Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker

       Hoban's novel Riddley Walker is an incredibly complex text, but I think it can certainly be asserted that Hoban is concerned with the two major issues that motivated Drucker's first work that she discusses: "the way in which visual structures actually produce meaning, and the relation between language and experience". The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic society thousands of years after nuclear war has destroyed the planet. Hoban imagines society reverting back to a Dark Ages system of intellectual inquiry, scientific discovery, artistic production, and most importantly for this discussion language. Hoban actually creates a linguistic system for these characters that uses all of the characters of type that we are familiar with, but arranged in an order that at times can be incredibly difficult to interpret. This language changes the way we view the characters' experiences of their reality, but also the way the reader experiences their reality. At times in the story there is also typescript that is set apart in a stanza-like presentation, type that is in italics, and type that is bold and in all capital letters. All of these different typescripts signify different meanings about the subject matter of the text being discussed. Hoban also encourages a radial reading of the text (such as McGann discusses). There is a glossary of some of the words he has created in the back of the book, as well as a history of the St. Eustace portrait upon which many of the characters base their religious and cultural philosophies. There are also other images scattered throughout the text that one can refer to as they read. Hoban has created a world in which language signifies experience differently and in which visuals produce meaning differently and asks the reader to explore this as well through his use of typography and spatial elements of his text.

Maus

I’m applying this week’s reading to the first hardback edition (1986) of Art Spiegelman’s Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale, the only graphic novel/memoir to win a Pulitzer Prize. The volume relies largely on phanopoeia, logopoei, and radial readings. The comics themselves are hand-lettered, while the chapter headings use bold machined fonts (akin to Arial or Franklin Gothic) paired with hand-drawn illustrations that harken back to war-era advertisements, propaganda posters, and even to period films. This is where the radial reading is most apt. The use of cats and mice is also apt in a radial reading; the anthropomorphic figures seem to reference Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney, and Tom & Jerry. This renders the inhumanity of man into both literal and figurative cartoon and does so by relying on the reader’s knowledge of early twentieth-century history and pop culture.

The visual reading additionally relies on the reader’s knowledge of classic comic books and their layout, occasionally breaking the classic text box/text bubble configuration for larger maps and illustrations. In fact, the back cover of this edition features a color map of occupied Poland with mouse skull and crossbones used to indicate the location of concentration camps. Two mice in black and white (ostensibly father and son) are superimposed in the lower left, posed in the comfort of an armchair (father) or stretched out on imagined carpet below (son). To their right, an inset map shows the characters’ home in Rego, Park, NY, signaling the threat of the larger/looming map somewhat moot (into a distant place if not a distant time).

What renders these images even more interesting is the text box below, a section filled with review blurbs. The book, as it is described on its own back cover, is (according to the Washington Post) “impossible to describe accurately, and impossible to achieve in any medium but comics.” According to Newsweek, “the very artificiality of its surface makes it possible to imagine the reality beneath.” (!)

The hardback covers and the pages within are glossy, foregoing the flat and cheap paper usually used for comic books and signaling the difference between comic memoir and comic strip, even while using the visual language of the latter. The copyright page is headed by a quote from Adolf Hitler, followed by a two-page title page—the front papers are designed to look like a billboard or wall that’s been spray painted with graffiti (a clean and rather thick banner listing Pantheon as the publisher runs across the bottom). The endpapers feature a full-page graphic illustration (possibly a linocut) depicting a crowd of grim mice with stars affixed to their clothing. A text box advertising the book’s sequel appears slightly below center to disrupt this image. In many ways, this book calls attention to itself as a commercial object.

Cavendish on Whist, 14th Edition

I chose a book from my home library for this week’s homework.  The title page has a unique frame which is very colorful, illustrating the suits in a deck of cards (i.e. hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs). The text within the frame consists of red and black lettering all in uppercase with various types of fonts in various sizes.  I would need to take up several pages to analyze all the varieties ones.  The actual words themselves are as follows.

THE

LAWS AND PRINCIPLES

OF

WHIST

STATED AND EXPLAINED

AND ITS

PRACTICE ILLUSTRATED

ON AN ORIGINAL SYSTEM

BY MEANS OF HANDS PLATED COMPLETELY THROUGH

BY

“CAVENDISH.”

FOURTEENTH EDITION

LONDON:

THOS. DE LA RUE & CO.

1884

ALL RIGHTS                         RESERVED

This ‘how to’ book provides the reader with practical information on the card game whist.  The book is printed throughout in two colors red and black with red text used for section headings within the chapters.  The chapter “The Laws of Whist” is a numerical list with footnotes added by the author.  Subsequent chapters provide information on how to play the first through fourth hands, followed by a chapter on “Trumps” and concluding with fully illustrated hands demonstrating how to take the best advantage of your hand of cards that you were dealt.

