White Magic: The Age of PaperPaper is older than the printing press, and even in its unprinted state it was the great network medium behind the emergence of modern civilization. In the shape of bills, banknotes and accounting books it was indispensible to the economy. As forms and files it was essential to bureaucracy. As letters it became the setting for the invention of the modern soul, and as newsprint it became a stage for politics. In this brilliant new book Lothar Müller describes how paper made its way from China through the Arab world to Europe, where it permeated everyday life in a variety of formats from the thirteenth century onwards, and how the paper technology revolution of the nineteenth century paved the way for the creation of the modern daily press. His key witnesses are the works of Rabelais and Grimmelshausen, Balzac and Herman Melville, James Joyce and Paul Valéry. Müller writes not only about books, however: he also writes about pamphlets, playing cards, papercutting and legal pads. We think we understand the ?Gutenberg era?, but we can understand it better when we explore the world that underpinned it: the paper age. Today, with the proliferation of digital devices, paper may seem to be a residue of the past, but Müller shows that the humble technology of paper is in many ways the most fundamental medium of the modern world. |
Contents
Notes | |
The Rustling Grows Louder | |
Partner | |
Notes | |
Notes | |
The Printed and the Unprinted | |
The Demons of the Paper Machine | |
Dreyfus Affair | |
Illuminated Inner Worlds | |
Autograph Hunt | |
Notes | |
The Analog and the Digital | |
Bibliography | |
Image Credits | |
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Arab paper archives assignats autographs Balzac became Bleak House Carlyle chancery circulation copies culture David Séchard depiction documents Don Quixote edition eighteenth century electronic Encyclopédie epistolary novel European paper everyday excerpts French Gargantua and Pantagruel German Goethe Gutenberg historians history of paper Ibid industry Jean Paul Johann Karabacek Leopold Bloom letters Lichtenberg literary estate literature London manuscript McLuhan mechanical media theory medieval medium Melville's merchants metaphor modern newspaper newsprint nineteenth century pantagruelion Paper Age paper factory paper formats paper machine paper mills paper money paper production paper-based papermaking papyrus parchment Paris periodical press Petit Journal playing cards printed book printed paper printers printing press published pulp Rabelais rags raw materials readers Revolution role script to print Simplicissimus Simplicius Simplicius Simplicissimus space story trade Translated Tristram Shandy typography University Press unprinted Valéry Verlag watermarks writing paper written