Author Archives: Mario Escamilla

Bibliographer and Historian

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After reading the main texts along with the further readings, I have come to the conclusion that I never really knew what the definitions were of bibliography, bibliographers, bibliographical and such. The only thing that I ever knew about bibliography was the Enumerative bibliography and even so, I never knew that exact term until the readings for this week. Using bibliography as a means to record the history of a text beyond its text form is something I would have never thought of considering that I had only known about enumerative which is a type of bibliography that doesn’t make its entire focus on the physical form of a book.

Looking more into the physical aspect of the book can teach us and also allow us to record things about culture, perceived meanings, and the transformation of the book during the time period it had existed in or rather created. McKenzie speaks on this topic about how a bibliography goes beyond the text itself and focuses on the physical aspects of the book and how a society affected its physical form.

“Beyond that, it allows us to describe not only the technical but the social processes of their transmission. In those quite specific ways, it accounts for non-book texts, their physical forms, textual versions, technical transmission, institutional control, their perceived meanings, and social effects.”(McKenzie 12-13)

The way McKenzie describes how a bibliography is made me remember the class discussion we had on Thursday talking about how the printing press was able to be controlled by institutions and how it shifted social processes which lead us to learning the history about how we must be wary of the information that we received no matter what. Bibliography to my understanding from McKenzie shows me that it tries to capture everything about a text’s physical form that is being studied and recorded for in which we will ultimately learn more meanings behind it and its social effects.

My biggest takeaway of everything about bibliography now is that a book is much more important than its text and that its physical form has so many meanings, implication and thought put behind it and that it shouldn’t be severely overlooked. It honestly shocks me now that I realize how many people including myself were never really taught how to read into a physical book’s history and honestly, it was never mentioned at all in my times during school until now.

Are Books Alive?!!?

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After reading Borsuk’s chapter two in The Book, I was honestly super intrigued by the way they were discussing the book or codex as a body while describing each and every aspect of it like a body part. I also love how this part of the book transitions into the next sub-chapter which is how we as a society created some sort of intimate connection with this object that is not even alive. These two connect so well with each other since we see the book as a body and it is a clear representation of how we created such a close relationship with books.

Pretty wild to describe the book as body parts because I don’t believe a random bystander who doesn’t read occasionally would look at a book in that way besides it looking like, well, a book. The intimacy of not only looking at a book as a body, but as well writing down notes in the margins which then add another layer of relationship with the book is another telling sign of having a personal relationship with the book. The printing press creating these margins allowed for people to start spending more time with the book and having a personal relationship due to how important they viewed the content. This would then make every copy ever made more and more unique as time went on.

“The early years of printed codex thus mark both an important technological shift (the mechanical reproduction of text) and a philosophical one in terms of how we relate to books”(Borsuk 84).

This line fascinates me so much because it perfectly describes everything that I talked about earlier and of how we as humans have created such a close relationship with something that isn’t literally alive, but we do believe it is alive in one way or another due to how we react to the book since it feels as though we have a conversation with it as we continuously read it. So now it makes me wonder sometimes if our books are truly alive in one way shape or form because usually, we have intimate relationships with entities that are alive and not as much with things that aren’t alive. Our obsession with books is truly something that I never thought of especially when I look back to previous class discussion on how Professor Pressman discusses the fact that we as a society have really fetishized it to such a far degree and so far, that we have ended up tattooing it permanently on our body.

One more thing that I believe adds another layer on top of the intimacy with books is the fact that people back then would pirate books since they weren’t able to have many copies or that it may be too expensive. You have to be obsessed with a certain genre, author or story type to go out of your way to do illegal things to obtain such literature. My only question now is how far have we fetishized this inanimate object and second, how much further are we willing to push that line simply because we love books?

Week 4: Book History, Beyond the Text and More

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Books have always been thought of as an object in which it only transforms because of the information that it carries inside of it, but that’s not the only case. Amaranth Borsuk presents a point that I believe is very hard to argue against and that is that books are ultimately decided based on what the needs are of the time period. Some of these things being the fact that new information was wanted as well as how they were going to obtain the materials to create these because at the beginning it was all done by hand and not machine. “Book historian Fredrick Kilgour refers to the book’s development as a series of “punctuated equilibria” driven by “the ever-increasing informational needs of society” a useful way of thinking about the book’s transformations”(Borsuk p.3). Stories, novels, books, comics, manga’s, e-books and such all have developed in their own way because of the type of technology they use for the codex. The style of the how the book is created makes each of these types of books stand out in their own category which is something that I never really paid attention to until now. I mention this because chapter one dives into the history of scrolls, clay tablets, palm leaf manuscripts and how those materials influenced how information would be put on them.

If anything, this chapter has made me think of how books have been influenced by us and our needs of how we as a society want it to be. An example of this is how e-books are being used every day by people. The demand and use for e-books through kindles and such will essentially shape the way we show information to our viewers and how it will affect them.

I still can’t wrap my head around the technological advancements of how we created the book from the codex. It’s starting to make me analyze books in a way of “Is there really any other way to make this even BETTER or have we truly created the best possible way to absorb information through this thing we call “book”. Ultimately, Borsuk already has me turning my brain upside down in how I should start looking at books since we read the history and context of how it all started from the various different cultures. It really goes to show that text is not only the biggest influencer on how a book will be created for the current society, but rather multiple factors that you wouldn’t even guess.

Introduction

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Hey everyone! I apologize for the late post, but it’s finally being written. My name is Alvaro Mario Escamilla, but you can call me Mario! I am in my final semester here at SDSU and I won’t lie, I am nervous about graduating, but also excited! I am currently majoring in Single Subject English with a teaching credential in hope of teaching some grade between 10th and 12th for high school. I don’t really do anything interesting or rather crazy outside of my school life. I mostly exercise, read almost everything, watch movies, play video games or just hang out with my friends, family or girlfriend. I am currently watching The Amazing World of Gumball with my girlfriend as I have not seen it (please don’t roast me, I know I’m 3000 years late) and it is honestly so much fun and such a genius show. As for video games, I am just waiting for Hollow Knight: Silksong which releases this Thursday, September 4th and I couldn’t be more excited.

I am currently reading The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole as a fun read and after that I plan to tackle a Japanese manga called “Jagaaaaaann” written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrated by Kensuke Nishida. I am always looking for recommendations when it comes to books, stories, short shorts, novels, etc. I am a person who enjoys mostly every genre and isn’t really picky with what I pick up. I have always been a firm believer of being open to all genre’s because they all have some sort of insight or view to offer that you couldn’t get with another genre. Being able to read from vast works that come from different pens and brains is so fascinating and something that will never bore me, even till the day I die.

As for why I am taking this course, well, I enjoy reading and I am very interested in the history and concept as to what books are, how they are used and for what purpose do we ultimately use them for. I believe that books are an extremely powerful object and that is something that the world has slowly stopped noticing in my opinion.