Literary Lash-Outs

In class Monday, we discussed how Doctorow is acting out against "Cold War Theory" and the literary styles of the time, then proceeded to discuss how the actual physical item of a book influences how the reader interprets it. What came to mind for me that relates to both of these topics is the book Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. In his novels, he has embraced a style of writing that includes pictures, font changes, unusual word spacing, and other visual elements that can't properly be reproduced in audiobooks or ebooks. When reading a novel like this, reading is even more of a visceral experience, where the actual book is a much more tactile experience. When you're reading pages like this:

where a man is trying to get all he can down in the finite number of pages he has, there is an emotional connection with each page turn. He's not running out of memory on his Kindle, he's furiously scribbling as much as he can, and every time the reader turns the page they realize that the page is gone for him. He can't have it back. And there is a lot of power in that.

This style can be interpreted as an act against the digitization of print media including books. By utilizing the actual object of the book in ways rarely used before exploits flaws in ebooks. Sidenote: If the book is replaced by the ebook, the pop-up book dies...until we can master ebook holograms.