Dear Sandra Waller,
I think it would be a definite step up if smaller press articles, the
production methods of which are -emphatically- various (see for instance
Ric's praise for West House, a message or two ago), could be presented
using a scanner, i.e. as they appear on the page. Any catalogue of our
current esoterica that merely re-formatted everything in Times 10pt. would
be overwhelmingly decontextualised and misleading (kind of like Birgitta
Johanssen, in her recent book, referring to 'the group of writers known as
a various art, or as conductors of chaos'). This seems particularly
relevant here and now, for a combination of (at least) two reasons: 1,
decreased mass production costs (ie photcopying) and increased
access to computers jointly create an extended opportunity for self (or
amicable) publication, which has been thoroughly exploited -as a means to
generating differences- 2, texts produced in this way are usually on
relatively small print runs, hardly ever get second editions, and so are
occasionally impossible to come by in their intended form (though some are
reproduced in anthologies, such as those mentioned by Tony). Net access
to scanned texts would be a proper exclusive.
Keston Sutherland
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