The typography in the book continues with the different sizes and types.  The main text is a ‘Serif’ typescript (in black) with a ‘Sans Serif’ type for the section headings (in red).  While you could read this book in a linear fashion, I suspect that it is a dip in and out of type reading it radially.  With the fully illustrated card hands, the book is constructivist in style as you will visualize the hands in the written text at the beginning of the book and will consider your previous experiences of playing games of whist. 

The end of the book provides five pages advertising the many other books offered by the publisher.

 

Diane Culpin

6 October 2016

Making the Text

Making the Text

While I was reading D.C Greetham article or chapters, I appreciated the knowledge that he provides for non-specialists that allowed me as a regular reader to understand some of the techniques that are used by bibliographers to analysis the text or the “book” and get the most important information that would help the critic to reveal some of the secrets that manipulated the general readers understanding of the piece from different perspectives. The daunting task that took much of my time was to fold a piece of paper to make it look like folio or octave with the watermark showing as instructed. Therefore, my question would be how to fold the paper in a way that allows me to locate every single detail Greetham mentioned?

My Second question is how do they print the engravings from a cooper plate or from a woodcut?

Links on printing, format, etc.

Most of these resources were compiled by Courtney Jacobs, Special Collections librarian at UNT. Courtney recommends that you watch two of the videos below before we meet on 10/4: "From Punch to Printing Type" and "The Anatomy of the Book, Pt. 1." This later is particularly useful for illustrating the discussion of format in Greetham.   

The Book as a Technology

The Medieval Helpdesk

The Atlas of Early Printing

Freely available videos

Bookbinding (sewing on cords): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BScrCpPtGPs

Intaglio (copper plate engraving): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQvghHs15hA

Fine art copper plate printing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEcTWa6aA9M

How to tell the difference between illustration types (engraving, woodblock, etc.):  http://collation.folger.edu/2012/02/woodcut-engraving-or-what/
Papermaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3PfwOItto

Oxford University Making of a Book (source for modern practices, include type casting): http://thespecialistcollections.tumblr.com/post/127804489249/the-oxford-university-press-archive-has-made

Stephen Fry’s The Machine that made us (on Gutenburg and his inventions): http://www.veoh.com/watch/v18714625RMJnrG8x

A very brief video featuring presswork and binding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T17aCX2iBBY

Book Binding from 1961 (sewing, marbling, gold-stamping): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1Sj4lRVqJc

Terrible Bookmaking video (but includes linotype and stereotyping): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBztGX-2i1M

Videos on Demand:

How to Operate a Book: https://vod.library.unt.edu/cat_vodentry.php?film=881

*From Punch to Printing Type: https://vod.library.unt.edu/cat_vodentry.php?film=880

*The Anatomy of a Book Pt 1, Format in the Hand Press Period: https://vod.library.unt.edu/cat_vodentry.php?film=879

The Making of a Renaissance Book: http://vod.library.unt.edu/film.php

Controlled Vocabularies

Etherington & Roberts descriptive terminology on bookbinding and conservation : http://cool.conservation-us.org/don/don.html

Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors: https://www.ilab.org/eng/documentation/29-abc_for_book_collectors.html

Format Resources:

Book Sizes Chart: http://www.trussel.com/books/booksize.htm

Here is the LibGuide for ENG5750 (not very useful but we can expand it if you have things to add?):http://guides.library.unt.edu/c.php?g=531512

Additions and Alternatives to Darnton's Communications Circuit

Darnton, "What is the History of Books? Revisited"
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3403039/darnton_revisited.pdf?sequence=2

The Grub Street Project, "Print Culture as a Distributed Social Network"
http://grubstreetproject.net/distributednetwork.php

Thomas Adams and Nicholas Barker, "A New Model for the study of the book"
summarized here: https://davidjgary.com/2013/02/05/summary-of-adams-and-barker-a-new-model-for-the-study-of-the-book/

Digital Communication Circuit:
http://www.bookunbound.stir.ac.uk/research/infographic/

"The Communication Circuit Revisited"
http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/wgbw/research/Weel_Articles/CommsCircuitRevd.pdf

Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years & The War Years

I believe Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War years, emphasizes the social nature of print. Throughout the book, he uses manuscripts of Lincoln's own personal writings (letters, speeches, professional documents, diary entries, etc.) to paint a very specific portrait of Lincoln's persona. "Every biographer," he says, "is under compulsion to omit all or parts of Lincoln letters and speeches that he would like to include; this in part explains why any Lincoln biography is different from any or all other... Supposing all could be told, it would take a far longer time to tell than it was taken to enact in life."

