#as i was saying: 2024 year of the MANICULE

[girderednerve]

house of leaves is a flawed project but it did absolutely get me when i read it in the eleventh grade (correct time to read it; i found it via xkcd 472) & i still think it's interesting to consider the form, possibilities, & limitations of a codex, especially one which is mass produced. there's a popular trend rn for special edition printings with various features (dust jackets, extra art, sprayed edges, &c.), which clearly centers on books as display objects & perhaps to a lesser extent what the physical form of a book might contribute to the reading experience. all this to say i think the time is ripe for a book that is distinctly interested in the typographical possibilities of print! i have spent a bunch of time thinking about medieval manuscripts lately & in general (listening to chris de hamel's book as an audiobook, which necessarily forecloses direct engagement with the book's images of the manuscripts he describes; interesting friction) & many of the features i like best about them—marginalia, errors, amendments, wear, mends & imperfections, textual lineages—are impossible in a mass produced context. but we might find other things which are uniquely possible in print, or propose combined editions (consider, e.g., hand-rubricated incunabula; one contemplates also the mystique, sometimes dubious, of a 'signed copy'). the wilder layouts of house of leaves remind me of the intricate pages of glossa ordinaria, which surround biblical passages with patristic commentaries, but where those were the product of careful layouts measured out on parchment leaves, pricked by hand, meticulously copied from exemplaria, house of leaves is very much the product of one guy spending too much time on quarkxpress (love & light). what else might we come up with that is engaged in the typographical possibilities of our current moment, and also interestingly opposed to exclusively digital forms? comics???