Nonlinearity, Multilinearity, Simultaneity

This paper addresses three paradigms in epistemological structures that could serve as preliminary classifications enabling a systematic approach to past and current media phenomena such as hypertext, diagrams and ubiquitous computing. Nonlinearity is discussed by Vilém Flusser in the context of "technical images." In his own approach to go beyond linear text, Flusser and his publisher created a digital version of his book Die Schrift on a floppy disk (1987), enabling the reader to jump between chapters or to rewrite the text. Multilinearity is a concept that is revived within the diagrammatology discourse, transcending linearity through topographical ways of reading. Current examples can be found in arts and narratives such as Chris Ware's comics, who uses diagrammatics to blur the lines between the reader and the author. Simultaneity as a technological attribute is essential to current ubiquitous and pervasive technologies and services and draws heavily on Heideggerian concepts such as readiness-to-hand and background. In this epistemological shift, the information is instantaneously organized according to the user's needs. Each of these epistemological structures offers a different idea about receiving and creating knowledge, information and communication, paving the way for narrative and media strategies that are more and more determined by a 'reader' becoming a 'user' and a 'text' becoming a 'service.' Image Credit: Chris Ware’s Diagram on the interior of the dust-jacket from Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth.

[Review] Natalie Porter and Ilana Gershon, editors. Living with Animals: Bonds across Species. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. 266 pp.

[Review] Natalie Porter and Ilana Gershon, editors. Living with Animals: Bonds across Species. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. 266 pp. Living with Animals, as the dust jacket avers, ‘is a collection of imagined animal guides – a playful look at different human-animal relationships’. The collection has an international range from dogs in Australia, to sacrificial cattle in Madagascar, chimpanzees in West Africa, tamed hyenas in Harar, and returning birds in Buenos Aires. At the same time the reader learns more about animals in processes and places we might take for granted – training service dogs, marketing rescue dogs, introducing a gorilla into a zoo troop – or prefer to deny – dealing with pigs in a factory farm, artificially inseminating cows and horses, responding to mice and ferrets in laboratories.

Executive Perspectives

I found a vinyl record in some wet grass one day about 50 years ago while walking home from high school. It had no dust jacket and no paper sleeve to protect it, and it was damp and scuffed up. What a find! It was “Truth,” the debut album by The Jeff Beck Group, which in addition to the legendary guitarist features vocalist Rod Stewart (not the same guy as SEG's past president but almost as cool).

Bone Hollow by K. Ventrella

Ventrella, Kim. Bone Hollow. Scholastic Press, 2019. Gabe isn’t sure what happens after he falls off a roof during a storm trying to rescue Miss Cleo’s prize chicken. And he isn’t sure why, when he wakes up in Miss Cleo’s room, no one will speak to him and everyone is crying. But it eventually becomes unignorable: Gabe died in that storm. Well, he almost died. Kim Ventrella’s second novel Bone Hollow, aimed at middle-grade readers, follows Gabe and his loyal dog Ollie as Gabe tries to figure out what happened to him, and what he’s supposed to do now that he’s dead. After some meanderings between the woods outside his town and the town itself, Gabe meets Wynne, a mysterious girl who shows him her home, the titular Bone Hollow. At the core of the book, Bone Hollow is a misty but cozy refuge from a world Gabe doesn’t fit into anymore. Gabe is searching for a new place to fit in, and Wynne is urgently searching for someone to take her place. Bone Hollow is a novel that takes its time, dwelling on sensory details that are alternately lush (like Miss Cleo’s sweet-and-savory biscuits) and grotesque (like Ollie’s propensity to lick every bit of Gabe he can find, including inside the wound that killed him). It’s not quite an adventure story, as there is no villain to defeat or ally to rescue. It’s not really a meditation on death; that theme is pervasive, but frequently interrupted. It’s not a gross-out or horror story, as plot threads that move in those directions—e.g., a creepy mortuary owner, and a hollow man with a bird inside his mouth—are abandoned as soon as they are begun. It’s a mix of all these things, in a way that defies expectations. Bone Hollow suffers somewhat from slow pacing and an unclear plot motivation. The climactic choice that Gabe must eventually make is barely foreshadowed before the halfway mark (although it is spoiled on the book’s dust jacket). Besides this momentous decision, his other movements through the story seem more orchestrated than agential: even after the tornado blows out, Gabe is buffeted around by childhood bullies, scared adults, ghosts, and speeding cars. He reacts to these events with grit, bravery, and no small amount of stubbornness, but he is, predominantly, reacting. Readers who are looking for an atmospheric, creepy, but ultimately reassuring story about loss, change, and finding one’s purpose may appreciate Ventrella’s blend of comforting and unsettling prose. Gabe’s voice is individual, funny, and charmingly Southern—you can tell he’s upset when he starts saying “gosh darn it!”—and his friendships with both his dog and Wynne are carefully traced. Squeamish readers might not appreciate the mild gore—mostly off-screen—and others might simply be put off by the focus on death and dying among humans and animals alike. For those who relish a more morbid take, this book might be a welcome addition. Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Amanda Daignault Amanda Daignault is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. She studies contemporary children's middle-grade fantasy novels, using methods of book history and bibliography to figure out where all those giant trilogies came from and what they're doing.

Sport and the New Zealanders A History.

A quick glance at the images of the dust jacket resulted in a sigh of, “Here we go again! Not another atypical one-sided historical text”. A genuine appreciation of the illustrations and respect for both authors’ in-depth research and analysis over a span of eleven years, evolved. I do question whether the collection of 24 photographs and 2 illustrations was inserted in an ideal location (150 to 151). To aid the reader’s understanding, it may have been more advantageous to insert the collection, as and when referred to.

Latin Literature

The dullest book of theAeneid? Certainly not, insist Stephen Heyworth and James Morwood in their commentary onAeneid3. There can't be many students at school or university level who cut their teeth on epic Virgil with his third book, but Wadham College, Oxford, where H&M were colleagues, has been the glorious exception for a quarter of a century, and the rest of us now have good reason to follow suit. I don't just mean the ‘thrilling traveller's tale’ (so the dust-jacket) that carries us from Polydorus to Polyphemus by way of such episodes as the Cretan plague, the Harpy attack, and a pointed stop-off at Actium, nor the ktistic and prophetic themes that give this book such weight in Virgil's grand narrative. There's also the simple matter of accessibility.Doctissimi lectoresofAeneid3 can consult Nicholas Horsfall's densely erudite and wickedly overpriced Brill commentary, but others have had to make do with one of R. D. Williams’ more apologetic efforts. (True, there is an efficient student edition by C. Perkell, but that seems to have made little headway in the UK, at least.) Now Aeneas’ odyssey takes a place among the few books of theAeneidfor which undergraduates and others can draw on commentaries which are at once accessible, sophisticated, and affordable.