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Palimpsest: A History of the Written Word, by Matthew Battles
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A profound, eloquent meditation on the history of writing, from Mesopotamia to multimedia.
Why does writing exist? What does it mean to those who write? Born from the interplay of natural and cultural history, the seemingly magical act of writing has continually expanded our consciousness. Portrayed in mythology as either a gift from heroes or a curse from the gods, it has been used as both an instrument of power and a channel of the divine; a means of social bonding and of individual self-definition. Now, as the revolution once wrought by the printed word gives way to the digital age, many fear that the art of writing, and the nuanced thinking nurtured by writing, are under threat. But writing itself, despite striving for permanence, is always in the midst of growth and transfiguration.
Celebrating the impulse to record, invent, and make one's mark, Matthew Battles reenchants the written word for all those susceptible to the power and beauty of writing in all of its forms.
15 illustrations
- Sales Rank: #469783 in Books
- Published on: 2015-07-27
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.60" h x 1.00" w x 6.50" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 272 pages
Review
“This fascinating exploration of the evolution of writing shows how, despite radical technological changes, the practice maintains its atavistic mystery…. And the history of the written word, as this book makes clear, reveals the evolution of the human mind.” (W. Ralph Eubanks - The Wall Street Journal)
“[L]yrical…. [C]onsistently evocative…. In today's memoir-mad, self-published climate…“typing” has taken the place of “writing.” Battles’s work runs counter to this cultural moment, participating in and expanding the art that’s the focus of his history.” (Michael Washburn - The Boston Globe)
“The reader and writing fan absorbed by writing's miscellany will find much to love and sink into in Palimpsest…. An enthusiastic, detailed account of writing throughout history.” (Julia Jenkins - Shelf Awareness, Starred Review)
“[E]xhilarating…. Battles is a gifted stylist, and his history of writing is both a paean to the powers of language and an extended demonstration of his own prowess. Nearly every page features an example of beautiful writing about writing.” (Nick Romeo - Christian Science Monitor)
“An illuminating look at the origins and impact of writing…richly detailed…. Battles deftly excavates layers of human history from a wide range of sources…. A fascinating exploration stylishly and gracefully told.” (Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review)
“Incredibly ambitious…intriguing…thoroughly researched and thought provoking.” (Library Journal)
“[A] dazzling foray into the history of text.” (Publishers Weekly, Starred review)
“Anyone who can write a history of writing in fewer than 200 pages is either foolish or brilliant. Matthew Battles is brilliant. This is not an encyclopedic chronology but an extended essay that skips gracefully across the centuries, stopping wherever the most interesting stories lie.” (Anne Fadiman, author of Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader)
“From traces in clay to photon traces on the screens that surround us today, seeing roots and bones in the shapes of letters, Matthew Battles explores the deep origins and hidden structures of our written world. Scholarly and poetic, Palimpsest is a beautiful and engaging read for anyone who loves to write.” (Ethan Zuckerman, author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection)
“To call this book a profound meditation on what it means to be human would be to tell the truth but leave out all the fun. At once elegant and mischievous, Palimpsest is a great intellectual adventure that travels around the world on its way from the emergence of cuneiform to the future of cyberspace. It will charm and provoke any reader who has ever put pen to paper or typed into a text box, whether to attempt literature or scrawl today’s to-do list.” (Elise Blackwell, author of Hunger and The Lower Quarter)
“This is book history as dizzying palimpsest. Traveling through centuries and across continents, Battles finds unexpected connections and echoes that resonate with our own day. Surely this is what life in Borges’s endless library must be.” (Martin Puchner, professor of drama and of English and comparative literature, Harvard University)
“The written word changed literally everything, allowing for history, the law, and civilization itself. But rarely is it appreciated for its own sake and its own beauty. Matthew Battles has written an essential text on the essence of writing. Whether it turns out to be an ode or an elegy, we have yet to see.” (Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now)
About the Author
Matthew Battles is the author of Palimpsest and Library: An Unquiet History and a program fellow at the Berkman Center of Harvard University, where he is associate director of metaLAB, a research group exploring the bounds of networked culture.
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Whirling Prose!
By Anne M. Hunter
I'm fascinated by language and history, so this should be an ideal
book for me. Unfortunately it's not really about the history of
writing, and imparts few useful facts about writing, embedded in
a complex stew of ideas.
The author writes in a convoluted, whirling style that I found
startling and off-putting. Perhaps appropriately to his topic, he
seemed to need a new piece of punctuation -- a tiny exclamation point to
insert at the end of almost every sentence or even phrase. His prose
left me almost breathless. Seeking an example, I just opened the book
and my eye fell first on this sentence:
"This remarkable -- and remarkably simple --
capacity for writing to become a symbiont of
the consciousness, for a craft so sophisticated
and cognitively demanding to knit itself securely
into our quotidian ways -- is as responsibile
as its great utility for the ineluctable role it
plays in modern life."
Really. A book chock full of sentences like that. You see
what I mean about 'whirling' prose, I trust.
Once in a while I learned something interesting. Both the
word 'character' (from Greek) and the word 'write' (from
Germanic languages) originally meant a carving tool, in the
first case, and the act of carving, in the second.
According to the author there was a fascination, among 19th century
Western poets, from Emerson to Pound, with Chinese writing and
poetical forms, that amounted to far more than the sort of
chinoiserie of Impressionism. They were attracted to the subtlety and
complexity of Chinese characters and poetry as an alternative to
apparently dreary mainstream Victorian poetry.
I'm sure you'd like to see another sample sentence of his writing,
before I end.
"Power -- the subject and product of our political
behavior-- enlivens mythical accounts of the
irruption of writing, with written characters
taking the form of mighty trees, armed warriors
marching to battle, or the dead in judgement;
letters springing from the earth, flying from
the singing mouth of the creator, falling from
the tree at the center of the world".
Whew. I read all 222 pages, marveling as I went. If you like this
sort of thing, then I guess you'll like it.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
A few kerns short
By Theodore A. Rushton
Palimpsest is a surface on which later writing is superimposed on effaced earlier writing, an apt title for this book which superimposes muddled thinking on what might have been astute original insight.
It would be nice to call it "wooly thinking," which Guillermo Algaze suggests is the earliest example of written communication, but this book doesn't rise to that level. At least seven thousand years ago, according to Algaze, after residents of Uruk realized wool was a much better commodity than flax, they needed a system of symbols to keep track of sheep and wool and ownership. Thus, the first written symbols were created to track commercial dealings. It was the start of what became cuneiform, used for perhaps four thousand years.
However, the invention of writing doesn't seem to be Battles' intent. Unless I'm mistaken (it's been known to happen), he is stumbling about looking for the impact writing has on human thought and attitudes. To start, one cannot do better than the Inuit description of writing, "words stay put."
It's a significant change from oral histories and legends. Great stories can be remembered on everything from quipu cords to poetic cadence from Gilgamesh to the Iliad to Beowulf. But, even the best memories are malleable compared to "words stay put" in written form. Battles' intent seems to be the changes in mental attitudes in response to writing - - but, who can tell?
Instead, he stumbles about with a jackdaw of quotes, quips and ideas and never seems to find a central coherent theme. It's a bureaucrat's muddle of ideas, very much the opposite of a scholar's useful focus. It is an example of the craft and technology of relying on quotes instead of original insight.
This book is truly a palimpsest; the prime examples were medieval scholars who erased the great works of Greek writers to write learned and scholarly and erudite descriptions of how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. On this palimpsest, it's how many quotes can dance around an original idea without once creating an original insight.
As is said, he's a few kerns short of good typeface.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Brilliant, Personal Academic Memoir
By David S. Wellhauser
Matthew Battles’ Palimpsest: A History of the Written word has evoked, in certain circles, a few seemingly unjust criticisms. At least one saw it as a ‘jumble’ and another suggests there are ‘too many unsupported assumptions and presumptions’. Both of these might be justified excepting for one issue and this has much to do with the marketing of the book. Nowhere is Palimpsest, on the exterior of the book, marketed as an academic or literary memoir, which, in point of fact, Palimpsest is. As such, the reader should read this as a very personal exploration of the history of writing, and this must, perforce, include computer code as the latest manifestation of writing.
Mr. Battles, who is a researcher [as of writing] in metaLAB at Harvard, has produced a piece of work, Palimpsest, which has very little sympathy for those with a middling vocabulary. One of the great joys of books such as this is the opportunity to spruce up one’s vocabulary and enjoy the way sentences may combine, with an unforgiving love of language, to create a transformative, almost mystical, separation of self and other. Don’t fight the experience, allow it to sweep you away. Once finished your first, hallucinatory, reading you may, perhaps should, return for a more critical experience. Critical not in its negative sense but in the sense of a self-aware dialogue with this marvelous little book. At under three hundred pages it isn’t long…which may be why some thought it a bit of a jumble. To cover a history of the written in such a short period of time requires a fair amount of jumping about.
As far as this reviewer is concerned, Palimpsest is an unqualified success and worth more than one reading.
Recommended for cultural anthropology and linguistic wonks who are not afraid of uncommon words and academic memoirs.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
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