly torn spine and plastic covering. The book has some odd
illustrations and lettering examples, and a rather massive index, and at
least one spacing issue on the front cover jacket.
The book is definitely worth viewing even if you happen to hate all 424
or so books mentioned inside it.
