The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting - Couverture rigide

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0771089252 ISBN 13 : 9780771089251

Synopsis

Book by WershlerHenry Darren

A propos du livre

Extrait

Typewriting is dead, but its ghosts still haunt us. Even in our image-­saturated culture, the iconic value of the typewriter looms large. Artfully grainy, sepia-­toned close-­up photos of its quaint circular keys grace the covers of tastefully matte-­laminated paperbacks, announcing yet another volume extolling the virtues of the writing life. In magazine and billboard ads, magnified blotchy serifed fonts mimic the look of text typed on battered machines with old, dirty ribbons: pixel-­perfect damaged letters that sit crookedly above or below the line with paradoxical consistency. On radio and tv, the rapid clatter of type bars hitting paper signals the beginning of news broadcasts. We all know what this sound means: important information will soon be conveyed. Typewriters may have been consigned to the dustbin of history, but their ghosts are everywhere.

What’s remarkable is not that typewriting continues to haunt us, but that typewriting itself was always haunted.

Consider the case of Felix Pender, a successful young author of humorous stories. Pender, a character in “A Psychical Invasion," one of Algernon Blackwood’s turn-­of-­the-­century tales of the paranormal, has a problem. Though he is producing new work at an alarming rate, the young Pender is no longer capable of writing anything funny. All his laughter seems “hollow and ghastly, and ideas of evil and tragedy [tread] close upon the heels of the comic.”

In the best Edwardian fashion, Pender’s difficulties stem from his misguided attempt to learn Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. In order to experience the ludicrous in a manner that he would not normally, and therefore, presumably, to generate some new material, Pender starves himself for six hours, then takes an “experimental dose” of hashish.4 After a slightly disconcerting laughing jag, he goes to bed, wakes late, and sits down to write:

All that day I wrote and wrote and wrote. My sense of laughter seemed wonderfully quickened and my characters acted without effort out of the heart of true humour. I was exceedingly pleased with this result of my experiment. But when the stenographer had taken her departure and I came to read over the pages she had typed out, I recalled her sudden glances of surprise and the odd way she had looked up at me while I was dictating. I was amazed at what I read and could hardly believe I had uttered it . . .

It was so distorted. The words, indeed, were mine so far as I could remember, but the meanings seemed strange. It frightened me. The sense was so altered. At the very places where my characters were intended to tickle the ribs, only curious emotions of sinister amusement resulted. Dreadful innuendoes had managed to creep into the phrases. There was laughter of a kind, but it was bizarre, horrible, distressing; and my attempt at analysis only increased my dismay. The story, as it read then, made me shudder, for by virtue of those slight changes it had come somehow to hold the soul of horror, of horror disguised as merriment.

Revue de presse

"Darren Wershler-Henry¹s The Iron Whim is a pure delight. This “fragmented history of typewriting” provides fascinating glimpses into the history, culture, and poetics of the typewriter, that instrument that controlled our writing for so many decades and for which nostalgia is currently at a high point. Himself a poet and critic, Wershler-Henry recounts, with great panache, how the typewriter works of such writers as Henry James and Charles Olson were actually produced. The role of the amanuensis, the dictation process, the production and reception of typed text: all these topics, clearly and vividly detailed, insure the wide reception The Iron Whim is sure to get. I cannot imagine a reader who would not find this book intriguing and compelling."

—Marjorie Perloff, author of Wittgenstein's Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strageness of the Ordinary and The Futurist Movement

"I have been waiting years for just such a book on the cultural imagination of the typewriter, and Darren Wershler-Henry makes the wait well worthwhile. The Iron Whim combines historical rigor, theoretical sophistication, and an amazing breadth of literary knowledge from the canonical to the avant-garde -- not to mention a palpable sense of mischievous fun. Wershler-Henry, one of today's most provocative scholars and poets, undertakes this medial archaeology with unerring precision: revealing the most surprising arcana to be central to our cultural history and making the most familiar facts of the modern writing machine seem suddenly new and strange and extravagantly unlikely. This book is necessary, intelligent, and fun."
—Craig Dworkin, Associate Professor at the University of Utah, and author of Reading the Illegible

"Who connects the typewriter with vampires, ghosts, sex, drugs, and money? Poet, theorist, and culture critic Wershler-Henry, has produced a surprising book that is nothing short of a cultural history of the complex writing machine. Richly researched, the text is composed with élan and wit. A must-read for students of contemporary literature, media studies, and anyone interested in the interconnections of modern life and technology.

This book will find its place next to Henry Petroski’s book The Pencil as a marvel of transformative prose by which a mundane and under-appreciated invention rises from humble beginnings to a starring role in the history of culture."

—Johanna Drucker, Robertson Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia

Détails de l'édition

• Date d'édition: 1609
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0771089252
• ISBN 13: 9780771089251
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 344
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible