[1332] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: Dead trees and humanities
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU ((Lee Jaffe, Microcomp)
Mon Sep 28 12:22:38 1992
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 11:15:35 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
From: "(Lee Jaffe, Microcomputer & Network Services)" <jaffe@scilibx.ucsc.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>The question I was trying to raise in my orignal article was: what is the
>intrinsic value added to abstract information by virtue of its being in a
>printed, as opposed to any other form?
I've generally not been too impressed with the aesthetic arguments supporting
the viability of the codex as a medium. After all, if that's the best
reason we can provide, then the book is in a very precarious position.
However, hearing Geoffrey Nunberg speak last spring (?) during the National
Library of France seminar, I heard some of the first interesting points
in this debate. (Basically, he ripped up both sides of the debate very
eloquently and I'm only highlighting the relevant points.) To illustrate
the bookish quality of the novel, he quoted from Jane Austen where she
referred readers to the few pages remaining as an indication of the swift
completion of the story. I can think of quite a few other texts that
use the page and the physical book as part of the story telling. One of
my favorties is Tristram Shandy where Stern substitutes one page with a
slab of marble and in another section, explains that one passage was so
good that it shamed everything else he had written and therefore tore the
page out. Nunberg pointed out that the physical artifact of the book is
directly related to the material it contains. The size of the book is an
indication of the length of the work. Your physical place in the book is
an indication of how much you have left to read. My own sense of these
points is that the novel was developed and flourished during an era of
cheap print and growing literacy. The genre is married to the medium.
Sure, James Joyce might have chosen to write Finnegan's Wake in hypertext
if it had been available, but it wasn't and he didn't. He wrote a book.
For the sake of brevity, I'll leave it here.
-- Lee Jaffe, UC Santa Cruz
jaffe@scilibx.ucsc.edu
