"not a sports page, not a magazine, but a book"



I recently bought a copy of Anthony Grafton's Codex in Crisis for no reason other than the fact that the binding was hand-sewn and the colophon indicated that I was holding copy number 285 out appeared to be a very limited run. I had little intention of actually reading the thing.

Codex expands on Grafton's recent-ish New Yorker essay on the advent of new archiving technologies and how they are re-shaping our notions of literacy and expression--it is a bracing piece and I recommend it to anyone who finds these matters the least bit interesting. At a basic level, it is a fitting essay for New York's fantastic Crumpled Press to republish, with most of the original copies long since recycled or buried under stacks of more recent, unread magazines. But there is something about the uniqueness of this object--the delicate stitching, the hand-stamped number conferring some kind of unique aura, the sturdy flyleaf paper--that speaks directly to the anxieties expressed in Grafton's piece.

And it got me thinking about the proliferation of "limited edition" goods available to us nowadays: artisinal foods, limited edition records, t-shirts and shoes, even campaign merchandise. As the brave Editors of Codex write in their Introduction: The web is hot. If the infinite back-alleys of the Internet define our condition, then why not acts which celebrate the "blissfully disconnected" (Crumpled Press, again) pleasures of old (and, in a way, less democratic?) technologies? Why not disruptive acts of scarcity, when so many other things spill forth with abundance and neglect?

Of course this is all just a lofty way of justifying purchasing habits, of buying the same sneaker in three different colorways. But for an industry like publishing--why not consider carving up the market in this way? As bands like the Vivian Girls and Wavves have demonstrated, limiting access can be an effective way of managing/accelerating demand at the indie/grassroots level. There has to be a way this logic can be applied to the book trade.

Presented by

Hua Hsu teaches in the English Department at Vassar College and writes about music, sports, and culture. More

Hua Hsu teaches in the English Department at Vassar College and writes about music, sports, and culture. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Bookforum, Slate, The Village Voice, The Boston Globe Ideas section and The Wire (for whom he writes a bi-monthly column). He is on the editorial board for the New Literary History of America.

How to Cook Spaghetti Squash (and Why)

Cooking for yourself is one of the surest ways to eat well. Bestselling author Mark Bittman teaches James Hamblin the recipe that everyone is Googling.

Join the Discussion

After you comment, click Post. If you’re not already logged in you will be asked to log in or register.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Video

How to Cook Spaghetti Squash (and Why)

Cooking for yourself is one of the surest ways to eat well.

Video

Before Tinder, a Tree

Looking for your soulmate? Write a letter to the "Bridegroom's Oak" in Germany.

Video

The Health Benefits of Going Outside

People spend too much time indoors. One solution: ecotherapy.

Video

Where High Tech Meets the 1950s

Why did Green Bank, West Virginia, ban wireless signals? For science.

Video

Yes, Quidditch Is Real

How J.K. Rowling's magical sport spread from Hogwarts to college campuses

Video

Would You Live in a Treehouse?

A treehouse can be an ideal office space, vacation rental, and way of reconnecting with your youth.

More in Entertainment

Just In
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2009/05/-not-a-sports-page-not-a-magazine-but-a-book/17167/
www.theatlantic.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-52
119397
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:G2CQPGRUPA7MST4NZTI7GWTI6LLKXESS
<urn:uuid:42b011f4-b0bc-42d5-9675-aaebec29b91b>
2014-12-19T03:20:15Z
72.21.91.54
sha1:BIRNQOWPV6LOGYKLDSMVJ6VZGG6Y3QTW
<urn:uuid:f8652a0c-234f-44b3-a817-bdd9f4275478>
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2009/05/-not-a-sports-page-not-a-magazine-but-a-book/17167/
length
response
<urn:uuid:6b442fd7-fb2d-491e-a7a2-cd61826d79bb>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-231-17-201.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-52
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for December 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf