Circular File ... Critical Slam Dunks

A current literary fracas taking place within the halls of Academia and extending onto the WorldWideWeb reminded me of this post of mine from long ago in which I revived a critical review from even longer ago:  

 

Old Review passing in review -- If there had been such  modern slang in use .... Circular File - Slam-Dunk! :

Arrah Neil, or Times of Old. by G. P. R. James.
New York. Harper & Brothers.


"We suppose that this novel will be read, admired, praised and forgotten, like the preceding fictions of the same writer. The usual cant of eulogy will be lavished upon it, and it will then pass into oblivion, to be succeeded in three months by another equally valuable.


"In our opinion there is hardly an instance on record, of an author who has contrived to win an extensive reputation, as a writer of works of imagination, with such slender intellectual materials as Mr. James. No one has ever written so many books, purporting to be novels, with so small a stock of heart, brain and invention. 

"He is continually infringing his own copyright, by reproducing his own novels. Far from being surprised that he has written so much, we are astonished that he has not written more. From his first novel, all the rest can be logically deduced; and the reason they have not appeared faster, may be found in the fact that he has been economical in the employment of amanuenses."

Binary Archaeology - Sifting Through the Corrupted Past

Authors who publish only via electronic devices and not through the agency of paper media of some sort may well be forgotten by and irrelevant to the future. 



Could this be true?



Will authors who publish only via electronic media be remembered by future generations?  Through what agency? With what impact?



What is the shelf life of electronic storage? How quickly can we expect data stored in computers to be corrupted? 

Or, in other words, what is the temporal extent of of our electronically-stored social and cultural memory?



This is not to say that electronic media is not now host to a very vibrant literature, and an astoundingly complex ongoing (and often instantaneous) commentary on current events - but what is the shelf life of that literature? - of that commentary?

I am concerned that, with the vast information already stored via computers, accessible at the touch of a finger, humanity may lose its capacity for functional memory. 

The extreme vastness of information now stored electronically already inhibits the accessibility of that data.  This hardly addresses the banality and irrelevancy of much of that stored data. Consider that much that is vital and vibrant on a computer browser page is surrounded - and often lost - within a plethora of extraneous and irrelevant visual material (This extraneous lateral field is filled with both pictorial and textual content: advertising, links, moving images - a constant and confusing barrage of entreaties and enticements for the reader's attention to stray away from the desired text if not away from the very page on which the text is displayed).  

As goes storage for the future - how does this barrage of irrelevant material impede or corrupt the relevant text? What extraneous materials visible on many a blog or news page will be thus corrupted into the content of the blog or news? 

The short shelf life of electronic storage, and the incredible complexity of binary configuration within a single electronic document bodes well for the future development and importance of Binary Archaeology.

There is an old literary joke  - that was stated in a very humorous poem, once published in The New Yorker : "Ha hah! the book of my enemy has been remaindered!" Now, I guess the exultant cry might well be, "ha ha! the text of my enemy has been corrupted!"

The exigencies of Temporal Displacement require that I  regularly subject my own memory to "data scrubbing".

Poe's Noble Visage.

This, I say - THIS - was the true visage of  Edgar Allan Poe. Noble of brow, clear-eyed, straight-forward and  honest. Samuel S. Osgood produced, it seems, two portraits of Poe - one looking to left , and one looking to the right. Both show the same inviting, intelligent, noble visage. My thanks to Undine for using the first image on her blog (shown below), and thus reminding me of this forgotten portrait. Below the portraits will be seen a link to her excellent blog.

Undine's Blog - Most excellent! :

http://worldofpoe.blogspot.com/

The Quills in Poe's Quiver

I'm dredging this up from a year long past - just because it still amuses me. 

Everyone knows those most excellent delineations of horror and psychological madness penned into reality by Edgar A. Poe. He remains the Grand Master, the Puissant Thaumaturge. But fewer people know that Poe was one of America's most trenchant literary critics. In Poe we have the critic who did not mince words ... who did not pull his punches. A good review from Poe was surely earned through Herculean efforts by a writer laboring for a slim foothold on the slopes of Parnassus. But a critical pan .... could any author continue to blithely sail about on the literary sea after Poe had leveled a critical broadside at their plimsoll line?

