During these quiet summer weeks, we thought we’d draw your attention to two recent publications by Corinna Norrick-Rühl and Alexander Starre, two of the blog’s administrators.
Alexander’s book Metamedia: American Book Fictions and Literary Print Culture after Digitization has just appeared with the University of Iowa Press. The book inaugurates the new series “Impressions: Studies in the Art, Culture, and Future of Books”, edited by Matthew Brown at the University of Iowa Center for the Book. Combining sustained textual analysis with impulses from the fields of book history, media studies, and systems theory, the book explains the aesthetics and the cultural work of complex material fictions by Mark Z. Danielewski, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer, and others. By fusing narrative and design, these writers have created reflexive fictions—metamedia—that invite us to read printed formats in new ways. Their work challenges ingrained theories and beliefs about literary communication and its connections to technology and materiality. Metamedia explores the book as a medium that matters and introduces innovative critical concepts to better grasp its narrative significance. You can read more about the book on the publisher’s website.
Corinna’s study panther, rotfuchs & Co. (2014) is the 24th volume of the Harrassowitz series „Mainzer Studien zur Buchwissenschaft“ and inaugurated the series design relaunch in May of last year. On the basis of hitherto unpublished material from the Mainzer Verlagsarchiv at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, the book offers insight into the intricate relationship between publishers, readers, and literature in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, addressing the role publishers and the book industry can play in shaping not only literary history, but also society and conventions. More specifically, the book explains the history and development of two paperback series for children and young adults. The two series, rororo rotfuchs and rororo panther, were introduced by the popular German publisher Rowohlt as a commercially-motivated reaction to the anti-authoritarian movement in Germany at the end of the 1960s. The series’ editors and authors influenced readers and changed the face of German children’s and young adult literature – even up until today. More information can be found on the publisher’s website.
Perhaps it’s not too late to add these to your summer reading list. We would also like to remind our associated scholars (and other blog readers) to inform us about their new publications so that we can share them with our followers in this space. Just send an email to bookhistorynetw(at)gmx.de
Book History and Print Culture Network 