I was super honored by this article, as it really pushed the impacts of my work. I also deeply enjoyed the interview-turned-conversation with the author.
The article takes up the interesting question: “Bookishness is a part of digital culture, but how is bookishness best reflected in readers and the publishing industry?”
Deeply grateful that my book received the award for literary criticism from my own beloved academic community; even better that the award bears the name of my mentor & to top it off— I was in Disneyland when the award was announced! So, all good here!
Twenty-first-century culture is obsessed with books. In a time when many voices have joined to predict the death of print, books continue to resurface in new and unexpected ways. From the proliferation of “shelfies” to Jane Austen–themed leggings and from decorative pillows printed with beloved book covers to bookwork sculptures exhibited in prestigious collections, books are everywhere and are not just for reading. Writers have caught up with this trend: many contemporary novels depict books as central characters or fetishize paper and print thematically and formally.
In Bookishness, Jessica Pressman examines the new status of the book as object and symbol. She explores the rise of “bookishness” as an identity and an aesthetic strategy that proliferates from store-window décor to experimental writing. Ranging from literature to kitsch objects, stop-motion animation films to book design, Pressman considers the multivalent meanings of books in contemporary culture. Books can represent shelter from—or a weapon against—the dangers of the digital; they can act as memorials and express a sense of loss. Examining the works of writers such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Jennifer Egan, Mark Z. Danielewski, and Leanne Shapton, Pressman illuminates the status of the book as a fetish object and its significance for understanding contemporary fakery. Bringing together media studies, book history, and literary criticism, Bookishness explains how books still give meaning to our lives in a digital age.
According to the prize jury:
“Bookishness provides a provocative look at the status of the book in the post-digital age. Pressman’s formulation of “bookishness” offers a compelling heuristic for considering the role of the overdetermining power of the book amidst the media shifts of the 21st century. Rather than sequestering electronic literature, Bookishness integrates a discussion of the digital with print-based texts, ushering in a new moment in e-lit scholarship in expertly crafted prose.”
Jessica Pressman is associate professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University, where she cofounded the Digital Humanities Initiative. Pressman previously won the N. Katherine Hayles award forcoauthor of Reading “Project”: A Collaborative Analysis of William Poundstone’s “Project for Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit}” (2015), which she co-authored. She is the author of Digital Modernism: Making It New in New Media (2014) and coeditor of Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era (2013) and Book Presence in a Digital Age (2018).
I had a lovely conversation with Richard Davies of the AbeBooks podcast “Behind the Bookshelves” about Bookishness. The series description: “We tell the stories behind books and the people who love them.” Definitely the right place for me! https://abebooks.com/podcast
On Friday, February 12, 12-1, I talked with Mark Marino and a group of media folk, about Bookishness (on Zoom). It was super fun. View recording of the conversation here
I wrote a little piece about how bookishness operates in the political scene these days as a backdrop– literally, as in the case of the bookish zoom backdrop– for credibility.
What sort of books inspired you as a child? I read voraciously and agnostically. In high school I would devour whole genres: a Stephen King summer, an Ayn Rand session, the Jane Austen novels, etc. I especially loved historical fiction: Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy, James Michener’s The Source, Leon Uris’ Mila 18; I still prefer to learn history through art and storytelling. I also remember that, early on, I loved books as thingly objects. My parents had shelves of paperbacks from their college days in the sixties, and I liked the thin, flaky paper and tiny print.
Your new book, Bookishness, explores the changing status of the book. What first drew your attention to this theme? I think it was Marshall McLuhan. I took a deep dive into McLuhan while working on my first book, Digital Modernism: Making It New in New Media. I bet it helped that my dad, who was a hippy at Berkeley in the 1960s, thought McLuhan was cool. I still think that McLuhan’s The Medium Is the Massage (with Quentin Fiore) is one of the best and best designed books about books as media.
Where can we find out more about what reading will mean in the future? I was included in a recent collection on this very topic, Further Reading, edited by the brilliant book-history scholars Matthew Rubery and Leah Price. For example, I write about the augmented-reality game-novella The Ice-Bound Concordance by Aaron Reed and Jacob Garbe. This work is comprised of a downloadable app and a highly designed stand-alone book, The Ice-Bound Compendium; the transmedial game tells the story – and also models in its form and format – how computers partner with humans to produce and read literature.
What else would you recommend about the crucial role books play in our lives? I love Leanne Shapton’s unique little novella, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, which is presented as an auction catalogue of stuff left over from a romantic relationship and an analogue time. You read the narrative in the image captions to follow the story and, in the process, you recognise the power of physical objects, like the book holding it all together.
What is the last book you gave as a gift, and to whom? Harold and the Purple Crayon, the 1955 children’s book by Crockett Johnson. I give this to every friend having a baby, and I just gave it to my friend and digital humanities colleague Erin Glass.
What books do you have on your desk waiting to be read? Since March, I have been reading non-stop…In these dark, unsettling days, I desire beautiful prose. I am rereading Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and, man, it is as exquisite as I remember it. I also plan to reread Toni Morrison’s Jazz. Layered in the stack are books to read for the first time: Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Mark Doty’s What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life.
Jessica Pressman is associate professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University. Her latest book is Bookishness: Loving Books in a Digital Age (Columbia University Press).
It’s finally here! Get it from the publisher here or from Amazon here.
Read my Page 99 test (Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” –Ford Madox Ford) response: here
