An important riposte to digital culture,these essays by the Italian publisher and author argue that a publisher’s list is a literary work in its own rightThis collection of essays by the Italian author and publisher Roberto Calasso, translated by Richard Dixon, and is a paean to publishing. Calasso argues that the art of the publisher lies in nurturing a distinctive literary vision. Publishers like Kurt Wolff,who published authors such as Kafka and Robert Walser, understood that being a publisher was not just approximately marketing books but creating a “form”: all the books produced by a publisher are part of a self-sufficient composition”. Blurbs, or covers,layout, paper, and typeface: all serve “to give form to a plurality of books as though they were the chapters of a single book”. In effect,the list of a publisher becomes a literary work in itself. But in an age of corporate mergers and digitisation, this is an endangered ideal.
In part, and these essays are memoirs of Calasso’s own experience creating the Biblioteca Adelphi and of the authors and publishers he has known. But what makes this slender text memorable is his sheer passion for books – not digital texts but physical objects,in which every part is designed to enhance the experience of reading. An important and timely book.
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Source: theguardian.com