Reviews and Comments

I love what this book does with both historical material and with storytelling. Sometimes I leave novels based on actual historical events wondering why a novelization or fictional approach is necessary, but this book both taught me something I didn't about Jan Gay and also reminded me how queer communication is...how true communication never hits the mark, never reveals itself, never lands.

Someone recommended these books to me because 1) I'm researching BBS systems and other pre-internet online communities; 2) They thought my kid would like it.

The picture of 80s life is pretty interesting, the artwork is great, and the depiction of BBS culture is especially interesting in that it's woven into the day-to-day of a world that (for the most part) didn't really know the personal computer was coming.

My favorite part of this book is the section on Emerson, Poe, Whitman, and Wordsworth. The nature writing was less of a draw for me, but even when I wasn't that engaged Oliver would come out what a pearl like this:

"I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned: that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness - the beauty and the mystery of the world, out. in the fields or deep inside books - can re-dignify the worst-stung heart." (15)

This installment focuses on the 70s (Harlem Shuffle focused on the 60s), and the writing is great. There's a lot of New York specific detail about neighborhoods and streets that is lost on me, but it's necessary for a series that is so intent on using NYC much the way The Wire used Baltimore. My favorite moment is probably when the Magnavox Odyssey (the "brown box") makes a cameo. The research behind this book is pretty awesome.

If you're interested in federated social media (and I know that you are), you should check out this book. What's happening here on Bookwyrm shares a lot with the BBSs that Driscoll talks about in this book.

I was especially into the chapter on FidoNet given that I have been thinking for a couple of years about how much ActivityPub/Mastodon/Bookwyrm/etc. owe to FidoNet's attempts to "federate" (not the term they would have used) Bulletin Board Systems.

A beautiful book, both in terms of writing and as an art object. It includes a volume that reproduces Cage's 1972 portfolio, Mushroom Book, authored in collaboration with illustrator Lois Long and botanist Alexander H. Smith.

Cage on his composition course:

"I wasn't concerned with a teaching situation that involved a body of material to be transmitted by me to them. I would, when it was necessary, give them a survey of earlier works, by me and by others, in terms of composition, but mostly I emphasized what I was doing at that time and would show them what I was doing and why I was interested in it. Then I warned them that if they didn't want to change their ways of doing things, they ought to leave the class, that it would be my function, if I had any, to stimulate them to change."

Regarding his poems on mushrooms:

"My poems on mushrooms are nonsense in the sense of not being ordinary sense," Cage observed of his mesostic poems; pleasantly counterposing Wittgenstein's rationalism. "Words which you're used to going in one direction can go in at least two directions. They can be used to set your mind floating."

In ways similar to Kasulke's Several People are Typing, this book is taking up the materiality/immateriality of digital media. An app tracking more than just your clicks (biometric data, facial expressions) combines with big data in surprising ways. Plus, the main character is an Art History major who is working in content moderation.

If you liked the FX show Devs (and if you haven't seen that, watch it!), this book has a number of similarities.

This is a strange book about Mariella Novotny, who (among other things) was an underage sex worker who had sex with JFK. But the story is much more interesting than that.

The book is interesting in that it peels back the curtain on a British underworld from the 1960s and 1970s. The author includes her own process in the reporting - we hear not only about Novotny but also about Pizzichini's attempts to chase down various threads of the story. This part was less interesting to me and served to kind of interrupt the historical narrative.

The plot of this (unpublished, unfinished) book is much more complicated than most other Manchette novels. It made me sad that he didn't get to finish this book or the series he was thinking would follow it.

Fuller's faith in design is both disturbing and inspiring. This book is certainly "of a moment." Agel and Fiore designed, it has a "Medium is the Massage" feel to it. It's also difficult to get your hands on a physical copy - I snagged one on AbeBooks, but I paid a decent amount.

There are also at least four different ways to traverse the book, two of which require that you turn the book upside down.

I was familiar with Ruth Wilson Gilmore but primarily because I've seen her cited by others. This book laid out some core concepts for me when it comes to her work on abolition (anti-state state was one of these).

I also appreciated that many of the essays here both describe and enact activist scholarship, describing her work with organizations and other scholars.

There's a lot here, and it spans many years of an incredible career.