THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK: A MINI-MANIFESTO IN FOUR SETS OF THREE

DECADENCE I

The necessary book has been replaced, imperceptibly, by the decadent one. This changeling book can no longer claim to be the keeper of the world’s knowledge. To understand the future of the book, then, is to understand the history of decadence.

APOCRYPHA I

Writing, especially literary writing, has entered its Apocryphal stage. There are those who can only understand literature through Canonicity, through consensus. Let them have their Facebook group. Apocrypha is derived from the Greek word for “hidden”.

PROTOCOL I

The Internet, at its root, is a protocol, the I.P., a form of address. Its complexities are the effect of the consistent application of a simple set of rules. Its core principle is that efficiency is created through maximum redundancy. If not this, then that, and if not that, then something else. The Internet, when visualized, can look like a newly sodded lawn, or an exquisite galaxy of infinite detail and wonder. Writing in the digital age begins here.

DECADENCE II

“Only in extinction is the collector comprehended.” While Benjamin speaks of the extinction of the collector, it can also apply to the extinction of the thing collected, in this case his books. The decadent book is there to be written, to be printed, to be found, to be purchased, to be owned, to be organized, but most of all to be coveted. It is not necessarily there to be read. Steve McCaffery, when asked if he had read the many thousands of books in his library, said simply “no, but I have read in them.” Publisher and author Bev Daurio is worried about the fate of the long form.

APOCRYPHA II

Creativity has no need for Art (and vice-versa). Only Artists have a need for Art. Art is merely its own discussion. In Canada, Art is the condition of Arts funding. Literary awards are a salve of false consensus on our splitting, post-canonical skin. Nationalism is the weakest bond of literature. Sincerity is its strongest.

PROTOCOL II

In much the same way that surrealism provided a model for advertising, avant-garde writing movements provide the model for digital practice. Detournement, piracy, writing within constraint, parataxis, collaborative, constructed or anonymous authorship, hyper-materialism, self-organizing, algorithmic and other emergent writing, all are web staples from YouTube to Twitter. Contrary to popular characterizations, avant-garde and conceptual writing has largely been about face value. There is nothing to get.

DECADENCE III

Bruce Sterling has listed several point-form challenges to contemporary literature. “4. Means of book promotion, distribution and retail destabilized.” “5. Ink-on-paper manufacturing is an outmoded, toxic industry with steeply rising costs.” “6. Core demographic for printed media is aging faster than the general population.” “7. Media conglomerates have a poor business model; economically rationalized ‘culture industry’ is actively hostile to vital aspect of humane culture.” The collapse of the mass book market is the fertile soil for the decadent book market.

APOCRYPHA III

Sianne Ngai sees “the interesting” as an aesthetic category, a contemporary equivalent of “the sublime” or “the beautiful”. It is at once an acknowledgement, a ironic dismissal and a deferral of judgment. It is a quality of the art and an assertion of taste. The assessment of good poetry, given that there is little agreement on the common tenets of the form, is most often made purely by assertion. That’s interesting.

PROTOCOL III

“Build an engine with words. Let it make you speak.” – Steve Venright.

DECADENCE IV

As the web collapses space, so too must it collapse time. All of history rushing towards the instant of the click. A willful misreading of Einstein. The book, the languorous inconvenience of it.

APOCRYPHA IV

What, then, the fate of “good” literature in this polyglot, bastardized future? Where is the well-turned phrase, the deliciously slow narrative arc, the seven types of ambiguity, the great authors of the age, their depth of allusion? What is there to revere when reading is reduced to the merest encounter, a witticism? Jacob McArthur Mooney is correct in his skepticism of a Jetsons future for literature. If anything, sincerity adheres to a law of attraction; those that care, if they care enough, will find a critical mass of others. Readers, especially readers of “good” writing, are enthusiasts, and the information age is made for enthusiasts. Only the intellectually dishonest, however, those adamant anthologizers, will make any greater claim for “good” writing than this. A love of model trains. The embrace of the very oddity of reading at all. The joy of finding it where it’s hidden. Being here because there is no other place for them to go.

PROTOCOL IV

Perhaps it is nothing but the long form., the open-ended text, this endless writing, or that the “long form” is not nearly long enough. “And what fun to wreck it: knock it down, hit delete, and start all over again. There’s a sense of gluttony, of joy, and of fun. Like kids at a touch table, we’re delighted to feel language again, to roll in it, to get our hands dirty. With so much available language, does anyone really need to write more?” – Kenneth Goldsmith. Dealing with this excess, this everything, is the primary condition of our age. The internet, in its efficiency, is the idealized dream of moveable type.