Author Archives: Jacob Suarez

The Press’s Redefinition of The Book As Content

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Amaranth Borsuk’s second chapter, specifically, “The Body of the Book,” delves into the differences between printed books before 1501 and after. The former was known as incunables. A word used to describe the period just before the commercialization and efficient mass production of ‘books’, a time when each ‘book’ was still unique and still handcrafted to an extent. Today, when a new book is published, we have mass printings of it, and each one is identical in terms of content and binding.The process and end result was more intimate as it was a laborious task and there were many ways in which you could personalize the text and there was this idea of the residues of reading. This also created a strange paradoxical effect with the press and it production of ‘the book’. It created a clear distinction and redefined its terms forever.

Today, when a new book is published, we have mass printings of it, and each one is identical in terms of content and binding. Even more so after ISBNs were created, any two copies became interchangeable. This is the main idea in this chapter: today, the book, as a physical object, is just a uniform, mass-produced text. During the incunable period, printing was still very much in its unrefined, rudimentary form: “Scholars of early modern books make a distinction between a ‘book’ and a ‘book copy,’ since each codex produced from a given print run will be unique in its circulation, history, and materiality.”(Borsuk 74).

The printing process back then was even more intimate too. The wealthy would hire illuminators to personalize their prints further with gold or highly elaborate illustrations, therefore, making the ‘book’ a piece of luxury and a sign of wealth/social status. This made each ‘book copy’ a unique and even archeological artifact with its own unique personal history, “In additon to minute differences in the binding, each book copy will contain marginalia and other residues of reading that adhere to them thanks to their individual history of ownership and circulation”(Borsuk 76). The marginalia and what Borsuk brilliantly calls ‘residues of reading’ perfectly encapsulate an incunable copy as a snap shot of the process in that specific moment and how these ‘residues’ “are part of the copy without being part of the ‘the book.'” (76)

A less obvious point is how the mass proliferation and production of printed copies that were nearly identical allowed for the author’s ideas to spread like never before, but it also inadvertently highlighted everything outside of that printed text. The marginalia, residues of reading, provenance marks, and accretions all became important to these highly annotated/illustrated copies, meaning that the identically mass-produced and plain-looking copies lacked. During the manuscript/incunabula era, each text as a whole was unique; ‘the book’ and its contents were one. But the press redefined the terms of the book, it essentially created the distinction between the content and its container. This allowed for us to think of the book as an abstract piece of content separate from its physical body.

Water as Omnipresence and Its Influence on Othello and Coastal Sea-Wolves

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To Preface:

I am so glad to have attended the capacious discussion that was held in the Digital Humanities Center(It wholeheartedly inspired this exploration and curiosity between water in literature and evolution of the wild through water; It’s my own mini-exploration of a sliver of the Blue Humanities).

Introduction

From briefly talking about his book on Shipwrecks in Shakespearean literature, and how the “shipwreck is a visitation of supernatural power,” along with the shipwreck being a sort of condemnation of human hubris (Mentz). And water as this force of nature, both “omnipresent” as Dr. Mentz put it, in all facets of our lives. It also is a direct link to evolutionary traits within wild-life we traditionally wouldn’t associate with the sea, It really inspired me to talk about two different aspects in which water directly influences, changes, and is omnipresent among both man and animal. It is through the brief mentions of “Freud’s Oceanic-Feeling”, a space of mediation and self-reflection, along with the mention of the book The Abyss Stares Back, and mostly, focusing on its title, that it further alludes to this notion of water as a fluid space where one can deconstruct and reconfigure the self; Ernest Heminway’s The Old Man and the Sea is a good example.

Dr. Mentz also mentioned how water goes through us and comes out of us, which I wanted to further explore the ability of water to not only influence us as humans, but also the wildlife that lives and directly works in tandem and literally adapts to water: Namely, Coastal Sea Wolves. My other exploratory example would be found in the second act of William Shakespeare’s 1602 play, Othello. Namely, during the crossing of the Mediterranean Sea during a raging storm, and how this not only affects the narrative and its characters but also reflects them as well.

Water as an Inhibitor in Othello

In Act One of Othello, despite the predominant narrative of Iago’s sinister plan unfolding through the manipulation of Roderigo and Brabantio, the impending war between the Ottomans and Venetians on Cyprus is equally important. The mention of the explicit geographical vicinity in which the war is to take place is important. As they are surrounded by water whether on land(Cyprus) or on boat. It is also the sea that carries the Ottomans towards the outpost on Cyprus, and it is the only way in which this imminent threat can arrive. At the very beginning of Act Two, Scene One, we read about two soldiers observing the treacherous seas,

MONTANO. What from the cape can you discern at sea?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Nothing at all. It is a high wrought flood;

I cannot twixt the heaven and the main

Descry a sail.(1-4)

In the next line, Montano follows up by equating the waves to mountains and how the wooden/manmade boats could withstand such a force. There’s a duality to this. On one hand, they are hoping the Ottomans are wiped out, but on the other, that their General is safe. The description of the waves, as well as the helplessness and the momentary loss of agency of our main characters, simply being demoted to passengers of a ship on thunderous waters, shows the sheer power the sea has. The characters are uncertain, anxious, and scared. It is this stripping of man’s perception of control(winning a war and gaining/defending land) that is swiftly attacked by the unstoppable force of nature. Once more, man is at the whim of nature.