The following example of Poe's caustic tongue-in-quill is from the December 1839 Burton's Gentleman's Magazine.

Harrumph, it is obvious that someone didn't pay their dues.


The Poets of America, Illustrated by one of Her Painters. Edited by John Keese . Colman, New York. 1839

"This long announced and much puffed volume has at last made its appearance. For the sake of the publisher, whose enterprising spirit deserves at least the good-will of the critic, we regret that we cannot award his beloved bantling a word of honest praise. We are compelled to pronounce this "splendid gift book", this loudly-vaunted specimen of American art and science, a common-place and profitless attempt. .... We are not sold to the will of any publisher; we never criticize a work without giving it an attentive perusal; we never obtain the gratuitous presentation of expensive publications by the promise of a puff; nor do we covertly slander a brother scribe because he is connected with another periodical. There are editors who cannot make these averments. The expression of our just opinions may give offense to various individuals, but we are not to be deterred in the execution of our critical duty.

"The editor of the Poets of America has woefully erred in the selection of some of the authors included in is list -- we know not whether he has mistaken the quality of the chosen from the lack of a kindred spirit with the sons of poetry -- from an ignorance of the attributes of of those whose name, although not enrolled on the catalogue of his acquaintance, have awakened the echoes of the bi-forked hill -- or whether he has suffered the interference of personal prejudice to warp his judgment and direct his choice.

"When we observe that some of the most celebrated poets of the day are excluded from his selection, and that various minor lights burn in the highest places, we are tempted to doubt the truth of his averment that he sought to present the finest specimens -- the true spirit of American poetry. There are names in his list 'alike to fortune and fame unknown', and the merits of their doings will not compensate the reader the offence of pushing better men from their stools. One writer, who has not yet attained the heights of mediocrity, has three pieces within eleven ages, while some of the best poets of the age, not being intimately connected with the publisher, are compelled tostand the ordeal of a single exhibition, and others are prohibited from all chance of show. "

[Poe gives us a sample ... and wretched it certainly is]

"The pictures are tolerably fanciful in conception, but their execution is paltry and ineffective; many of them are inferior to the woodcuts in Peter parley's school books. .... [the woodcuts] are inexplicable in their detail, and seem as if they had been engraved with a sharp fork on the back of a pewter plate."

E. A. Poe was one of the most incisive and important critics of his day. Most of his pronouncements on writers well stand the test of time.

View BOOKS FOR SALE

The Lumpencorporatariat.

Fie on the Lumpencoporatariat.

Crying Wee Wee Wee all the Way to the Market

One could probably find just about any animal species being used as a decorative motif on a book cover. Here's a nifty little porcine quartet that scampered across the front cover of an old book. Can any of you guess the title of the book?

 

The answer.

A great place to look to look for unusual books, vintage paperbacks and decorative prints.

I don't know why, but the Brothertown Books page on Facebook keeps getting buried. So I am posting this link. Check us out! Brothertown Books

New Books Cannot Match Old Books for Charm

There. I have said it. No amount of exposition on shiny paper, with photographs devised by the latest technology will budge me from this opinion.


Any number of persons will now run to their favorite new book and drag it out to defend it. harrumph. All such efforts are in vain. Those who prefer the old do not care for all the arguments in Babylon in defense of new.


There is nothing new under the sun - merely revised ways of viewing things ... some like to think it is "new ways of looking" ... but we all know only babies have a new way of looking at things. Society (drooling bully that it collectively is) soon beats that out of the wee upstarts. (I say drooling because, collectively, society drools after all that is shiny, flashily inconsequential and base). Anyhoooo ... here are some lovely illustrations in an old book from 1806. This book had been much read and studied in its day. This is hardly an incunable treasure, but it is a treasure of a sort for those who appreciate such ...

