A thriller in ten chapters
The Observer’s literary editor Robert McCrum stood down this month after more than 10 years in the job. And what a tumultuous 10 years. When he started it was a world of ‘cigarettes, coffee and strong drink’. But that has all changed - new writers, big money, the internet, lucrative prizes and literary festivals have all helped revolutionise the books world. Here he charts the changes in 10 short chapters - and wonders if an ‘iPod moment’ is imminent.
The Library in the New Age
Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google? More by Robert Darnton at the NYRB.
Fake memoirs, factual fictions, and the history of history
But is “historical truth” truer than fictional truth? The difference between history and poetry, Aristotle argued, is that “the one tells what has happened, the other the kind of things that can happen. And in fact that is why the writing of poetry is a more philosophical activity, and one to be taken more seriously, than the writing of history.” Historians have turned this thinking on its head. History, not literature, is the serious stuff.
More by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker
Start Writing the Eulogies for Print Encyclopedias
It has never been easier to read up on a favorite topic, whether it’s an obscure philosophy, a tiny insect or an overexposed pop star. Just don’t count on being able to thumb through the printed pages of an encyclopedia to do it. The end of print encyclopedias ? I would hope not. Call me old-fashioned, but I love these printed editions.
Secretum Secretorum
Secretum secretorum is a medieval treatise also known as Secret of Secrets, or The Book of the Secret of Secrets, or in Arabic Kitāb Sirr al-asrār, or the Book of the science of government: on the good ordering of statecraft. It is a mid-12th century Latin translation of a 10th century Arabic encyclopedic treatise on a wide range of topics including statecraft, ethics, physiognomy, astrology, alchemy, magic, and medicine. It was influential in Europe during the High Middle Ages.
Sample page (source)
Two charts for determining whether a person will live or die based on the numerical value of the patient’s name. From copy of a portion of Kitāb Sirr al-asrār falsely attributed to Aristotle (see pseudepigrapha). The copy is dated on fol. 9b, line 12: Rajab 1264 [= 3 June-2 July 1848]. The copyist is not named.
(Unfortunately I cannot read Arabic, and couldn’t locate a translation either of this page)
Micrographia
A revelation in its time, Micrographia (1664) exposed the previously hidden microscopic world. Robert Hooke, an early developer of the compound microscope, used his device to peer at the eyes of flies, the stinger on a bee, hairs, bristles, sand particles, seeds, and more, noting every detail with both words and masterful illustrations. The original book is a hefty three pounds, so the digital versions now available are more convenient, but there is something to be said for flipping through a printed copy and discovering, like a hidden treasure, each drawing in its beautiful intricacy.
Marginalia
Marginalia is the general term for notes, scribbles, and editorial comments made in the margin of a book. The term is also used to describe drawings and flourishes in medieval illuminated manuscripts. True marginalia is not to be confused with reader’s signs, marks (e.g. stars, crosses, fists) or doodles in books. The formal way of adding descriptive notes to a document is called annotation.
More info at the marginalia pages of the Cambridge University Library
Jorge Luis Borges
Yesterday I intended to start reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. But I decided (after a visit to the book shop…) to read first some stories by Jorge Luis Borges : Historia Universal de la Infamia (1935), Ficciones (1944) and El Aleph (1949).
Note to myself: write an essay about Borges.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Yesterday I finished reading Life & Times of Michael K, a book written by J. M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2003. A very fine story indeed. My next book will be Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It’s the debut novel by British writer Susanna Clarke.
The book is set in an alternate 19th-century Britain, during the Napoleonic Wars. The story is based on the premise of magic returning to England after hundreds of years of desuetude, and the tumultuous relationship between two fictional magicians of the time. The story incorporates historical events and people into its fictional alternate reality. Historical figures encountered in the novel include the Duke of Wellington, Lord Byron and King George III. The novel, written in a pastiche of Jane Austen’s literary style, uses quasi-archaic spelling for several words (such as shew, chuse, connexion, sopha, scissars, headach, and surprize).
The book is interspersed with hundreds of fictional footnotes which reference a number of fictional books including magical scholarship and biographies, and which provide a detailed backstory. Many pages of the book contain more footnote text than main body text. The book features several illustrations by Portia Rosenberg.
Further references:
- Seminar with Susanna Clarke at Crooked Timber
- Susanna Clarke’s Magic Book, John Hodgman, The New York Times Magazine.
Quote
The world had changed. The life of the mind in the Age of the Feuilleton might be compared to a degenerate plant which was squandering its strength in excessive vegetative growth, and the subsequent corrections to the pruning back of the plant to its roots…[It had] become common knowledge, or at least a universal sense, that the continuance of civilization depends on this strict schooling. People know, or dimly feel, that if thinking is not kept pure and keen, and if respect for the world of the mind is no longer operative, ships and automobiles will soon cease to run right, the engineer’s slide rule and the computations of banks and stock exchanges will forfeit validity and authority, and chaos will ensue. It took long enough in all conscience for realization to come that the externals of civilization — technology, industry, commerce, and so on — also require a common basis of intellectual honesty and morality.
- H. Hesse in The Glass Bead Game
Some interesting reviews
James Wood about Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s new translation of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” Writer discusses the vivid way Tolstoy renders the vitality of his characters. Tolstoy is the great novelist of physical involuntariness. The body helplessly confesses itself, and he seems merely to run and… Review at The New Yorker.
Amazon has launched its first electronic book reader, a wireless reading device named Kindle, hoping to drag one of the last bastions of the analogue world into the digital age. Review at The Guardian.
Update: the Kindle ingnites the flames…(37 Signals).
The tumultuous decades between the wars saw the birth and development of a new genre—pulp fiction—that sought in the gritty seams of American life a fresh moral code, one that made sense for hard times and harder people. A review at Bookforum by John Banville. Big Book of Pulps is 1168 pages filled with crimefighters, villains, and dames, and in which the editor compares pulp fiction with jazz…another “entirely . . . American invention.”
‘Many enemies, much honour’, Sigmund Freud thought. It is an opinion that Craig Venter undoubtedly shares, for he quotes with relish a remark once addressed to him by a government functionary: ‘This is Washington, and we judge people by the quality of their enemies, and son, you have some of the best.’ Walter Gratzer reviews A Life Decoded: My Genome - My Life by J Craig Venter
Read
Just finished The Inheritance of Loss, a novel by Kiran Desai. A book I really enjoyed.
The Book of Beasts
White’s The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts was the first and, for a time, the only English translation of a medieval bestiary. Bestiaries were second only to the Bible in their popularity and wide distribution during the Middle Ages. They were catalogs of animal stories, combining zoological information, myths, and legends. Great attention was given to bizarre, exotic, and monstrous creatures. Much of the content of bestiaries was drawn from much older sources including Aristotle, early English literature, and oral traditions. White provides an excellent appendix that explains how the creatures of the bestiary influenced the development of allegory and symbolism in art and literature.
My wish list
My wish list at Amazon…feel free…
When I’m back home end of this week, I’ll start ordering what is still on it. 
The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection
From Edwin A. Abbott to Emile Zola, the 1,082 titles in the Penguin Classics Complete Library total nearly half a million pages–laid end to end they would hit the 52-mile mark. Approximately 700 pounds in weight, the titles would tower 828 feet if you stacked them lengthwise atop each other–almost as tall as the Empire State Building. The complete collection available for $7,989.50 at Amazon…
Das Ständebuch (1568)
Das Ständebuch (1568) is a book by German woodcut artist Jost Amman (ca.1539-1591) depicting various trades. The complete book is available in electronic form here.
