This weeks blog topic helped me to realize that I should perhaps spend more time looking for experimental books. Even as an avid e-book reader, I don't usually wander far from the page or its e-representation.
In this weeks post I wander a bit from the concept of book, because what is a book anyway? After the first six weeks of this course I am not so sure about my gut answer to that question anymore.
Recently NPR asked three comic book illustrators to illustrate something that inspires them. The illustrator Afua Richardson chose to illustrate Langston Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." Here is where we depart from any classical notion of a book. The illustration is published to a blog on a web page. Below is a little snapshot of the page.
Contrast the above with Langston's own handwritten copy for reading on the radio.
So please, check out both versions of the poem, but best of all, listen to Langston Hughes read it.
I really like the NPR's experiment with the idea of a poem on a page. The illustration lends itself to the rich imagery of the poem, while the shortness of the poem gives breathing space to consider one's own feelings about each line. However, the beauty of the illustration that makes this e-page a success is also its downfall. It's very frustrating as a reader to have the imagery already painted out for you. From then on you will picture the illustrator's renderings instead of the picture in your mind's eye.
Bringing this blog-as-a-book notion forward struck me as radical, but in hindsight maybe not. In the early days of blogging many authors had their blogs published as books with a little reworking.
Somehow I wanted to tie this weeks post into week six's reading by Piper. Piper advances a metaphor and thesis in one when he opens his chapter with the phrase "The page is the atom of the book." I found as I read that I kept coming back to this comparison between atom and page. However, I was not returning to it to celebrate it, but rather to ponder it, and in a way get hung up on it. My mind rolled the declaration into a question, "How is an atom like a page?" Yet still I got nowhere. Is a book a molecule then? And a collection of books, or a library, what is that? If Piper only meant to say that a page is a small part of something bigger, then why confuse me with the atom metaphor. Is a page more like an atom than a book is like a blog?
In this weeks post I wander a bit from the concept of book, because what is a book anyway? After the first six weeks of this course I am not so sure about my gut answer to that question anymore.
Recently NPR asked three comic book illustrators to illustrate something that inspires them. The illustrator Afua Richardson chose to illustrate Langston Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." Here is where we depart from any classical notion of a book. The illustration is published to a blog on a web page. Below is a little snapshot of the page.
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| Retrieved from http://academic.reed.edu/english/courses/eng211/images/NegroSpeaksofRivers.jpg |
I really like the NPR's experiment with the idea of a poem on a page. The illustration lends itself to the rich imagery of the poem, while the shortness of the poem gives breathing space to consider one's own feelings about each line. However, the beauty of the illustration that makes this e-page a success is also its downfall. It's very frustrating as a reader to have the imagery already painted out for you. From then on you will picture the illustrator's renderings instead of the picture in your mind's eye.
Bringing this blog-as-a-book notion forward struck me as radical, but in hindsight maybe not. In the early days of blogging many authors had their blogs published as books with a little reworking.
Somehow I wanted to tie this weeks post into week six's reading by Piper. Piper advances a metaphor and thesis in one when he opens his chapter with the phrase "The page is the atom of the book." I found as I read that I kept coming back to this comparison between atom and page. However, I was not returning to it to celebrate it, but rather to ponder it, and in a way get hung up on it. My mind rolled the declaration into a question, "How is an atom like a page?" Yet still I got nowhere. Is a book a molecule then? And a collection of books, or a library, what is that? If Piper only meant to say that a page is a small part of something bigger, then why confuse me with the atom metaphor. Is a page more like an atom than a book is like a blog?
Caleb, I like your line of thinking about the page as atom. I like the idea that a book can be a molecule and then collections of books could form different compounds. It makes it seem to me like a certain combination of books (two hydrogens and an oxygen, for example, would make water [essential for human life]) could make for a certain type of thinking, but a similar but different combination could lead to a whole other type of thinking (adding another oxygen molecule makes it hydrogen peroxide [lethal for human consumption]). I'm not certain that this metaphor can be extended that far, but it's a fascinating thing to think about. I just assumed that the atom metaphor was being used as an analogy for a basic building block.
ReplyDeleteI have a little difficulty with your assertion that seeing an illustrator's interpretation of an image will undoubtedly usurp any image that a reader might imagine. I don't disagree that this is a common occurrence (I think about the way I see Ron, Harry, and Hermione as Rupert Grint, Daniel Radcliffe, and Emma Watson no matter how hard I try to imagine them otherwise), I just think of things like fan art where other illustrators (both amateur and professional) resist this notion and consistently draw their own interpretations. I agree that homogenizing the imagined image is troubling, but I don't think that it's a necessary outcome.
Piper makes a second reference to the atomic structure of books on page 48 of "Turning the Page (Roaming, Zooming, Streaming)." The second time is to claim that e-books have not made a significant departure from paper books because e-books still rely on the page as a building block. Part of me wishes Piper had just said The page is the fundamental building block on the book. I find the atom metaphor to be a bit clumsy, something that would have made more sense to Democritus but less so to us given what we know about atoms. The real departure from the page that I have found, and one that I hope someone blogs about, is the audio book. Not a book read aloud, but a podcast of audio that is researched and prepared for just as one would if writing a book. For example, Dan Carlin's Wrath of the Khans.
ReplyDeleteAs for the illustrations, I think you make a great point. In fact I think that illustrations often cause me to go back to the text and to read them for the details that inspired the illustration.
I absolutely agree that illustrations make me look for the details that inspired the illustration. In a sense the text gives you a model from which to draw an illustration (Harry is skinny with green eyes, black hair, and a scar), but because most descriptions only give the salient details there is so much room for individual interpretation.
ReplyDeleteI'm still fascinated by the possibilities that your analysis of the atom metaphor opens up for thinking about the page and the book. I keep thinking about extending it (in a sort of playful way) to talk about common molecules and compounds (books - or types of books - that appear more often households) and more rare molecules and compounds (rare books or niche interest types of books). The metaphor could even extend to types of books that are commonly found together or types of books that are repellant to one another the way that certain compounds are formed (or not formed). This thought is literally keeping me up at night. I'm so glad you pointed it out! My interpretation is almost certainly not what Piper meant to suggest, and I'm not even sure that it's what you meant to suggest, but this is kind of a fun floating signifier to expand beyond its intended capacity. I'm a little surprised that nobody's written a poem or a prose piece exploring this metaphor.
As for the audiobook/podcast, that's a really interesting thought about a literal departure from the page (and perhaps a return to a pre-literate/storytelling society? - Not to push a progress/regress narrative that might not necessarily exist, but perhaps an interesting thread to follow...I digress...). The podcast Welcome to Night Vale (http://podbay.fm/show/536258179) by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor might also be worth a look in this respect.
I really like your last paragraph here Jeremy. Although I am out of my depth (what else is the internet for?), I think that there is some writing from McLuhan on the orality of our learning pre-Gutenberg. The success of the podcast, and even the persistence of radio might be linked to the timeless appeal of listening.
ReplyDeleteIn that sense, is there such a thing in listening or speaking as the page?