be there or be square
Scenes from
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modes of printing
A printed book is ready to be shelved among other books and derive its meaning among them. The written manuscript, however, can only be read as a unique recording from the mind of the writer.
Kerouac’s first typing of On the Road is one of four of his scroll manuscripts. Jack’s father was a Linotype operator and the young writer would have been aware of the long galley proofs of the print shop and the mechanical dancing composition of straight text at the keyboard. He typed 100 words a minute. The published book of course has paragraph indents but not the manuscript scroll. The trip itself was not cast-off into pages but relayed from pocket journals and narrative sketches. The whole creative process was supported by a sympathy of industrial conventions of the print shop.
With wonderful intonations, Roger Chartier described, from the book, the arrival of Don Quixote in a town where he notices a print shop. He and Sancho enter to find two books being printed. One is a book of piety, but the other is ìThe Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha, Part Twoî. Don Quixote takes offense at this prescription of the future and decides not to fulfill the adventures described in Part Two. Specifically he will not win the tournament at Saragossa or be shut up in a mad house at Toledo.
The interaction of the manuscript journals, typewriten scroll, subsequent paginated typescript, line cast galleys, printing plate, printed book and invitation to travel provide a thread connecting Cervantes and Kerouac. It is a paradox that conceptual works are conveyed by physical objects.