library
Texts
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Pantography
Pantography tweets a message every hour. Each one is consecutive: the first was ‘0’ and the last will consist of 140 zeds. Between these two extremes, every possible message will have been tweeted: a description of every feeling you’ve ever had, anything you’ve ever overheard or will overhear, any headline that has ever caught, or could ever catch, your... -
Text 149
This does not exist only for books, it exists for any reproducible work. We can say this not only of “book” but also of “film”, “record” and so on. In this sense, Benjamin’s famous assertion that reproduced work differs from our older notions of art in that it has no aura can be turned on its head: reproduced work leads us to suspect the existence of an ideal... -
Packing My Library
I am packing my library. Tomorrow morning, these books will be packed inside ten cardboard boxes, loaded onto a van, and shipped to another country. Were it not for these several hundred books, the question of moving would be trivial: a couple of suitcases would carry all my clothes, and everything else I possess would happily fit into a large box. The rest—all the other things that are... -
Text 136
Nothing says, “We know what we’re doing” like an automated retrieval system such as the one at the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library in the University of Chicago. When a student wants to read a book, she orders the book online, then waits while a robotised crane swoops to the appropriate shelf and fetches a box containing several volumes, including the one the student requires. The box is delivered... -
“Have you read all these books?”
Anyone in possession of more than a handful of books, who is in the habit of standing them up side by side on a shelf, must be prepared for one particular question, “Have you read all these books?” Every time we have a guest over, or a man comes in to fix the heating, a quick glance at the shelves is enough to provoke this question. Walter Benjamin cites Anatole France’s retort to the... -
Electronic paper
When paper is blackened by ink in a printing press, we have the seeming transmutation of form into essence. This observation wouldn’t stand much scrutiny, of course, but it holds true in the sense that when a book is printed, the material world is permanently altered: there is now a string of words that exists in the physical world. The words have gone through several stages of abstraction in...
Citations
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“The only exact knowledge there is,” said Anatole France, is the knowledge of the date of publication and the format of books.”
“Unpacking My Library” in Benjamin: Illuminations p. 60 -
Ma alla domanda sui libri occorre rispondere, mentre la mascella si irrigidisce e rivoli di sudore diaccio colano lungo la colonna vertebrale. Io un tempo avevo adottato la risposta sprezzante: “Non ne ho letto nessuno,...
“Come giustificare una biblioteca privata” in Eco: Secondo Diario Minimo p. 140 -
All the technical requirements (presses, inks, page-shaped supports, even the art of negative casting in metal) were then already in place. But there was as yet no printing because no one was yet aware that by drawing ...
Flusser: Does Writing Have a Future? p. 48 -
"[I]f you want to know how I know about every book here, I can tell you: Because I never read any of them.” [...] he explained himself. The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the...
Musil 1995 p. 503