And further into Act Two, Scene One we get the most direct change of the plot thus far explicitly attributed to the storm:

THIRD GENTLEMAN. News lads! Our wars are done.

The desperate tempest hath so banged the Turks

That their designment halts. A noble ship of Venice

Hath seen a grievous wreck and sufferance

On most part of their fleet. (20-25)

The war, which would have completely changed and altered the plot, is no more, and it is here that this miraculous storm has completely shifted the narrative. Not only does it get rid of what would have been a highly contestable war, but it also allows Iago’s sinister plan to truly come to fruition. And this is something that scholar Dennis Austin Britton picks up on in his journal article titled: RE-“TURNING””OTHELLO”: TRANSFORMATIVE AND RESTORATIVE ROMANCE: “The conspicuously-added shipwreck, however, is not only a miraculous solution to the Turkish fleet; it provides the occasion to transform identities. So often in the literature of the period, and always in Shakespearean drama, shipwreck dislocates individuals, either requiring or allowing for the creation of new social identities-“.(38-39)

This notion of a narrative literally allowing for the characters and the story itself to be able to transform is directly because of the storm. If it weren’t for the storm wrecking all of the Ottomans’ ships, the actual story of Othello sinking into madness via Iago would have never taken place. The water, and namely the sea, in this play is not mentioned again, nor does it play such a role in the narrative as it did at the beginning of Act two, but like Professor Mentz states, it is omnipresent. The characters are still on Cyprus which is still surrounded by water on all sides. The sea even had a hand in directly changing the narrative of the story. Water, even if for a moment, became a god-like character in this narrative and the characters of the play were all at its mercy and reflected the brutality of man and as Michael Flachmann put it in his article titled THE MORAL GEOGRAPHY OF OTHELLO: “-the tempest on sea and in Othello’s mind, the isolation of an island universe the reversion to brutish behavior…Shakespeare’s play takes us on a geographic and psychological journey into the wilderness of the human heart.”(par. 7) A striking reflection of Man and Sea.

The Vancouver Coastal Sea Wolf

Wolves have always been an animal I’ve traditionally seen limited to land, stalking prey in forests, howling at the moon, things only done on land. That being said, I recently came across an article talking about how a certain subspecies of gray wolf has evolved to fit their peculiar way of life: “Coastal wolves’ biology and ecology includes a unique diet heavily influenced by marine resources, distinct behaviours such as swimming in the open ocean between landmasses, and morphological differences to their interior conspecifics, such as darker pelage, smaller size, and distinct cranial and dental morphology. Coastal wolves are fast, powerful swimmers who often paddle miles between islands in search of food.”(Raincoast par.3)

While the evolutionary traits, adaptations, and resilience of the Gray Wolf are incredibly intriguing and a testament to the animal it is also incredibly important to know why: ‘”The Vancouver Island wolf was believed to be extirpated, or at least significantly reduced following decades of sanctioned eradication,’ Windle explains. In other words, they were nearly hunted to extinction by the middle of the 20th century. But starting in the 1960s, they reestablished themselves by swimming to Vancouver Island from mainland British Columbia across short channels like the Johnstone Strait or perhaps even island-hopping across the Salish Sea.” (Yogerst par. 10) Not only through hunting have the Gray Wolf population gone down(which is still legal on Vancouver Island) but also through deforestation and human expansion. Joe Yogerst continues this thought in paragraph 23 of his article titled The Secret World of Canada’s Coastal Wolves, “However, Allen says that’s not the only threat. Wolf hunting and trapping are still legal in Vancouver Island, where each hunter is allowed to take three animals per year. Habitat destruction through logging remains a concern, although less so in the past, because timber extraction is being curtailed in some old-growth forests.”

Humans directly impact and force animals to relocate and limit their space due to our consumerism and expansion as a species as well. Yet the water has once again come to the rescue and has allowed this animal, that we didn’t traditionally think as marine or marine-adjacent, top thrive. The Coastal Wolves have, over time, adapted to their new environments and figured out how to adapt to our(humans) expansion, and the sea in contrast to my last example has offered a sort of refuge for them in an ever-changing world where wildlife and naturalization is an afterthought at most.

