The Function of the Mediums

Through our exploration of the print culture and how the development of relevant technology has influenced the social anatomy of the time, I have understood much deeper that the medium might change but the function is the same.  Print culture might be digitizing, but its function is overwhelmingly similar.  In the earlier readings this semester, i.e. The Book, we learned the transition of how conversations of current events transitioned.  This is most clearly seen through the transition of newspaper clippings to sharing articles on Facebook.  During the early American development of print culture, we learned that people would write comments in the margins of articles and mail them to friends and family.  This sheet of paper would then travel and collect more opinions and comments, which is mirrored exactly on the Facebook article sharing culture that has become popular.  Members on Facebook will share articles with their Facebook friends, who will then be able to comment on it and continue to share it.  This new medium has made that exceedingly more streamline and widely accessible, but has not changed the sharing process nor the function of this aspect of social culture.

The Broadside

            Broadsides are a challenge to define, as through the years they have come to take on many shapes and purposes.  These single sheets of paper have allowed for the proliferation of ideas during both religious and political reformations and revolutions.  They have been a staple in the news world since the development of the printing press made printing quick and accessible to the general population.  From Martin Luther’s 95 Theses to wanted posters, broadsides have offered a platform for all sorts of announcements no a printed, sharable sheet of paper.  However, in the years since, broadsides have been able to take on a much more artistic function.  Utilized to present stories or poems in a more graphic format, broadsides have allowed for interactions between visual representations of the piece to play as important of a role in the experience of the piece, sharing the attention and significance of the words.  With all these varying functions, it can be difficult to come up with a set definition of what a broadside actually is.  The article we were assigned as reading approached the broadside as a means of conveying almost any type of information, and then went on to list the multitude of ways this is done, from “Typographic Poetry,” to “Integrating Display Type” where the text is incorporated into the image itself.

            Allowing for this sort of creativity in expression has a great deal of advantages artistically when creating a broadside.  One of the most obvious is in the use of a broadside as a means to convey information.  For example, in using a broadside, a person can manipulate fonts, text size, colors, and images in order to be more attention grabbing.  This could be particularly beneficial is public service announcements, posters for events or bands, and campaign posters.  Sometimes, this can even come into play when addressing the concept of art as a means to reach the masses.  Examples can be the interplay of art and images in order to convey a message, such as “Meat is Murder.”  Approaching it from an artistic standpoint again, the use of broadsides allows for the manipulation of texts and images, even the presentation of the title or the layout of the words on the page, can contribute to the readers understanding and allow for greater liberty of interpretation.   I can apply these benefits to my own creative purposes in understanding that words have a physical presence on the page, and to limit myself to the bare minimum of what they can convey would be to put boundaries on the creative process that are not necessary in today’s society.  The way that people are exposed to both poetry and art because of the technological nature of our time allows for this medium to be particularly successful.  While broadsides are a very longstanding tradition, they exist in a new form in the digital world.  People do not spend as much time reading through texts as they used to, especially while just perusing the internet.  Broadsides can be contained to a single image that is attention grabbing and can be transferred to various mediums quickly, such as blogs to twitter to actual print.  The nuances in imagery and text manipulation can be highlighted and greatly appreciated through the zoom functions on phones and computers.  Broadsides are a timeless form of mass communication, whether of art or of literature, that has transcended seamlessly and successfully into the technological world.

            While this medium is exceptionally versatile, it can also be extremely limiting for the obvious reason of its length.  Broadsides are not a means to communicate large pieces of writing.  Novels, or even short stories of a certain length, can’t be translated into broadsides as the physicality of the words makes this simply impossible, and incorporating imagery or manipulation of text would be frivolous and only add space.  However, the experience and understanding of broadsides can translate well into this medium in the ways of certain skills.  For example, while a novel could never be a broadside, the skills in creating a broadside could lend to designing a cover or understanding the simple affect that proper font selection can have in even chapter headings and page layout.  While the broadside is not appropriate for every piece of literature, it can translate well into many different fields of study that are contingent upon the skills developed in the creation.

            Approaching broadsides has opened the door for me in understanding literature as a visual art.  I enjoyed creating my own broadsides, because it gave me liberty to work with font and style in ways that I have previously been unexposed.  Writers by nature are lovers of words, and thus I have always been appreciative of the way that a font can convey the connotation of a word and change the mood of a text entirely.  I have become much more interested in the visual representation of pieces in that aspect the most.  While I’m not an entirely artistic person as far as images and drawings are concerned, exploring the way a word or series of words in a piece is physically placed and designed has been a pleasure in the study of broadsides.  I would love to explore further into the creation of the extremely similar broadsides of a few words to convey a message—such as the “Meat is Murder” example previously mentioned.  Where would this be most applicable in our day and age now that posters are no longer a very popular means of mass communication, and how would I be able to utilize that in the future of my career?

