>From:  "Booth, Christopher" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      Re: Thanks and query
>Date:  Tue, 18 Jan 2000 07:16:13 -1000
 
>I suspect a stronger influence on writing/thought was the typewriter. The
>typewriter had a profound effect on modernism's brevity and layout, I
>suspect; it lends itself to a kind of mechanical stutter; I wonder if the
>ease with which the keyboard flows will actually bring back a more graceful
>mode of expression, in which sentences will follow the breathing of the
>musical phrase rather than the imperative of the carriage bell and the
>return bar. The quill pen & inkwell technology suited well the phrasing of
>the prose style of its day; a period or a stop marked by heavy punctuation
>meshed well with the time that a dip of a pinna would last.
 
Hugh Kenner wrote a very short fascinating book called FLAUBERT, JOYCE
AND BECKETT: THE STOIC COMEDIANS, in which he claims that the most
decisive influence was the invention of modern printing.  And his reason
is that only when books became typeset did it become clear that we are
working within a finite universe, i.e. that there are only a finite
number of books (of any reasonable length) which can be written.
 
Whether or not one accepts Kenner's main thesis here (I, for one, do
not), the book offers a lot of very interesting insights into these three
authors and the ways in which they changed the shape of literature.
 
--Lee Lady