I don't know if I am a taker, but the suggestion that Paul Eggert puts
forward is much along the lines of the argument of the book I'm trying
to write. Nicolas Barker (and a lot of other people) have talked about
the book as being the most important of all human artifacts. Well, I
think I might put dwellings first, but that being said, books would be
at the top of my list. Though there again, one has to expand the
definition of book beyond the usual one. (The art is in the expanding,
of course.) How can we *not* regard the book in all its manifestations
as central to human culture? Paul mentions Greg 1932; I go right back to
Greg's "What is Bibliography" of 1914, which seems to me central even to
as wide-ranging a discussion as today's. But it isn't easy to do; at the
plenary lecture here in which I was beginning to evolve my ideas, I
asked the audience who had read that article, and only 3 people raised
their hands. I asked because it seems to me that bibliography and book
history are intimately connected in every possible systematic way. As to
the "point" of this cumbersome but essential mating, a counterfactual
experiment in which you try to imagine human life without "the book"
makes the point. These are big questions, I know, and they need to be
addressed with great rigour. (Tanselle legacy) and imagination (McKenzie
legacy). It's worth doing. Wish I'd been at that discussion at DMU, but
that's my two cents-worth from Toronto where spring (yes, Tony Edwards)
has finally arrived. cheers, Germaine.
--
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Germaine Warkentin // English (Emeritus)
VC 205, Victoria College (University of Toronto),
73 Queen's Park Crescent East, Toronto, Ont. M5S 1K7, CANADA
[log in to unmask] (fax number on request)
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