book theft

I have never been so compelled to steal a library book as I was this afternoon, opening the 1928 Phoenix Library edition of Tarr, for the following reasons:

1) It is pocket-sized: at 4.5" by 7", this tiny hardcover is possibly the platonic ideal of book shape.

2) It smells like old books (the best non-food smell there is).

3) It is full of underlining and (sometimes illegible) notes in pencil, including "TEDIOUS!" and "nothing is what it is; it is always the possibility of smthg else, or the potential to effect smthg."

4) It is written in the inimitable style of Mr. Wyndham Lewis, who is a master of human nature and who elevates punctuation from the grammatical to the artistic:

Tarr needed a grimacing tumultuous mask for the face he had to cover. He had compared his clowning with Hobson's pierrotesque variety: but Hobson, he considered, was a crowd. You could not say he was an individual, he was in fact a set. He sat there, a cultivated audience, with the aplomb and absence of self-consciousness of numbers, of the herd—of those who know they are not alone.—Tarr was shy and the reverse by turns; he was alone.

5) It is orange, with a phoenix blind debossed onto the front. The text and flourishes on the spine are in gold leaf. You don't get much more flamboyant than that.

Please note that I did not actually steal the book, as I am far too susceptible to guilt.

a post-literate society

From Cat and Girl. (Click image to enlarge.)

Editors were once the gatekeepers for content; the advent of the internet has made not only gatekeepers but also gates a thing of the past. Will the book's loss of privilege and the rise of the internet result in a post-literate society, or a hyper-literate one? Is the internet another advancement that democratizes literacy, like the printing press and the paperback, or does it signal its demise? What will the editor's role be in the future?

I don't think we've found a more efficient way to exchange information than through text, nor do I think clarity and accuracy are less important now than in the book's heyday. Language is organic and English orthography has always been fluid. In my view, literacy is becoming more, not less, important.

e-publishing

At the urging of a professor, I've published one of my projects through issuu.com as an experiment in digital formats and in reaching an online audience. Those of you who are interested in amateur design work might want to have a look at this redesign of Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins (note that there's something weird going on with the title page and the title should not, in fact, be in a grey box). Those who are interested in virtually anything else will enjoy issuu.com, where you will find the tools to publish your own works as well as a collection of digital magazines, e-books, articles and other media created by people far more talented than myself.