In the preface to the single volume edition written in May of 1954, Carl Sandburg discusses the evolution of his work since it was first published in the early 1920's. Initially a six-volume edition, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years was Sandburg's attempt "to make a certain portrait of Abraham Lincoln... as the country lawyer and prairie politician." After it's publication, he had become so enamored with Lincoln that he went on to write a four-volume book called The War Years. Twenty-eight years after his initial publication, Sandburg condensed them all into a single volume. Despite having what must have seemed like an endless amount of text to work with when attempting to condense the material, he acknowledges that he also "made use of such new materials and researches as throw added light on the life and personality of Lincoln." This highlights the fluid nature of how texts are created, specifically when they are based on a variety of manuscripts that weren't intended to be released to the public. Sandburg's book highlights how his recreation of a man's identity was based on a biased selection of texts that operates not under a regulated, authoritative system, but on the social distribution of ideas and documents that change over time.

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost by John Milton

                After reading the articles assigned I found hard time understanding the term “social nature” through which a book undergo to appear in the last form the reader is holding.  Therefore, it was hard form my to find a contemporary book that had experienced a variety of printing mechanisms or change in the apparatus of editing and bibliography. Then I thought of narrowing my search to something old that it was written in manuscript and new that it was printed. After struggle with what to choose I picked up Paradise Lost which after looking at different versions was the typical example that would satisfy or speak to the “social nature” of a manuscript or a book. The great feature about the book I choose is that it brings the discourse of what happened to variety of versions that were published and what kind of errors the copy text has. The name of the book is “Paradise Lost: A Poem Written in Ten Books” An Authoritative Text of the 1667 First Edition which was Transcribed and edited with commentary by John T. Shawcross and Michael Lieb. The transcription of the book is from a copy owned by the Newberry Library which was checked against facsimiles (XVI). The first addition had a number of issues when it comes to changes or the lack of them. For instance, line numbers are given on the right side of the text rather than on the alternative right left sides of the page (377). Harris F. Fletcher’s facsimile edition of Paradise lost is a copy of the 1669 rather than 1667 version, but it shows the reissues and changes made through the various versions occurring between these two dates. The work has as part of new machinery an electronic edition of the 1667 edition as a facsimile. Moreover, in the second edition of the work Milton adds a total of 15 lines which changes the order of the books. The changes that take a place during that period of time is not limited to the changes that Milton himself does, but also to changes that readers might or might not know its source. The first edition, for example, was issued six times during three years in which the title page changes in ever issuance (392). Another example of what social nature could do to a book is the added preliminary material ,1668-69 such as statement from the printer which changed over time as well(419). To summaries the resetting and the second printing of the preliminary materials in 1669 resulted in a variety of alterations (in spacing, linage and non-significant type of font). These alterations proves that the compositor of the second addition is different from the first and was reflecting his style.

Here is an Electronic Version of  Paradise Lost:

http://iii.library.unt.edu/record=b5529661~S12

Milton, John, John T. Shawcross, and Michael Lieb. Paradise Lost: A Poem Written in Ten Books. Pittsburgh, Pa:       Duquesne University Press, 2007. Print.

Bodleian First Folio

In looking for something that “exemplifies the social nature of print or manuscript ‘publication’,” I began thinking about the numerous works that touch on the publication cycle in early modern England. These discuss the variety of people that had a hand in printing Shakespeare. I thought about works like Double Falsehood, ostensibly a collaboration across time of Lewis Theobald (in the early eighteenth century) and Shakespeare and John Fletcher (a contemporary and known collaborator of Shakespeare’s). This case seems aligned to the kinds of problems Darnton is talking about, but maybe only in a very broad, general way.

So, yet again, I find myself at the First Folio. The First Folio and its publication are very social in nature, and specifically the copy in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The First Folio itself was published seven years after Shakespeare’s death, removing any control he himself may have had over the works and their publication – a circumstance that Johns points out with Brahe. Authorship of Shakespeare’s plays was, however, communal in many ways because the plays technically belonged to the company and the publisher (one of whom, in this case, was a bookseller). This speaks more, I think, of a different conception of authorship than we have today. The Bodleian First Folio, however, is interesting because it has escaped restoration and rebinding. The Bodleian acquired it at publication, but it was sold off in the 1660s and not bought back until the early twentieth century. This edition bears the markings of reader interactions with the text, preserved through its lack of restoration. The Bodelian’s web site says that, “[i]ts unique marks of wear connect us with the tastes of early readers, and we can see how their hands have worn the pages of Romeo and Juliet almost to shreds, while leaving King John virtually pristine.” While, as Darnton says, “reading remains mysterious” and “texts shape the response of readers,” here we can see how readers have physically shaped the text, and potentially shaped the reception of some of its parts over others.