James Ferguson's Astronomy Explained Upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles, and made Easy for those who have not Studied Mathematics ... &c., &c. - Published in 1806 in Philadelphia by Mathew Carey.


























Nor for simplicity of titles ;) :

Shop Labels in Books : a Record of the Past -

One of the small pleasures to be had in booking is the discovery of what extraneous things are found in books ... placed there after the books have been released into the wild - so to speak. One of the most commonly found objects are the small labels affixed by retail shops. They are as myriad as the number of shops. Some of these labels are mundane and some are exotic. Some make one aware of a history that is adjacent to the world of books and every bit as complex and fascinating. Here is a small label affixed to the front paste-down of the old book from 1882 shown above. It is a book on diet for the sick as viewed by an Homoeopathic practitioner.

It would be delicious to pop back into Mr. Clapp's Pharmacy and snoop about his stock. What other interesting books might he have had on his shelves? People have placed their signatures in books on just about any page imaginable. It used to be a common practice - not universal, but common enough - to write one's name across the title page. Probably it is that the book is old that I am not gnashing my teeth at the audacity of someone so effacing the title page. Instead, I find it lends a charm of sorts to the book. An aura of use and history. Now if only the owner had been able to resist closing the book prematurely so soon after signing, we might easily read who he was, but as it is we know the book belonged to D. R. -----

HENRY STICKPIN BOOKNOODLE

My brother, Henry Stickpin Booknoodle, is an author, also set loose in time (It seems that if one member of a family is so released from the strictures of time, then other family members are also thus affected). Henry appears at my abode every once in a while, when our temporal dimensions happen to coincide.

Although an author of some considerable output, Henry does not share my enthusiasm for the book game. He disdains collecting. He considers such things as decorated bindings mere frippery, and insists that all his books be bound in a simple 1/4 cloth on board with lettering in black, on the spine only. In fact he so detests the whole phenomenon of First Edition Collecting that he insists that his publisher imprint Third Edition on all printings his books, whether it is the first printing or second. It tickles his fancy to think of frustrated collectors searching in vain for the scarce First Editions of his books.

I tried pointing out to him that an author's works must first be considered desirable by collectors before they will search out any edition of that author's work.

Henry's main opus is a massive ... nay, gargantuan novel in five volumes - not sequels, he insists, but a cohesive whole. The five volumes are titled individually, Telemachus Cogitatus, Telemachus Precipitus, Telemachus Conjuratus, Telemachus Liberatus, and Telemachus Infinitum.

Despite his public disdain for collecting and all things collected, Henry cannot help but think that his massive 20,046 page, five volume novel would, of course, be collected ... and prized. He considers it a masterpiece.

Indeed it may well be. The collecting jury is still out.

I ignore Henry's poor use of Latin. I have indeed read the entire five volumes, in manuscript .

Henry refers to his opus as Telemachus Completus ... I think of his opus as Telemachus Pentamental. When in a more exasperated mood, I think of his massive pile as Telemachus Concursus.

It was the read ad terminus per astera per annuum.

Definitely it is a book that goes on ad infinitum.

I am making a request here for any persons (if such should exist) who have read all or any part of Henry Booknoodle's massive Telemachus Completus, to write in and make commentary. I shall read these with interest, and pass on to Henry all comments that refrain from mean-spirited invective.

HENRY STICKPIN BOOKNOODLE,
Professor Booknoodle's Brother

Henry Stickpin Booknoodle, A>P> (Author Proliferous)

Someone inquired as to the possibility of purchasing my brother's opus. A bookshop on the dark side of the moon, The Terminus Bookery, which of course exists only in a future mode, might have the Complete Telemachus;  in 2231 AD the entire novel was reprinted on antique paper and bound in real woven cloth taken from once-living plants, causing a small furor in the literary world .... and as well instigating a demonstration by PETA for the use of a Vegetal Entity (V.E.) in the construction of the volumes. As well as PETA, S.A.U.P.O. (The Society Against the Use of Physical Objects) joined in the protest. Become displaced in time and you, too, may well be able to witness this seminal event.