Category Archives: Week 3: Book Studies as Media Studies– Levy/Mole and Pressman

When Books Change, So Do We

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Reading Michelle Levy and Tom Mole’s The Broadview Introduction to Book History, one passage in particular about the codex stood out to me. In their text, Levy and Mole describe it as “portable, resistant to wear and tear“ and most importantly able to let the reader “flip back and forth between pages and […] move more easily between different sections of the text.“ While this description may seem very obvious to us at first, since this is how we have known books for years, thinking about how the codex was not actually the standard for such a long time really struck me. Taking a closer look at history, one can see that it actually took centuries to replace the scrolls.

This raised one big question for me: how much of reading is not about what we read, but about the form that allows us to read? With the scroll, reading was linear. You started at the top and moved downward. Very simple. With the codex, however, reading suddenly became more flexible. Now you could move forwards and backwards, skip ahead or compare two sections at once. This non-linear movement transformed reading into much more than just consumption. It became an act of navigation. The codex made it easier to divide texts into chapters and pages, to give precise references and to mark important places. In short, the format of the codex did not only shape the book itself, but also the intellectual habits that came with it.

What I find interesting is how similar this is to our current experience of digital reading. When reading online, you cannot only read in a straight line but also switch between various tabs, jump from one webpage and/ or text to another or scroll back and forth. Looking at it, the internet feels closer to reading a codex than reading a scroll. At the same time, it also contains elements of the scroll. Long pages that we read by scrolling down, like articles, news, blogs or comment sections. Digital reading feels like a hybrid which mixes the navigability and flexibility of the codex with the linearity of the scroll. However this parallel also makes me wonder, how fragmented reading can become before it begins to lose depth. If we constantly cross-check passages, open new tabs and shift our attention, do we risk losing focus? On the other hand, digital formats create new ways of thinking, just as the codex once opened new possibilities. They allow for faster comparisons, even broader connections and new forms of creativity.

In the end, what Levy and Mole show with the codex is that a book is not merely a container of words but also a technology that reshapes our relationship to knowledge. From scroll to codex, each form does not simply preserve text. It transforms how we read it. Ultimately, it is not about celebrating or fearing new formats, but about seeing how they slowly shape the way we read and even the way we think.

Week 3: Book Studies as Media Studies

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Books have always served as a source of comfort and nostalgia in my life. As I’ve grown older, my childhood joys mirror much of my adult hobbies as I still love to read on the beach or before bed as much as I loved having books read to me. Something that has continued to interest me throughout our course so far is the concept of preciousness surrounding books that most of our class expresses experiencing. With daily life and academia continually evolving into a more digital world, it is important to consider how our bookish behaviors have evolved or resisted the shift from pages to screens.

In considering the book amidst media studies, Dr. Pressman defines bookishness as “the book is figured within literature an aesthetic object rather than a medium for information transmission, a thing to fetishize rather than to use,” (Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media and Textuality). Through this definition, we are compelled to view the book as an object of aesthetic and symbol. Due to the historic exclusivity of the book, the book has become a status symbol of education and wealth and it may have more significance in society as a visual signifier of these notions than as a tool to access the knowledge inside of it. Though books have become more accessible in the digital age through e-books and audiobooks, the symbolism of possession has not diminished. This can especially be seen through online trends and the rise of Internet subcultures like “BookTok” and “BookTube” where creators show massive libraries or book hauls often without including any critical response or review to the material of the books presented. That’s not to say that books can not be read for leisure as Michelle Levy and Tom Mole’s introduction to book history reinforces, however, these platforms exemplify how the book has continually grown to be a fetish object.

Imagining the Single Book

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I think that most people in our day and age tend to think of books as a part of a larger whole. They’re things to be collected. They’re things to be placed upon shelves and organized in neat numerous rows either by author last name or spine color or the Dewey decimal system. To see a book all on its own seems so rare that my mind has difficulty even picturing it. I am sure that I have seen it, but there seems to be no good way to orient the display of a single codex on a shelf or on a desk, and it is equally difficult to imagine dedicating oneself to a single text.

