Subliminal Books

A question: do we have one shot at this time travelling business, or is it more of a Time-Turner situation, in which we have a device at our disposal that will let us pop in and out of whatever time period we please, whenever we please? I ask because my message may require a few reiterations.

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Much of my essay has to do with reductive conceptions of the book, so this topic has been on my mind as of late. Picking one specific historical date and place to deliver my message wouldn’t do too much good. Rather, my message would need to be conveyed over time. Every few years or so I would dust off my Time-Turner, put on a fancy hat, and remind people to spend time thinking about reading technologies, to consider their active role in the book’s construction, rather than simply receiving texts as “inert things” (Drucker, p. 170).

A broadcast signal intrusion might be my best bet for reaching a wide audience. I’m thinking something akin to the Max Headroom broadcast intrusion which, ironically enough, interrupted an episode of Dr. Who, another time traveler. Actually, now that I think about it, forget the hat idea. I would make my broadcast intrusions as absurd as possible. What makes the Max Headroom incident so memorable is the sheer mystery attached to it, and the seeming lack of motivation behind it. My message would have to be somewhat subliminal and my identity would need to remain anonymous. Maybe I wouldn’t speak at all. Instead, I’d have stacks of books beside me, each of which I’d open up and paint white – Kate Bush’s “Waking the Witch” playing in the background. I can hear the Reddit conspiracy theories now!

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Perhaps, on another occasion, I’d travel back to the era of silent film, equipped with my Kobo, and pull something similar to the time travelling cellphone user in Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 film The Circus. Though, my anachronistic appearance would be harder to debunk. As with the Max Headroom incident, this strange clip has been poured over and dissected in effort to make sense of it. Think of the time people would put into considering reading technologies and mediums if something like a Kobo or a Kindle featured in one of the bizarre videos. Why does this strange woman have what looks like an e-reader in her hand? What kind of e-reader is it? Are we sure this film is from the 20’s? When were e-readers invented?

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My message would not be an overt one, there would be no direct plea to diversify our understanding of the book, but the mystery would be palpable and would fuel continuous discussion. This discussion, and the time spent considering the implications of reading technologies, are key to my time travelling. Anonymity and sublimity are also important factors for my travels. I understand the desire to stroll up to Johannes Gutenberg and whip out a Kindle for him to take a look at, but I’m almost positive this scenario would end up with me burning at the stake. I do not wish to obscure the history of any one iteration of the book or to suggest that the codex is irrelevant. As David Greetham notes in his essay “What is Textual Scholarship?,” the “ineffable ‘originary’ form [of a text] is but one (albeit an important one) of the various guises in which a text negotiates its way in history and society” (p. 25). I do not wish to alter the timeline of the book, nor do I want to force a technology on the masses. I simply want people to question the ways in which they read, to defibrillate the book in all its forms, and restore it to the “living organism” it is (Greg, p. 150-1).

References

Drucker, Johanna. “Modeling Functionality: From Codex to e-Book.” In SpecLab: Digital Aesthetics and Projects in Speculative Computing, 165-74. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Greetham, David. “What is Textual Scholarship?” In A Companion to the History of the Book, edited by Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose, 21-32. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. http://go.utlib.ca/cat/7875444.

Greg, W.W. "Bibliography—An Apologia." In Joseph Rosenblum (ed.), Sir

Walter Wilson Greg: a Collection of His Writings, edited by Joseph Rosenblum, 135–57. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1998 [1932].