Week 2: Form and Function

I feel like this is a bit of a cop out, given that we discussed this book in the Analytical and Historical Bibliography, but it is such a good example of form and function in a physical book that I'll use it anyway--also, it's the last book I've read!

For Christmas, I received a copy of Doug Dorst and J. J. Abrams' S., which by all accounts looks like an old library book complete with call number and aged cover. However, upon opening it, you see that there are sets of marginalia throughout the book that show the development of a mystery and a relationship through marginal notes between two readers. On top of that, there is ephemera like postcards, newspaper clippings, and other bits of "extra" material inserted between specific pages of the book. Underlying all of this marginalia and ephemera is the text of the physical book the marginalia-story relates to, Ship of Theseus.

This is so complex that I found it difficult to even start. Do you read Ship of Theseus first, or just the marginalia? I chose to read the marginalia first in the order it appeared on the pages, but even then it was difficult to keep up with the timeline of who wrote what, and when. Marginalia is written in different colored ink to indicate time, so, for example, on the "Also by V. M. Straka" page (verso side of the half-title), you see the conversation initially in blue and black ink, and then again in red and purple, and then again both in black. This indicates a passage of time. If this was all in the same color of ink, or not handwritten, the meaning of a conversation between two people over time would be lost.

It's also important to note the marginalia wouldn't be a conversation that happened in dialogue: one person would need to react to the text, and the next person would have to react to the text and the annotations. So complicated!

In short, this book is entirely dependent on its form. The article "Ebookness" by Simon Peter Rowberry discusses the problem of S. vis-à-vis the ebook. How could you ever get something as complex and dependent on the form of three separate substrates (Ship of Theseus, the marginal notes, and the ephemera) to come across meaningfully in an ebook? Rowberry shows the difference between different e-reader editions of S.  using the example of ephemera placement. While Kindle inserts the ephemera as a "found object" on a black background, iBooks places the ephemera over the page in Ship of Theseus where the object was originally placed.

Although I have 'read' S., I don't think I have truly read it, nor do I truly understand it yet. I will have to examine it further and possibly read it differently. I read the marginalia first, but perhaps I might like to read the main text of Ship of Theseus, or try to read the marginalia in the order that it was 'written' rather than page by page.

That might have to wait until after term is done though...

Citations

Abrams, J. J. and Doug Dorst. S. London: Mulholland Books, 2013.

Rowberry, Simon. "Ebookness." Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies [pre-print; no vol/no assigned yet] (2015): 1-18.