But when we think about the history of reading (because to read them is the only rational reason to have any books at all) as something that has evolved over time, with various practices and methods, and we go back, perhaps, to the time of the first codified printing of Don Quixote, readers would have approached the text of the first modern, widely dispersed novel very differently.

As Levy and Mole explain in the introduction to The Broadview Introduction to Book History, “historians of reading sometimes distinguish between “intensive” and
“extensive” reading. Reading “intensively” means returning to a small number
of books again and again, whereas reading extensively involves reading
a much larger number of books (or other printed matter), and often reading
them only once” (xvii). They go on to explain that extensive reading is something of a novel phenomenon in the past hundred years and is a result of easily accessible printed material; “when books were very expensive and labour-intensive to produce (especially when they had to be copied by hand), most people had access to very few books. People often read these books intensively because they didn’t have access to any other reading matter. As a result, they came to know their books well and invested significant emotional energy in them” (Levy et al xvii-xviii). I like to imagine some simple, moderately well-off person in the mid seventeenth century going back to Alonso Quixano and the jousting of the windmills and the trot of Rocinante time and again by the glow of a lantern. There is no doubt that intensive reading of Don Quixote is nothing particularly unique, as it is probably the most studied novel of all novels, but to be that invested in that book because you have no other choice of reading material makes for a much different experience than that of the scholar who can understand why Steinbeck’s truck is named Rocinante in Travels With Charley, and who can tie Cervantes’ novel to numerous other works in the 400 years since its publication.

How does that type of reading alter the reader’s conception of the book itself? Are we still drawn to the same plot points? Do plot points then become of lesser importance? Are we more interested in language? Do we have time for more ornately written sentences? And are we more privy to social commentary, or are we less, with no (or few) other written works to compare to? Is the book something self-contained, as I believe we view it now, or does the book only become a launching pad for the more creative parts of our brain? Must we memorialize it and make it something more than a story?

The last two questions seem to have some answer. We can see it in the artworks of every part of the Spanish speaking world, and very much of the rest of it too. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza may be the most represented characters in sculpture and painting who are not religious figures. You can find them, if you look well, cast in bronze everywhere from remote regions of the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain to bustling downtown squares in Brussels, Belgium.

I would argue that intensive reading of Don Quixote, (and of other books of the early era of widely-available novels) of prolonged, nearly undivided attention to the story and the characters within, allowed readers to elevate them to something of a mythic status. There were artworks created, false sequels written, conversations in the public square, and this came from an inability to access other books.

Readers must have had a sense of infatuation with early novels, allowed themselves to fully exist in their worlds, used these stories as inspiration (not unlike religion), and this is something we’ve seen peter off through the centuries as readers have had access to more and more stories, whether that be in the form of books, television, cinema, video games, or other kinds of entertainment. We read now in a series of flings, ever moving on to the next thing that catches our eye, which in some ways may have led to our viewing them as “a thing to fetishize rather than to use,” as Jessica Pressman says in “Old Media/New Media” (1). Books exist in collections. They are housed in vast libraries. And so, a deep relationship with a singular set of characters and pages and words in a singular world is largely a thing of the past. They are largely ornamental except in the brief periods of time we have them cracked open.

Week 3: Already Thinking About My Final Project

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While reading this week’s texts, particularly “Old Media/ New Media” by Dr. Pressman, I started getting ideas for my final project. (Or maybe just a personal project.)

The project would be made up of two texts written by me, one physical and one digital. It would also incorporate text and images from whichever special collections text I choose. The physical text would use asterisks, numbered citations, or maybe emoji to “link” to the digital text. The digital text would be an index of hyperlinks, quotes, and other footnotes for the reader to understand the physical text better.

