If it’s not too
brash to use Book History’s current theoretical frameworks to postulate « The
Future of the Book » (after all, who knows what the future may bring?), then
certainly D. F. McKenzie’s well-received concept of the “Sociology of Texts”
provides a means for conceptualizing immanent bookish forms. McKenzie posited
that bibliography,
“…as the discipline that studies texts as recorded forms and the
processes of their transmission, including production and reception…should be
concerned to show that forms effect meaning. …For any history of the book which
excluded study of the social, economic, and political motivations of
publishing, the reason why texts were written and read as they were, why they
were rewritten and redesigned, or allowed to die, would degenerate into a
feebly degressive book list and never rise to a readable history.” [McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts,
12-3].
McKenzie, if
he were alive, would surely approve of a history of future books (a
pre-history?) that examines why traditional formats have been repudiated and what role form had played in that transformation. Critics seem to have declared the codex passé on
account of its serial nature. Long ago, Michael Joyce proclaimed that the
traditional book, with its linear structure leading to finite closure would be abandoned in favour of the electronic text, which “requires rather than
encourages multiple readings”, [Joyce, “Notes toward an unwritten non-linear
electronic text,” 45]. The bookish forms du
jour are the hyptertext and the electronic reader. According to Matthew
Kirschenbaum and Sarah Warner, hypertext was lauded by post-structural literary
critics such as Roland Barthes as “writerly”, while the staid codex was derided
as “readerly” (think autonomously creative reading through link-chasing vs authoritatively
directed chain-reading of consecutive pages). They argue that the new Book History
is the study of “pixels and plastic”, the “interplay between text and real life”
and the proprietary nature of platforms, [Kirschenbaum & Werner, “Digital
scholarship and digital studies,” 406-7, 452-3].
But were readers of the book really such slaves to form? Before we assume that the electronic turn is only about new reading formats, Book History should
look back once more to see whether past and postmodern reading habits are really all that different. In his “Sociology of Texts,” McKenzie advocated for the investigation of reading; that is,
how people engaged with books, as well as received, interpreted and utilized
the information therein. For example, he comparatively examined how treaties were read differently by colonial agents and Maori leaders in New Zealand [McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts,
122-3]. A history of reading has only begun to be compiled, since evidence for
reading practices is difficult to locate and challenging to interpret. Even
Darnton, in revisiting his Book History model, which was concerned with
investigating books as the foci of human action, urged an examination of intertextuality to recover how people read selectively,
concatenating citations and texts in referential chains, [Darnton, “What is a history of
books? Revisited,” 506-7].
In my view, readers
have always been a picky bunch. To illustrate, I invite the reader to consider the case of the children’s book, (if you so choose!). Picture books generally
have sparse texts and bright, expressive illustrations. Their images might
be considered paratextual; that is, they serve as thresholds to the text, inflecting
and augmenting the story or even creating parallel narratives. Anyone who has read
to children will know that such figurative digressions often have the effect of
changing the course of the reading, with readers avoiding closure (and
bedtime!) altogether. A favorite picture book is Rosie’s Walk, created by Pat Hutchins. The
text, located on alternate openings, briefly relates Rosie hen’s stroll around
the farm, which takes her “around the pool, over the haystack, past the mill,
through the fence, under the beehives and [back home] in time for dinner.” Unbeknownst
to Rosie, a fox stalks her.
On non-text openings, the narrative is propelled by
the illustrations alone. There, objects that had formed part of the farm-scape become
obstacles, which the oblivious hen avoids, but trip up the goal-obsessed fox.
My
daughter and I would ‘read’ this book in multifarious ways. First, I would read her the story, supplementing with my own narration of the images on the text-free
pages. Since I related the story in an identical manner each time, it was a personal reading
that we alone shared (her father could never replicate our ‘reading’, leading
her to seriously question his literacy!). After we had read the story through, we
would flip through the illustrations in no particular order, allowing the images
and our imaginations to wander, both within the book and beyond its covers. One
doesn’t need hyperlinks to read in a non-linear fashion, only imagination.
Best, Laura
Best, Laura
If you’d like to read the book, Patricia Hutchins, Rosie’s Walk (New York: Macmillan, 1968;
New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1986), it is available at the Toronto Public Library.
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