Fig 2.1 Bowers, who was more intimidating than he looks.
Why keep a blog? Because let’s face it, the internet is at its finest when we use it to glorify other technologies– especially the very antique. And what is Pop Culture of the Book? By “pop culture of the book”, I’m dropping a truncated term: what I really mean is a “pop culture of the history of the book”, words I am using to license my own slipshod pasting together of things to talk about books. From the hit 1993 Disney film Hocus Pocus, to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, nothing is safe. It’s about using flippancy with no less sincerity to illustrate a point; be it about the greatest articles of our cultural heritage, the odd provenance mysteries, binding oddities, et. al.
In the words of Benjamin in his entry on the “Collector” in The Arcades Project, this blog will be as “an alarm clock that rouses the kitsch of the previous century to assembly,” in anyway that it can. Early Modern books, since they are my special interest, will be screen-printed across the internet in amazing technicolor. Fredson Bowers will be my Liz Taylor; Aldus Manutius my soup can. It’s never been a better time to be into books for the love of it (everyone who tried to turn a profit is jumping ship), so here I am.