Books and Social Media

            Books are a social device, and people are social creatures.  We are developed to operate based upon social circumstances.  Writing on the Wall illustrated scientific ties to the development of our brains and the social nature of our existence.  Thus, it’s natural that books and the emergence of print culture changed social interactions for humans indefinitely.

            The exploration into the development of print technology is relevant to modern culture even though it’s in the process of being steadily replaced by electronic books, because it’s still a relatively new media. While, yes, eBooks are a newer technology, the development of laser printers, which sped up and simplified the process of printing, did not come about until the twentieth century.  Furthermore, it continues to be relevant to study the process of bookmaking, because the way in which books are bound has not changed very much since the emergence of the folio method of binding.

            In looking toward our future, I learned that electronic paper and ink is a potential for the future, which both enforces and combats the argument that books are a dying art and will be replaced by devices such as the Amazon Kindle.  Digital ink would see the development of books of electronic paper that would be able to store a book upon upload, but then be wiped clean once the book has been read without leaving any marks on the paper.  This would potentiate the existence of physical books over simply a screen, such as on the Kindle.  On the other hand, it would exacerbate the extinction of libraries of physical books.

            Modern society is dominated by social media to the extent that it interferes often with physical interactions.  The readings we did for class illustrated the ways in which social media isn’t a new development, but has been a key method in establishing social groups since as far back as the Ancient Romans.  Socialites in Ancient Rome would exchange letters and scrolls through scribes in order to communicate and establish alliances. It was a means of gossip, the exchange of information being key in establishing a place in society and smaller groups of friends.  This continued all throughout the Revolutionary period in the United States, in which letters would be exchanged containing portions of newspapers and the sender would send notes in the margins or in their letters about their thoughts on the divisive news throughout the colonies.

            Social media today maintains key aspects reminiscent of its antecedents.  For example, it allows a public platform through which the average person can communicate their opinions on news and current events.  Through outlets such as Twitter and Instagram, people chose a penname to publish their work under, just as the writers would during the American Revolution so as not to receive punishment from the British who were trying to continue regulating the press of the colonists.  People would send articles and broadsides to their friends with comments in the margins, similar to sharing an article on Facebook where your friends can comment on it with their own opinions.

            The emergence of print culture was key in my life personally, because I am an English Major who intends to be a writer and loves the study of literature.  Print culture allowed for a future of being an author to be possible.  Even with the emergence of eBooks and print becoming a less popular medium, literature will always be present in some way.  From the point where books proliferated and literature was acceptable for the masses to indulge in, rather than the elite, the possibility that I could be come a writer was born.  Now, there is a medium in which I can publish my creative endeavors, whether the product of which will be created by a laser printer or on electronic paper.

            Furthermore, the development of printing technology made it so that the reproduction of literature was much easier and widespread.  This allowed for the preservation of historically important texts as well as the widespread distribution of all kinds of literature and writings.  Because of this, I am able to study an insurmountable variety of texts in my educational enterprises.  These texts being more accessible and easily reproduced has enabled me to study texts from hundreds of years ago through books that were printed in the modern days.

            The exploration into Books and Print Culture has enlightened me to a variety of aspects that have affected my life.  Every part of what we have studied in the class has culminated in my life today.  It has made my studies possible—both in writing and in reading analysis.  Beyond that, it is responsible for many of the conventions of social media and discussion that are present today.  It was an inevitable development based on our social nature, but it still allowed for an explosion in communication, making the world quite a bit smaller—and getting smaller every day.

Author Interview

Brittney Cannon

Author Interview

30 October 2015

David Colón

Author Questions

1.     Who or what inspires you as an author?

a.     Particular writers: J. M. Coetzee, Juno Diaz

b.     I like doing things that are a little bit innovative—the novel I published was speculative fiction, set 200 years in the future. Not really sci fi but the setting makes it sci fi, but the chief technology was books

c.      I like to do things that are a bit different

                                               i.     The reconning of barbaro soto – not published yet (5 chapters, each one is a day in the life of someone who has a life not surprisingly similar to my own, teaching at the college of st. Zachary, educated in Brooklyn then in California, a busy week and  half for him

                                              ii.     Did different voices and tenses in each of the chapters--- first and fifth are both third person present, then the second and fourth are first person past, then the middle is first person plural (we), not too experimental, but I like to do some different things

d.     The founder effect – a guy has 12 fingers and 12 toes, misanthrope because people reject him, doesn’t want to be around people or alone, so he starts a menagerie of animals, unlikely love interest