Themes that might be explored in this format:

  • Old vs. New media: The project would question the distinction between “old” and “new,” referencing Dr. Pressman’s writing on Bolter, Grusin, and Hayles. Regarding “Remediation” and “intermediation,” I could show how the physical text and the digital index influence each other and how they’re influenced by other media, both “new” and “old.” Both texts would be influenced by the special collections text, and that text may also be influenced by my project. My interpretation of the text through “new” media might influence how that text is seen by new readers. Readers who already know that text, however, might approach my project differently.
  • Detached Footnotes: Going back to our conversations about Marino’s Marginalia, this project could be about what happens when the marginalia is separated from the text. Eventually the medium I use to create the digital index will become defunct. The one copy of the physical text might be destroyed or kept somewhere inaccessible to most readers. How could someone read one without the other?
  • Subconscious influences: This morning, I texted Raine some of these ideas. It turns out that he started a very similar project last year. I’m not sure if he’s told me about that project before, or if we happened to grab our ideas off the same shelf in the Library of Babel, but the idea of uncertainty as to where ideas come from is one I want to play with in the project. A lot of the digital index will be references to my influences. But what about the ones I’ve forgotten?

This isn’t a project proposal, obviously. It’s a vague creative daydream. Not to be taken too seriously, yet. I don’t even know what genre it should be. Will this be a fictional story? A collection of poetry? Non-fiction prose? All of the above? I probably won’t know until we’ve visited Special Collections. Now that I have an idea of what I want my final project to look like, though, I might be able to quickly home in on a book that could play in this space. Looking forward to this week’s classes even more, now!

Week 3: The Intricate Dance of Old/New Media

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When I read Jessica Pressman’s essay about old and new media, a quote from it that really stood out to me was “Media do not replace one another in a clear, linear succession but instead evolve in a more complex ecology of interrelated feedback loops.” (pg. 2) I felt that this observation really challenges a dominant cultural narrative that I see myself coming across a lot. That this idea that technological advancements follow a predictable path in which new technology eventually replaces older technology, making the former generation of technology outdated.

Another part of the reading that fascinated me was Pressman’s concept of “bookishness” as a response to the perceived danger of digital media to print culture. It seems that modern literature has started to fetishize books as a pleasing object to look at rather than just letting it fade away in the face of screens. I think that this type of occurrence shows how old media actively changes in response to new media, as it frequently becomes more strongly itself in the process rather than passively absorbing its effect.

Thinking about this dynamic, I can’t help but be reminded of vinyl records, in which it made a notable comeback right in the middle of the digital music streaming era. Vinyl’s very much focused more on its physical qualities, such as the album cover, the ritual of actually playing a record, and the cozy real sound. Rather than attempting to compete with the ease of digital technology. I found that vinyl records started to highlight their tactile, physical characteristics in ways that set them apart from their digital counterparts, much like Pressman’s bookish novels.

Furthermore, I thought that Pressman’s use of Hayle’s alternative term “intermediation” together with Bolter and Grusin’s concept of “remediation” raises significant issue regarding directionality and agency in the evolution of media. “Intermediation” better represents the ongoing, bilingual aspect of media influence that Pressman outlines, while on the other hand, “remediation” would imply a rather linear process of new media altering the old. The chain of feedback is an ongoing process of mutual modification rather than merely new things impacting old things.

This had me wondering, what more examples of “bookishness” or related trends may we uncover in the media world of today? For instance, how do established newspapers highlight their trustworthiness and materiality in the face of digital journalism? How do physical retail establishments renew themselves in the face of online shopping?

Week 3: Mapping the Limits of the Library with Media Ecology

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Our readings this week prime us to approach Special Collections materials within a “media ecology” (Jessica Pressman, “Old Media/New Media”). Operating themselves in this ecology, these readings cite diverse scholarly approaches to book studies. While this is my third time reading Michelle Levy and Tom Mole’s The Broadview Introduction to Book History (2017) with Dr. Pressman, I’m struck by the immensity of information and approaches to information cataloged in the History. As we prepare to enter Special Collections, I’m struck by a deep thought: There’s a lot to read. How do we read a lot?

