Notes and Quotes: Intro, Chapter 1, Chapter 2

Notes and Quotes

Pressman: Intro, Chapter 1, Chapter 2

Things that made me go "AHA!"
Things I did not already know
Things I want to remember
Things.

I understand modernism to be a strategy of innovation that employs the media of its time to reform and refashion older literary practices in ways that produce new art (3-4).

Making it new is not just about reinventing the past. It is also about using new media to do so (4).

Cinematic ways of seeing the world have become the basic means by which computer users interact with all cultural data (5).

Some media critics claim that modernism was the first electronic age (5).

Digital modernism is characterized by an aesthetic of restraint (7).

These writers pursue minimalism as a conscious act of rebellion (7).

Modernist literature is intentionally antipopular (7).

The web is actually the place here serious literature stages its rebellion and renaissance (9).

I seek to remind us of the transformative effects literature can have when we dedicate our attention to it and to close reading it (10).

Close reading contrasts to the speeding up of modern life due to new technology (11).

Deep reading implies a sustained focus on the words themselves and how they operate to produce a particular effect (13).

New Criticism: slow, close reading of the work itself rather than just the research around it (13).

I make the case for the continued importance of literature and literary criticism in an increasingly digital, visual, and networked culture (17).

Close reading demands renovation (18).

I contend that literary scholars need to pay more attention to the media aspects of literature and that media critics need to pay more attention to the literariness of electronic literature (19).

…close reading as a pedagogical means of training students to read not only specific literary texts but also to learn to evaluate and judge culture more broadly (21).

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the post-postmodern period heralds the return of aesthetic theory through digital literature? (23).

McLuhan doesn’t explain, he explores (39).

Precisely because ads seek to distract, one must pay particular attention to how they operate (42).

MucLuhan rejected a distinction between creative and critical writing (46). (Bold because it relates to my thesis and I'd like to research this statement further.)

Hot media: low participation. Cool media: high participation (51).

Machine poetics expose the reading machine to be a part of the literary process and thus subject to literary analysis (57).

Media archaeology’s main goals: to study what is underlying and guiding the development of media culture and to promote the excavation of ways in which these traditions and formulations have been imprinted on specific media machines and systems in different historical contexts (50-60). <-- I believe I screwed up this page number.

Subliminal advertising and concrete poetry were introduced as concepts at nearly the same time (63).

Concrete poetry: a work that loses a part of its meaning if it is rearranged or printed without the attention to the typeface and form which were a part of the poet’s original work (65).

The blank space of the page is never empty (65).

Literature has not kept up with new technologies like art and music have, according to Brown (70).

Reading has a medial history that is part of literature and literary history (72).

Reading machines not only enable access to literature but also inspire its creation and critique (77).