2.     Who or what motivates you as an author?

a.     ^^ answered in Question 1

3.     What author[s] or book[s] influenced you as an author the most?

a.     Everything by Coetzee and Diaz

b.     Gabriel Garcia Marquez

c.      Julio Cortazar

d.     Avant garde writers and poets that I thought were pretty interesting too

e.     Medieval stuff

                                               i.     Beowulf

1.     Has been so Christianized, but there’s no overt Christianity in the book

2.     Grendel being condemned, not unlike Milton

f.      Contemporary latino writers

                                               i.     John rechy

                                              ii.     Tomás Rivera

g.     John Banville, the Sea (really well written)

h.     Phillip Roth, every man

i.       Toni Morisson, Tar Baby and Mercy—set it late 17^th century America

j.       I just like fiction that does the things that nothing else can do but fiction

4.     Most often, where, when, and how do you write?

a.     I’ve had a shelf project for the sake of doing scholarship (Founder Effect)

b.     When I do commit myself to writing fiction, I write all day, every day, day and night

                                               i.     When my wife and daughter went out of town for a week, I wrote like 100 pages

                                              ii.     I got dominos 2 for 1 special and ate nonstop pizza and just wrote

                                            iii.     Writing literally like 18 hours a day

1.     A lot of other writers will say, I write for one hour every morning, and have a set schedule and read all day, but that’s not how I work—for me it’s just binge writing

5.     How is technology changing print culture, specifically regarding authors and readers?

a.     A lot of ways, I read something recently that said for the first time in our history since the rise of the printing press in the 15^th century, written text no longer has primacy in our culture.

b.     There’s a lot more automatic writing that is happening—texting, writing where there’s not much a difference between writing and what you’re thinking

c.      There was a gap of writing and contemplation, the source of writers block

d.     We’re shrinking the space between whats going on in your mind and the page for better or for worse

e.     Conversations don’t die

6.     When you write, who is your intended audience?

a.     My intended audience is definitely myself

b.     It’s myself and imagine the best writers I’ve read if they were readers, my favorite authors

7.     How is the current technological revolution changing your audience?

a.     Well my novel was published as an e-book also, it was published in print, it was published in e-book, and people have bought the e-book.

b.     My book was also published in England, and it was nominated for an Arthur Clarke award which is a science fiction award out there

                                               i.     But it happened in England, so part of it was I was able to respond, and submit to England over the internet, I haven’t met my publisher in person

c.      Reviews are much more democratic, I have reviews on amazon of people I’ve never met that I’ve never sent my book too

d.     In some ways, it diffuses the amount of tension—we have our sacred cow writers, but it also kind of makes publishing pretty democratic

e.     People have to be much more entrepreneurial, you have to write something that peple really want to read, and you have to develop your platform, because there are so many platforms you have to work on

f.      The people who are more successful are the people who are able to do that

8.     What do you think reading and authorship will look like fifty years from now?

a.     I think one of the things that technology has done is it’s made everyone an author

b.     Recently andrea Lunsford came to visit our campus and spoke to some grad students

c.      She is one of the most accomplished rhet comp scholars around

                                               i.     She said there’s a shift into so many people are writing texts,

                                              ii.     It used to be a smaller number of people wrote and a lot more people read, but now it’s the opposite, any sort of people can blog, anyone can publish

                                            iii.     It’s so easy just for the tactility, anyone can write

                                            iv.     Anyone can get something in print it seems, and there’s going to be a lot more texts that get written that can get read, which might spring back to more reading, but it’s hard to predict

d.     One day iphones will be tiny and imprinted into their head

e.     It’s gonna be the death of university as we know it, remembering is going to be pointless when you can always access all the information in the world

f.      Whats going to wind up happening is that in my life time, definitely yours, we’re going to see a shift in what people know and remember and memorize is going to be totally not important at all—what you can predict, intuit, forsee that’s gonna be…

                                               i.     That’s why I’m confident that fiction, the arts, in a lot of ways is what it always does—because if it’s fiction you’re making up something that hasn’t happened

                                              ii.     It’s going to be based on memory, but you’re going to be taking liberties in the way it’s told, or in the way it’s telling. The active writing is anticipatory, you’re anticipating that it’s going to be worth keeping around

                                            iii.     Literature is a vicarious experience of another person, that’s clearly not what technology can do, at least as we can understand it now

9.     How did you find a publisher, and how long did that process take?

a.     I used the internet, I knew that my book was not marketable by mainstream standards so I looked for a niche publisher, an publisher that published exactly what it was

