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Saturday, June 23, 2012

Text as Talisman

I've been walking around for months with William Germano's From Dissertation Into Book in my bag. Regardless of whether I'm actually going to work on the book (which most days I'm not at the moment) it's there. On the few occasions I've gone to clean my bag out and divest myself of some of the added weight, it goes straight back in. It's some performative act, as though the occasional contact between my palms and the cover of the book will have some effect in the direction the title suggests or that, hopefully, there might be some correspondence between the miles the book travels and the linear feet of verbiage I can produce.

2 comments:

  1. Thus linking back to your post on the materiality of writing and reminding us that the potency of talismans (talismen?) resides not only in the words they contain but in the object upon (into) which those words are committed.

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  2. Unfortunately, the words are ok for the not-ruining-my-back-and-shoulder-before-age-30 plan, whereas the materiality is a little more detrimental. It's a paperback, though, so not too bad.

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