If we understand each book as a networked media object, we must read this object’s contexts across time and place. To use Dr. Pressman’s term from “Old Media/New Media”, how do we read an “ecology of interrelated feedback loops” if all are entangled? How does one read an ecology? How do we focus or curate our readings of an object when we understand its paratext to spiral in directions and scopes beyond our comprehension? If the book object is assembled and networked so pervasively, how do we decide the scope of our reading? As Dr. Pressman said of digital hypertext in last week’s class, how does the reading end, and how do we decide where it ends?

What Dr. Pressman calls the “linear historical narrative that describes the shift from old to new media” (2), thoroughly unwound by book archaeology, is tempting because it makes reading media easier. Questions of immense scope are detangled; the singular reader retakes authority to create a sequential history and to construct singular meanings from this easier narrative. This reduced “flowchart” history is popularly bent to political ends. We don’t need to fall into this practice just because it’s easier – rather, it is important that we commit to following the confusions and uncertainties of research if we really want to meet and draw more nuanced interpretations of our book objects.

Without needing to construe reading history through the transitional “intensive to extensive reading” model, we can recognize that the way we approach reading is influenced by our perception of how many things are available to read (Levy and Mole xviii). I realized during our discussion of Mark C. Marino’s Marginalia in the Library of Babel that many hypertexts take me longer to process than static texts because they offer no readout showing how much content remains to be read. As a mortal thing, having some concept of when – or at least if – I’ll end a reading informs how I apportion my time and attention. My attention transitions out of the text and through others. Instead of expecting a fixed termination point, then, I think I’ll enter Special Collections with the framework that my reading of a book object will be transitional: our feedback loops will pass through each other. Maybe the ending that will guide my reading is not the limit at which a reading or history terminates, but the transitional process that happens when the book object takes on new meaning. It’s not a cessation, but a transition into more and radiating loops. I need to pay attention to my reading processes in order to notice when this transition is taking place.

Last week, Borges’ narrator in The Library of Babel conjured “[an] unspeakably melancholy memory: I have sometimes traveled for nights on end, down corridors and polished staircases, without coming across a single librarian” (114). Borges philosophically dramatizes conflicts surrounding the ways in which people approach books and reading as cultural practices; here the conflict is not between opposing readers but in the echo chamber of an intellectual journey undertaken alone. I am grateful that we populate our own Library within the massive ecology of scholarship, expertise, and curiosities of people across time and place.

Books Tell Time and Human Adaptation

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It has become relatively clear that we can base the time period of a book on its physical body. Of course, these time periods could range hundreds to thousands of years, but the way we read shows us how we’ve adapted. Although it wasn’t necessarily explicitly spoken on, humans are constantly looking for the easiest, most efficient ways to do things. This includes reading.

In The Broadview Introduction to Book History, Michelle Levy and Tom Mole explain the four epochs of book history. Even before the first epoch of books, we read from scrolls and, because of Christianity, codices became more commonplace. Second, after hundreds of years, “the printing press…made it possible to produce large numbers of (reasonably) accurate copies much faster” (xv). Because printed matter was so much quicker, it was also much more expensive. However, the third epoch occurred over several years as the prices decreased and the prints were continuously used. Finally, we stand in the fourth epoch, with digitized books we can hold in our back pocket.

In one way or another, the media adapts to our human adaptations. Therefore, we are carrying this evolving matter through our history as we find newer ways to transport information. Yet, as Professor Pressman notes, “media do not replace one another in a clear, linear succession but instead evolve in a more complex ecology of interrelated feedback loops” (“Old/ New Media”). Unlike being able to define the eras of books throughout history, it is difficult to determine the difference between the old and the new uses of books. I find this very fascinating especially since we have no way of knowing just how changed our method of reading will be 100 years from now. What used to take thousands and hundreds of years to develop can occur in decades. 

While it’s clear that the digitization of books is a current phenomenon, I wonder how long it will be until we switch to something else entirely.

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.