This edition, too, is being shaped by modern "printing" technologies. It is viewable online in high-resoultion to be flipped through from the comfort of your PC, Mac, or laptop, and who knows what effects that publication decision will have on the rest of the circuit of tees text.

You can view the Bodelian's First Folio here and get more info about it here.

The Common Reader

In her Common Reader series, Virginia Woolf remarks upon life and literature throughout a compilation of essays, many of which originally appeared in publications such as Vogue, The Nation, and the Times Literary Supplement. The second part of the Common Reader series, this specific book was published in 1932 by Virginia herself, along with her husband Leonard, at the Hogarth Press, 52 Tavistock Square in London. It is the “second impression” of the first edition, printed by R. & R. Clark, Ltd. in Edinburgh.

The Hogarth Press venture originally began as a hobby when the Woolfs were living in Richmond, later becoming a source of supplemental income and a therapeutic, tactile alternative to the stresses of Virginia’s writing. I found the link between Tycho Brahe’s singular printing endeavor and the Woolfs’ publishing venture to be interesting. Darton, Johns, and Ezell all question the “fixity” of print, and it is Johns specifically who argues that “printed texts were not intrinsically trustworthy. When they were in fact trusted, it was only as a result of hard work” (p. 284). The phenomenon of publishing and printing your own written work (although this particular copy wasn’t printed by the Woolfs themselves) eliminates the variables that would be possible in a typical “communications circuit” (i.e. Darnton), but perhaps only to a certain extent.

The fact that the Woolfs published and printed much of Virginia’s writing does not undermine the idea of “publication” being primarily social in nature (and I would argue that their doing so is, in fact, "social" to the core). Publication is merely a part of the communications circuit. On the title page of The Common Reader – Second Series, Virginia presents a quote by Dr. Johnson in Life of Gray: “…I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be generally decided all claim to poetical honours.” It is the reader who truly completes the communications circuit, who is responsible for interpreting signs to create meaning, and who ultimately must determine the veracity of the methods by which those signs were produced.  

Life of Norman

I’m about to get really far out on this social construct thing, but I’d like to examine the creation of a crowdsourced novel/linked short story anthology via the Reddit subreddit: “Life of Norman” (https://www.reddit.com/r/lifeofnorman/).  There’s an “about” section found on the lower right of the page link that details the basics of Norman’s character, the world he lives in, and the ways his story should be told (3rd-person omniscient; suggested 500-word limit per story). From this same section, I can see that the site was created three years ago by a user named MaximusLeonis. A search for the user’s comments on this subreddit show that they created “Life of Norman” on a whim and were surprised by its popularity (https://www.reddit.com/r/lifeofnorman/comments/1cm39f/meta_wow_what_an_immediate_and_awesome_response/?). As of today, there are over 54,000 subscribers, though it’s hard to say how many are active contributors.

It appears that the founding user no longer moderates this page, and there are three current moderators listed in the “about” section, one of which, MattressCrane (who is also a contributor), is in the process of compiling an anthology of Norman stories. He asks for permission to do so in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/lifeofnorman/comments/2b653j/id_like_to_compile_normans_stories_into_an_ebook/?, dated two years ago (exact dates are not available). MatressCrane’s latest update regarding this project can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/lifeofnorman/comments/52u22t/the_book_of_norman_the_time_hasalmost_finally/ . As of today, this link is dated as “7 days ago”, and the link includes a final list of the usernames attached to each contributing writer.

A search of MattressCrane’s posts in the Norman subreddit reveal roughly thirteen updates on the bookmaking process between the two years that separate the links above. While the book manuscript is now finalized and awaiting publication (with all proceeds to benefit Cats Cradle animal shelter in Victoria, British Colombia, Canada [https://www.reddit.com/r/lifeofnorman/comments/3yuh6v/the_book_of_norman_the_final_update/], users continue to contribute new stories about Norman and the characters in his life on a daily basis. There is even a spinoff subreddit for Norman’s coworker/love interest, Lisa: https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeOfLisa. By upvoting or downvoting stories about Norman (or by awarding them virtual gold coins purchased with actual currency; i.e. gilding, users effectively decide which stories become canonical, and which do not.  Users can also actively discuss the specifics of Norman's life and character by tagging such posts as "[META]".