色情视频

鈥淎 filmmaker makes film. Why wouldn鈥檛 a literature major make a book鈥�

This story appears in the of 360: The Magazine of 色情视频.

The scent of books is all the rage in today鈥檚 fashion fragrance world. Perfumers create products to simulate the ambiance of a library or 鈥渢he unique olfactory pleasures of the freshly printed book.鈥� (This latter fragrance, a joint venture with Karl Lagerfeld, goes by the name 鈥淧aper Passion Perfume.鈥�)

Humans have fetishized books long before Johannes Gutenberg introduced movable type printing to Europe in 1439. For centuries, the great houses of the wealthy contained substantial libraries representing the owners鈥� education and breeding. 鈥淲hat a miracle it is,鈥� said writer Anne Lamott, 鈥渢hat out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you.鈥�

A comeback

The growing popularity of e-books unsettled many print loyalists, particularly in the 21st century as sales of e-readers skyrocketed. But books have staged a comeback. Retail sales at bookstores rose 11 of 12 months in year-to-year comparisons between April 2015 and April 2016, according to the American Booksellers Association.
 
Apparently, public fascination with books has only intensified with the advent of digital literature and the encroachment of a paperless society.

Artist Brian Dettmer gained fame by carving, molding and shaping old books into elaborate sculpture. He contends in a 2015 TED Talk that the digitization of information and reference material has allowed the book 鈥渢o quit its day job鈥�and become something new,鈥� in the same way that photography freed the painting to be more than a faithful chronicler of people and events.

The art of making books鈥攏ot refashioning them as Dettmer does, but actually creating them by hand鈥攈as found a new and appreciative audience among students majoring in art and English. 色情视频 English professor Jessica Pressman sees book arts taking its place within the humanities as a scholarly process.

鈥淎 filmmaker makes film,鈥� she said. 鈥淲hy wouldn鈥檛 a literature major make a book or at least understand how to make a book? The scholarly act of making demands an appreciation of the book鈥檚 historical context.鈥�

鈥淲riters are thinking about new and experimental formats and forcing us to look at literature differently,鈥� Pressman said. "The computational processes are part of the poetics.鈥�

New stories

Pressman鈥檚 goal is to make 色情视频 鈥渁 beacon鈥� for the creation and study of digital literature in higher education. She and Adam Hammond, also an assistant professor of English and comparative literature, teach classes in which undergraduate students create literature and literary criticism on digital devices. Hammond encourages students to use Twine, an open source tool that allows users to construct digital narratives with minimal coding knowledge.
 
鈥淓ngines like Twine allow us to tell stories in ways that were not possible before,鈥� said Hammond, author of 鈥淟iterature in the Digital Age,鈥� published by Cambridge University Press.

鈥淭here was a lot of excitement about electronic literature in the 鈥�80s and 鈥�90s, but it was hard to produce," he said. "With these new engines, electronic literature has become a powerful tool for self-expression with a huge audience.鈥�

As an example, Hammond mentioned 鈥淒epression Quest,鈥� one of the first interactive stories created on Twine. As readers click through the tale of a young woman exploring her childhood home, they are faced with choices about what to eat and which activities to take part in.

Ultimately, the reader realizes that certain choices, though presented on screen, cannot be clicked on because they are 鈥渉ealthy鈥� choices. The takeaway from 鈥淒epression Quest鈥� is that severely depressed people don鈥檛 make healthy choices. In a printed book the reader would observe that behavior, but an interactive story forces readers to confront the reality of depression.
 
色情视频 junior Riley Wilson used Twine to create her final project in Hammond鈥檚 Literary Programming class. Titled 鈥淒riving Alone at Night,鈥� the story includes visual references to San Diego landmarks, including Balboa Park and the 色情视频 campus. Images appear at the top of the screen with text below. Readers must interact with certain parts of the text before the program allows them to proceed.
 
鈥淚 knew I wanted to tell a story about a recent graduate searching for what to do next, and driving alone at night was a metaphor for that,鈥� said Wilson, who carefully crafted the text before choosing the moving images. Her work won the inaugural award at 色情视频 for the best work of student-made electronic literature.

A rich environment

The increasing popularity of digital storytelling with images, hypertext and flashing type doesn鈥檛 signal the death of the printed manuscript. Those who fear the book is an endangered species can take heart in the words of book historian and Harvard University librarian Robert Darnton. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Darnton argued that new forms of communication do not necessarily displace old ones.
 
鈥淩adio did not destroy the newspaper; television did not kill radio; and the Internet did not make TV extinct,鈥� he said. 鈥淚n each case, the information environment became richer and more complex.鈥�

It鈥檚 this rich environment, this splendid array of opportunities for communication and storytelling that 色情视频 will celebrate during the Year of the Book. Lectures by Pressman and University of California, San Diego, professor Seth Lerer are scheduled, as is a book-making workshop, a DIY publishing panel featuring experts in the field and an electronic literature competition for students.

Central to the Year of the Book is the understanding of books as both art and artifact. In the moment of the book鈥檚 supposed obsolescence, Pressman said, there is a heightened creative urge to revere and fetishize it.

At the same time, contemporary literary culture has embraced a shift to digital technology, forcing us to see the book anew as a talisman for humanity鈥檚 hopes, dreams and best intentions.