Matthew G. Kirschenbaum: Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing (2016)
Filed under book | Tags: · computation, digital humanities, history of literature, history of technology, literary theory, materiality, media archeology, media theory, technology, word processing, writing
“The story of writing in the digital age is every bit as messy as the ink-stained rags that littered the floor of Gutenberg’s print shop or the hot molten lead of the Linotype machine. During the period of the pivotal growth and widespread adoption of word processing as a writing technology, some authors embraced it as a marvel while others decried it as the death of literature. The product of years of archival research and numerous interviews conducted by the author, Track Changes is the first literary history of word processing.
Matthew Kirschenbaum examines how the interests and ideals of creative authorship came to coexist with the computer revolution. Who were the first adopters? What kind of anxieties did they share? Was word processing perceived as just a better typewriter or something more? How did it change our understanding of writing?
Track Changes balances the stories of individual writers with a consideration of how the seemingly ineffable act of writing is always grounded in particular instruments and media, from quills to keyboards. Along the way, we discover the candidates for the first novel written on a word processor, explore the surprisingly varied reasons why writers of both popular and serious literature adopted the technology, trace the spread of new metaphors and ideas from word processing in fiction and poetry, and consider the fate of literary scholarship and memory in an era when the final remnants of authorship may consist of folders on a hard drive or documents in the cloud.”
Publisher Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016
ISBN 9780674417076, 0674417070
xvi+344+[16] pages
via slowrotation
Reviews: Brian Dillon (The Guardian, 2016), Jessica Pressman (ALH Online Reviews, 2016), Eric Banks (Bookforum, 2016), Dylan Hicks (LA Review of Books, 2016), Kirkus Reviews (2016), Francis Russell (Hong Kong Review of Books, 2016), A. Bowdoin Van Riper (PopMatters, 2016), Leann Davis Alspaugh (Hedgehog Review, 2016), Thomas Padilla (American Archivist, 2017), Lai-Tze Fan (Papers of The Bibliographical Society of Canada, 2017), Seth Erickson (Interactions, 2017), David Walden (TUGboat, 2017), Grant Wythoff (Revista Hispánica Moderna, 2018), Elena Spadini (Umanistica Digitale, 2018).
Online companion
Publisher
WorldCat
Mary Ann Caws (ed.): Manifesto: A Century of Isms (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, art criticism, art history, avant-garde, bauhaus, cubism, dada, de stijl, expressionism, fauvism, futurism, history of literature, imagism, lettrism, literature, manifesto, modernism, surrealism, symbolism, vorticism
“An anthology featuring over 200 artistic and cultural manifestos from a wide range of countries. It includes texts ranging from Kurt Schwitters’ ‘Cow Manifesto’ to those written in the name of well-known movements – imagism, cubism, surrealism, symbolism, and projectivism – and less well-known ones – lettrism, acmeism, concretism, and rayonism.”
Publisher University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2001
ISBN 0803264070, 9780803264076
xxxiv+713 pages
Reviews: Greil Marcus (Artforum, 2001), Publishers Weekly (2001), Gail McDonald (symploke, 2003), Cynthia Ellen Patton (College Literature, 2003).
PDF (14 MB, updated on 2017-11-21)
Comment (0)Francis D. Klingender: Art and the Industrial Revolution (1947–) [EN, IT, ES]
Filed under book | Tags: · 1800s, aesthetics, art history, history of literature, history of technology, industrial revolution, industry, labour, marxism, poetry, technology
A classic of Marxist art history.
“Drawing on his unique command of the contemporary visual and literary record, Francis Klingender analyzes and documents the inter-reaction between the sociological, scientific and cultural changes that moulded the 19th century. His subjects range from the development of the railways to the poetry of Erasmus Darwin, from the construction of bridges and aqueducts to the aesthetic concepts of the Sublime and the Pictoresque, from the Luddite riots and the English ‘navvy’ to those artists most profoundly affected by the climate of the Industrial Revolution, among them John Martin, Joseph Wright of Derby, J.C. Bourne, and J.M.W. Turner.” (from back cover)
Publisher N. Carrington, London, 1947
Edited and revised by Arthur Elton
Revised and expanded edition by Adams & Dart, 1968
Publisher Paladin, St Albans, 1972
ISBN 0586081224, 9780586081228
xv+272 pages
Review: Fred H. Andrews (J Royal Society of Arts, 1949).
Art and the Industrial Revolution (English, 1947/1968, 60 MB, no OCR)
Arte e rivoluzione industriale (Italian, trans. Elena Einaudi, 1972)
Arte y revolución industrial (Spanish, trans. Pilar Salso, 1983)