Erase the Books

[Adnan]

Yesterday we had test lectures by candidates for professorship at my department. One of the contenders talked about the materiality of books, how printing something has a different social impact that transmitting a story orally, or on the net. It is interesting how we went from mainly oral cultures, to print worship, and now are moving to electronic, world wide delivery of books. What is more interesting is how does this affect the phenomenon of protest against books as well as in books. When stories were transmitter orally there was an even greater physicality or even immediacy between the narrator and the audience. Modern public readings, I'd say, don't really live up to that. Remember good old and hot Scheherezade for whom telling (or showing) had the element of something always being at stake. No one could burn her books, unless they burnt her, because the stories were a part of her body. Then with print comes the possibility of burning books. Remember Ray Bradbury who wrote how books turned into cinders and yet went back to the more dangerous form, being memorized and transmitted orally. Today we don't really memorize, learn by heart, a few quotes here and there, I give you that, ripping them out of their full contexts and all that. But what will happen with the burning of books phenomenon in the internet, E-age? A public burning in itself has a most dramatic effect, it brings forth its materiality, it infuses the written texts with subversive agency. But if the books are on the net, no such thing is possible. A tyrant wants to ban a book, fanatics want to burnt it, but it's everywhere and nowhere. What can they say? Erase the book! Yeah right. Not so dramatic. Maybe I should try and rewrite Ray's story with this premise in mind, about a fanatic who tries to erase books from the net. Yet what about memorizing, or even what what Tony Morrison called rememory? Don't know. I'm just brainstorming. Share your thoughts if you want.

[Maxwell James]

Hey, was going to comment, but it turned into a post of my own:

http://cantaraville.ning.com/profiles/blogs/re-erase-the-books

Interesting concepts you bring up.

[Chris Bays]

Hi Adnan,

I set up a blog in response to yours. Yes, the means of absorbing literature in the future will bring wonders and horrors ... preferably wonders. My blog response to yours focuses on robotics and cyborg technology -- rapidly advancing systems of storing memories.