                                               i.     I narrowed my searched to literary speculative fiction, something that was fiction that wasn’t totally realist, something that would do something in an unfamiliar setting, like there’s some clervoyance in some of my characters and it’s set in the future, and there’s only a couple hundred people in the world for some unexplained reason—so I didn’t have the platform to market that

b.     Once you’re an established publisher, that name recognition, people will read whatever you write, so I wanted to look for an independent publisher, so I was trying to self identify with what I wanted to write

c.      Publishing was the hardest part for a writer, because you have to self-identify and explore

d.     So I found a small publisher in England that published literary speculative fiction, so I sent it, and they like it

e.     That actually didn’t take very long, because it was a small press, it was like a year, less than a year

                                               i.     I also was like a guinea pig for them, because they had published an anthology of short stories, so I was their first novel, and they’ve published many since then

                                              ii.     They published the ebook before the books, which is unusual, I’m not sure why they wanted to do that but they did

                                            iii.     I think that the fact that we didn’t sell very much, didn’t make much of a ripple,

                                            iv.     I’m not that interested in the showmanship, I’m not convinced I’m the best writer in the world, I don’t know if the things I write will totally utterly change your life—I don’t know, I’m not convinced of that. I don’t have that kind of blind spot in my self-reflecting ego, which I think some people need to market it, but I’m just not that enthused about it, I’m not that great, the networking and promotion is not that big to me. In the future I’ll forgo the route of submitting for little prizes, little little prizes, where they’re blind reviewed

                                              v.     You need to publish this, if you publish this thing 30,000 things will be purchased

1.     They will be interested and purchase

                                            vi.     But I have zero motivation to hoodwink people into thinking im the best writer ever

f.      My career is not contingent upon it, I don’t need it to pay the bills

g.     I would spend my retirement just writing, I like the doing of it, it’s the making of that world that’s just—to me it’s so satisfying, and just to hear sentences come out just right

                                               i.     Like I remember one sentence was just “quotes sentence”—I was just satisfied with writing that, for that character

                                              ii.     And another sentence, from Soto **struggles to remember** I think it goes something like “he wondered if there was” ** goes to a locked cabinet and takes out a manuscript “from all my unpublished writings” – “He wonders if there is a deeper register of finding the right words, a frequency lower than the mind can hear, that requires a heart to break in order to be audible.”

1.     I’m not saying they’re the greatest sentences in the English language, but there are moments when you are writing that

2.     For that moment in the text when it’s just write in this persons life in their experience, and you just nail it, and you’re convinced that you’ve nailed it, and that’s the pull of writing

10. How much did your manuscript change during your publisher’s editorial process?

a.     Not as much as I expected, maybe not even as much as I had hoped.  There was a lot of little tinkering, a phrase here, a phrase there, like all over, and then there were a couple long scenes that I had hoped an editor had said “here’s how you cut it down and fix it” and they didn’t do that, so I kind of had to do that myself. I mean it changed, but not unrecognizably, it wasn’t that drastic.  Revisions weren’t too drastic.

b.     Although they probably could have been more drastic and made it better, and I go back to it and read it and I’m cringing, but there’s times in writing where you want to do the next one to be better

11. Do you have a definite and specific organization and structure in mind as you begin writing?  If so, how definite and specific is your outline?

a.     Absolutely, always

b.     Oh, like I have to kind of know what the whole thing is going to be before I start it. I don’t start it with like a plan start to finish

12. How would you describe your writing process? 

a.     It depends on the thing that I’m writing

b.     Like for example, this new thing the founder effect, has been shelfed for now. It kind of blurs fiction and creative nonfiction—because the main character is aware that he’s text, he gets intertextual, he talks about other books, he quotes other books, he just kind of like does research in the book, it’s kind of a weird mix, so it’s kind of—it depends on the project

                                               i.     There are certain writers who have very recognizable themes and styels and topics and people know what like an alice Monroe story is kind of like, and people know kind of in that sort of a vein. But every time I write in fiction, I try to do something that’s very different, and maybe I’m trying to find tthat thing that’s my best voice, or maybe it’s about how img oing to do it

                                              ii.     I have to feel like I’m learning something and it has to be stimulating to me

13. Do you have any writing habits or rituals that help your writing process?

a.     Drink a lot of coffee, forget to eat

b.     I mean it only happens so often, because professionally I have demands about publishing scholarship

14. Do you write in multiple genres?

a.     Yes—see above descriptions of various texts

15. What was your first publication, and what do you think of this publication now?

a.     I want to go back and talk to that young man, talk some sense into him

b.     Forgiving, you know realizing that I was younger and not so great at that, see the maturation process, what I’ve become more self aware about, as writers get older, they get better at understanding what you don’t have to put on the page

                                               i.     Sometimes you can just put the first thirty seconds of a conversation, then cut to the next scene, than spend an hour continuing that conversation and leaving it off the page can be better, you know just to hint at it. It gets better to know how to manipulate gaps for dramatic effect and efficiency.

16.  Besides teaching and authorship, have you had any other jobs in the writing field?

a.     No