Conclusion

The Blue Humanities discussion with Dr. Leong, Mentz, and Pressman really inspired me to explore, to some extent, the aspect of water and its direct impact on literary narratives and our wildlife. I was really intrigued by many of Dr. Mentz’s statements, and I really just had these two brewing ideas that I thought would be neat to explore through a slight eco-critical lens. But my main takeaway was really how important and interwoven water is in our lives. I’ve said it many times but the word Dr. Mentz used really stuck with me- water as ‘omnipresent’. Which is incredibly true but something I never was truly conscious or aware of. Similar to the whole thesis of our BOOKS! class I’m really starting to think through a deconstructing point of view. Realizing that many of the notions that I had of certain things like books and wolves can be and totally are different. They aren’t just confined to the definitions taught to us and retained in our minds but can adapt, evolve, and take on a whole new form.

Progress and Its Remediated Fear

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What I found most interesting about not only chapter 1 of Borsuk’s book but also Thursday’s class was the multiple fears of the advancement of literature from various influential people of their time. Socrates and Plato were named in both and in the Book, Borsuk says, “The great thinkers of Ancient Greece, in fact, mistrusted writing as a technology that would destroy the oral arts of debate and storytelling on which they based their sense of the world, of philosophy, of time and space.”(55). In class professor Pressman commented on the close relationship writing has to politics and it seems like Plato, Socrates, Hugo, Nietzsche, Derrida, along with many others had the same fears we seem to now have today, yet, they are remedial.

The anxieties, fears, and worries that plague us about our future have already had a host. The same fears that created a disdain of the written word for Socrates, “for separating ideas from their source-“, are now ones many of us today fall for (Borsuk 55). If I remember correctly, it’s true what Socrates said about dialogue being stronger than the written word. Today, for example, many forms of media and new websites use ‘clickbait’ titles and false narratives, not to seek the truth, but to profit and entertain. Furthermore, the popularity in audio books and podcasts is also a bit worrying. It was very eye opening and comforting even, to see these great thinkers and philosophers of the past share many of the same feelings I did. That weariness of change, the unavoidable path forward, to progress, to the future unknown; “Their concerns echo contemporary anxieties about the ways digitally mediated reading and writing shortens our attention spans, and ability to engage deeply with texts (Borsuk 59). It is somewhat strange to read that. That our contemporary worries have also been ancient ones just remediated. It reminds me about our conversation about book history in general. That these ways of linear thinking serve no purpose other than to blind us to the whole picture. And its important to note that, “writing itself fundamentally changed human consciousness, much as our reliance on networked digital devices has altered us at the core.” (Borsuk 60). Progress demands change and with that change come both good and bad, “The thing we fear is precisely what worried the Ancients: mediation.” (Borsuk 60).

While time has only proven that the written language has helped develop human civilization to grow exponentially in every way, so too will the number of problems multiply. And it is precisely here that worries me, but also those before. That especially now, we cannot trust what we read and see, we have to question everything and remain aware. A worry that many of us have today but that was long ago held by a greek: “At the root of Socrates’s accusation lies a vision of writing as a technology that interposes between thinker and thought, severing the two and allowing them to travel independently of one another.” (Borsuk 60).

The Syncretism of Reading and Technology

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Reading the Broadview Introduction as well as Professor Pressman’s essay, Old Media/ New Media was fascinating. From the examination and tracing of epochs, categorizing new and emerging forms of media to the evolution of reading in all its forms, it’s clear to see that, through many cultural shifts and religious/ industrial revolutions, reading and books in general have taken various forms, reflecting their cultural placement in that time.

I want to highlight the evolution of reading because I think its very pertinent to us right now. I’ve also never read a deconstruction of it and it particularly caught my eye. The introduction mentions an example where the Theologian St. Augustine observes his mentor reading silently: “He recalls how”[w]hen[Ambrose] read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still.” Augustine seems to have found silent reading unusual enough to be worth commenting on. Before this, he implies, most people vocalized the text when they read, even if they were reading to themselves.” (Levy & Mole xvii). Later in the text Levy and Mole highlight how Alexander the Great did so as well but that the concept of silent reading as a whole took a while to catch on, as reading aloud was so ingrained in most cultures if not all (xvii). Thinking about this made me realize how we are currently shifting into a new era of reading and how back then there was the emergence of reading silently stemming from reading aloud.

From having an orator read from a scroll in front of a crowd in antiquity to children being read aloud bedtime stories as well as oral presentations in class, reading aloud has always been a crucial form of learning, retaining, and communicating. But the blooming popularity of audiobooks and reading on a screen creates a drastic shift yet again. Although I do want to point out that one doesn’t take over the other: “Media do not replace one another in a clear, linear succession but instead evolve in a more complex ecology of interrelated feedback loops” (Pressman 2).

I am curious to see where the remediation of reading goes. How the process of intensive and extensive reading change due to technological advancement. How the syncretism of technology and reading converges. We are already seeing it now with books as a fetishized object, a phenomenon professor Pressman calls “Bookishness”: ” -the result of new media’s impact on
literature’s old media, and it is one example of the complex, poetic, and mutually generative relationship between old and new media.”(3).

Right now, since we are at the dawn of this new age, I feel like it’s unbalanced and overwhelming how reading is changing, but hopefully, with time, once settled(audiobooks, AI), we will learn how to harness both mediums and be able to work in tandem with one another, creating syncretism between the two. That is my hope at least.


The Library as a Beehive

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After reading Borges’ famous short story “The Library of Babel” (1941) for the first time, I was overwhelmed by its scope of theme. A story trying to make sense of the nonsensical is sure to be dense. The more I read, the more expansive this infinitely yet finite library became. Making sense of the story and its purpose was difficult, to say the least. Despite this, I kept coming back to one word in particular, “hexagon,” a word that immediately reminded me of something, but a thought not developed enough that I decided to brush it off. It wasn’t until my second re-reading that I was able to focus on Borges immediate description of the library’s infrastructure and architecture and the word itself.

“The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite,
perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. In the center of each gallery
is a ventilation shaft, bounded by a low railing. From any hexagon one can
see the floors above and below-one after another, endlessly. The arrangement of the galleries is always the same: Twenty bookshelves, five to each
side, line four of the hexagon’s six sides; the height of the bookshelves, floor
to ceiling, is hardly greater than the height of a normal librarian. One of the
hexagon’s free sides opens onto a narrow sort of vestibule, which in turn
opens onto another gallery, identical to the first-identical in fact to all.” (Borges 1)

The immediacy of the description suggests that Borges is not only highlighting the books and the knowledge that are on the shelves, but the architecture of the library itself.

A structure that similarly mirrors the labyrinth of the Library is a beehive. Beehives do not naturally form into hexagonal shapes. The process takes place when a worker bee molds the wax into circles, only for their body heat to melt the comb into its familiar hexagonal shape. “Roman scholar and writer, Marcus Terentius Varro, proposed that it was a mathematical hunch known as “The Honeybee Conjecture.” He said that a structure that was built from hexagons is slightly more compact than a structure built from tiny squares or triangles. The more compact the structure is, the less wax the bees need to complete the honeycomb. (Allon par. 3) Honey is important to bees, it is not only used as a food source but as a climate control for the hive itself, communication, preservation, honey is essential to bees and every aspect of their being. Bees spend their whole lives on the quest for honey, nectar, pollen. They die only for another worker bee to takes its place to continue the never ending goal of finding, creating, and storing honey.

The idea of librarians living and dying within the library, cataloging knowledge, is reminiscent of the lives of bees, and the library itself is akin to a beehive. There is a natural process in which the library and its librarians function. The process that the narrator describes within the first few paragraphs mirrors this. Natural labor is deconstructed into an animalistic, primal level, where, through instinct, bees’ lives revolve around honey, so too do the lives of these librarians revolve around the books and their potentially infinite knowledge, “Now that my
eyes can hardly make out what I myself have written, I am preparing to die,
a few leagues from the hexagon where I was born.” (Borges 1)

At its core, the library is a hub of cells filled with knowledge; it must be protected. And its inhabitants participate in eternizing it. “-The bee serves as example when one must reinforce the definition of the human as rational animal. (The first to question this complicity was Derrida in The Animal that Therefore I am.) But Borges’ brief story deconstructs each of these binaries: language/sound, rational/irrational, and human/animal. The random creation of the library’s texts shows that even the most complex achievements of human “reason” are equally possible without any animating consciousness or any intention-to-signify at all. The life of us bibliotecarios is no more justified and no more good than that of the bees. And who’s to say a bee doesn’t believe his vindication awaits in the very next hexagon?” (Basile). Of course, the distinction in my comparison is that humans have a conscience and animals, namely bees in this instance, do not. Yet the comparative nature of the library itself invites the reader to deconstruct this notion and compare a natural order to that of a chaotically infinite one and the purpose of not only the library but the librarians as well.

Introduction- Jacob

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Hi everyone, I’m very excited to be a part of this class and contribute to a first-time(and hopefully not just one-time) course on the importance and pertinence of books. Retrospectively, the Digital Age has just dawned, yet technology keeps growing exponentially year after year. The topic of AI and its effects has been impossible to avoid, and I, along with many people, worry and have an anxious weariness about just how this will impact our lives, especially writing and all physical and digital media. With that being said, I am glad to know this class confronts all of that and more!