Book Presence in a Digital Age

Contrary to the apocalyptic pronouncements of paper media's imminent demise in the digital age there has been a veritable surge of creative reimaginings of books as bearers of the literary. From typographic experiments (Mark Z. Danielewski's <i>House of Leaves</i> Steven Hall's <i>The Raw Shark Texts</i>) to accordion books (Anne Carson's <i>Nox</i>) from cut ups (Jonathan Safran Foer's <i>Tree of Codes</i>) to collages (Graham Rawle's <i>Woman's World</i>) from erasures (Mary Ruefle's <i>A Little White Shadow</i>) to mixups (Simon Morris's <i>The Interpretations of Dreams</i>) print literature has gone through anything but a slow inevitable death. In fact it has re-invented itself materially.<br/><br/>Starting from this idea of media plurality <i>Book Presence in a Digital Age</i> explores the resilience of print literatures book art and zines in the late age of print from a contemporary perspective while incorporating longer-term views on media archeology and media change. Even as it focuses on the materiality of books and literary writing in the present <i>Book Presence</i>also takes into consideration earlier 20th-century moments of media transition developing the concepts of presence and materiality as analytical tools to perform literary criticism in a digital age. Bringing together leading scholars artists and publishers <i>Book Presence in a Digital Age</i> offers a variety of perspectives on the past present and future of the book as medium the complex relationship of materiality to virtuality and of the analog to the digital.