Introduction
The history of reading is the history of a technology of communication. There have been three major media, in all of that history, five thousand years. Clay, for cuneiform tablets. Paper, for the printed book. And light, for the new vehicle of reading, just emerging, the computer.
The question I want to address in this paper is, will the book die? Can computers, working in light, deliver the reading experience? Will books go the way of typewriters, chemical cameras, compositors, swept away by the computer?
The answer is in the subject of that painting: the reading experience. The pleasure of the text. Obvious that encyclopaedias, manuals, academic monographs, telephone directories, and all such tedious vehicles will be consumed by the computer. But the primary use of the book is for pleasure, and this is the centre of the English department. Will that be taken over?
The reading trance
The essence of the pleasure of the text is the reading trance.
The powerful compulsion to read is based on the universal need to dream.
The book doesn't exist, only readings. Because the reading experience depends soon on memory and acculturation, you get wide variation of experience, very idiosyncratic, the actual trance experience. Critics don't deliver the truth of the book, that is impossible; they do deliver interesting readings, that can enhance the reading of the text. But the are not guardians. And the book keeps us in the cave, prisoners of the ego.
Freud, the poet and the daydream
"Through the revealing characteristic of invulnerability we can immediately recognize His Majesty the Ego, the hero alike of every daydream and every story"
The real jouissance is meditation. Orgasm, say the Tibetans, is ego loss, just like sneezing.
All of English lit is actually about the reading trance. But it's never mentioned, ever, it's the dirty secret of the English department. Students hate making notes because it disturbs the reading trance, I do myself.
What is a book?
Middlemarch is not a book
The book is an internal experience
The book is a dream, and we are compelled to dream.
The deconstruction of the book
Death of the author
Power of the reader
Suspicion of elitism
Demolition of the rigid structures leads to free play, jouissance: is this the pleasure of the text?
The pleasure of the text is precisely not the jouissance of the newest critics; it is the embrace of his majesty the ego, the reinforcement.
Hypertext and the book
The computer deconstructs the book
Hypertext jouissance, must get out more, but true in that fiction is the domain of his majesty the ego, and this is destroyed by hypertext.
The correspondence between the deconstructed view of fiction and hyperfiction is well known, and remarkable; but it is because of the deficiencies of the book, that, hallowed by time, have been erected into myths. But, the myths destroyed, there is still the pleasure of the text, the reading trance. Whose precondition is effortless attention.
Hypertext can't deliver the reading trance, by its very nature: it is not effortless attention. It requires decision-making. You can't do that delicious abdication of will, that surrender to narrative, that the reading trance offers. There is no author god, but it's nice to play along with the fantasy, to suspend disbelief. To suspend atheism.
No commercial or techie person is interested in hypertext fiction; it doesn't deliver the reading trance. They are interested in replicating the book, not because of conservatism but because the book got it right. Effortless attention. More powerful than TV. Focus. But not the same as meditation. The opposite; the deconstruction as opposed to the fortification of the ego. Freud's phrase, read the text.
What is a book?
Is it then that the computer can't deliver the book? Not at all. What is a book?
Paper, board, type, optimally organised to enable from a trained (by the state, for free) user experience the reading trance.
Is this the only way of organising text? Is it the best? Is it the thrill of turning a page, what is the tactile quality of the book that appeals?
The cuneiform tablet
Something comfortable to the hand. Lets look at the earliest form of reading matter. Comfortable to the hand in the way the book can't be.
Cuneiform is print, like paper, like light.
Assyriologists will turn a tablet so it catches the light from different angles.
The demise of cuneiform an early casualty of the imperialism of the alphabet. Plus the lack of mud and reeds. You can't do the alphabet in clay.
The pda
An actor flooded by the light of the ebook, like the Rembrandt.
The absurd attempt to duplicate the multi-page book electronically. No, a handheld and a stylus will do it, augmented by a clip-on keyboard.
Cf ppc and cuneiform tablet, tactility, a proper reading medium
Not paper pages, that's not it; imitation of paper by computer absurd
The book is a clumsy thing to hold in the hand; my pda has the same weight and feel as the clay tablet, and I use a stylus to write in it.
Pda will also deliver music--demo? Pass round clay tablet. Look an feel, not just light but also touch. Clay.
All the books I have on the pda. Ms reader technology. Hypertext is not big business, not even small business. But much money to be made from electronically evoking the reading trance.
Rembrandt uses light, as do computers; light is the basis of reading, and computers address this directly. It's all pixels…
