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I listened to a BBC podcast the other day and I found it depressing: Local public libraries to be run by volunteers. Because of the UK’s financial constraints there’s an austerity budget that’s been introduced. But the tactic of handing over services to volunteer groups is a very worrying model that I can see being taken up elsewhere. It’s worrying because at least in the UK there doesn’t seem to be any commitment to ensure success in the transfer. 
There’s a cottage industry that seems to grow with every new generation of scholars with the capture, tagging and release of canonical texts. From the first hermeneutics to narratology to New Historicism to the great unknown of Google Scholar and its agenda, there’s an insistent sour desire to make the “outputs” of interpreters determinate. There’s an insistent faith that as each new strata of complexity is identified as texts are burrowed into, the goods scholars produce will yield an ordered surplus to make the work of the next generation easier. Or more realistically, to render it impossible, since what’s at faith is the goal to standardize meaning in a text. [...] 
There’s only one time so far in my life when I’ve torn pages out from a book. It was a fit of pique, an unreasonable response to an unreadable, unreliable and bizarre decision. It was the introduction to the abridged and edited version of Finnegan’s Wake by Anthony Burgess. It was a glib, unnecessary, and as I remember, idiosyncratic read. Burgess “edited” the Wake, which makes as much sense as cutting out pieces of the Mona Lisa or halving the run time of Beethoven’s Fifth. Pick your analogy, it didn’t make sense, and while I had read the Wake 1.5 times before that — not counting the genuine times I had skimmed or attempted and failed to complete the book — I still couldn’t reason the logic of some of his edits. Amongst a few things, 2009 for me will be the year of the lists. Becoming familiar with any community of interest requires information, and the best way to “inscribe oneself” into a narrative is first of all through the opinion of others. Over time we can question those bias and change ourselves, but for now these opinions are a basic and useful starting point. Here are a few reading lists for 2009. I may add some more eventually. For now they contain enough recommendations to keep me busy for the upcoming year. The Millions: A Year in Reading 2009 Blake Butler’s list on <HTMLGIANT>: 25 Important Books of the 00s Online Degrees: 50 Best Literature Blogs Emerging Writers Network: 2009 Holiday Gift Suggestions Anna Clark’s list on Isak: Choose Books: Complete Gift Guide Daily Beast’s: Our Favorite Books of 2009 Blake Butler’s 2009 Reading Summary: 106.2 Books in 2009
It’s all around us this market changing world of ours. Or is it? A couple of hundred years ago our dear forebears of English went ice cold thick banana-whips (to quote Douglas Adams) when Parliament forgot to renew the monopoly of the Stationer’s Company and people were able to print whatever they jolly well liked. We imagine our own times are unique for upturns in publishing output, but that’s misleading. Instead, we keep recycling the same business models — it’s only the tactics and technologies that change. |
 
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