| Before a book is read,
it generates an expectation of what will be experienced in the process of reading it. In
the present instance, I started from the subtitle, and my acquaintance with the author's
work in Latin late antiquity and his engagement with electronic means of communication. My
anticipation of a vista spanning millennia was matched by the classification and subject
headings (primary is Communication and technology -- History) assigned to the work by the
Library of Congress. Much of the content of the book suits this expectation. Among matters treated are oral/written/printed/electronic communication, memory, authority, libraries, the birth of the codex, linear and nonlinear access, encoding of text, scholarly publication, copyright, and canon and classicism. The presentation of the matter, though, is "a historical perspective" rather than "a history." (The nature of various remarks on Nietzsche suggest that the foregoing sense of "perspective" is not intended to point in that direction.) Announcing this, the preface goes on to promise a work consisting of "meditations" in a style "deliberately associative and informal," with assertion that by design "this book is exceedingly personal, even familiar" (x). This dialectic of discrepancy is intimated in the oracular main title: Avatars of the Word. Consider each term in turn. The word "avatar" is elaborated and used substantively at only two points in the entire book. First is a reference in the preface to a related homepage as an "electronic avatar" of the book itself, with a note explicating the word as "manifestation -- the form in which some abstract and powerful force takes palpable shape for human perception" (xi). Second is reference in chapter one to "the power of the word and its avatars" (17). The antecedent to "avatars" is "such figures," namely Jesus, Socrates, Confucius, and Buddha. This occurs at a point of turning from a general historical comparison to more detailed consideration of Socrates in particular. These two uses of the word "avatar" are more abstract than, though not entirely divorced from, the primary lexical sense: the incarnation of a god in Hinduism. What is meant by "the word" seems most clearly delineated in a few paragraphs from the introduction, where an exposition of this linguistic unit states, "Words stand for things, but words are known to us only as signs for the things they thus create, or at least differentiate, by representing" (8). O'Donnell then moves on to refer to Augustine. (There is nothing in the context to make it clear whether this is accidentally or deliberately echoing against the opening of Wittengenstein's Philosophical Investigations, though I suspect not.) At a second level, there is no apparent basis in the text for assuming an ironic stance toward the logos of John 1:1. The boundaries of the main title's range of resonance are not clear. Moving from the preliminaries to what there is of a gist, the already-noted discrepancy becomes a basal fault line running throughout the work. A collection of phrases serves to illustrate an uneasy desire for pattern and continuity, which finally cannot be asserted:
In one instance, the changes portended by electronic technology are expressed in two strong metaphors of disaster: "a flood of words and images, metastasizing in every imaginable way from around the world" (148). On the penultimate page, an attempt at synthesis results in a peculiar phrase whose realization seems impossible: "the wise navigation of those upheavals." O'Donnell wonders explicitly why more humanities scholars have not engaged the new technologies. With regard to the university itself, he anticipates that change is more likely to come at the margins. The autobiography woven into the text reveals a well-established professor and administrator whose origins (New Mexico) and academic specialization (late Latin antiquity) have equipped him to perceive fissures and try new things despite his present situation. The latter half of the book moves toward an extended critique of higher education, one that is not reflected in the book's presence (title, appearance, cataloguing). Throughout Avatars, O'Donnell turns to narrative and offers accounts of persons such as Jerome, Socrates, Sidonius Apollinaris, Symmachus, Johannes Trithemius, Marshall McLuhan, A.E. Housman, Matthias Corvinus, Augustine, Mrs. Shoppach, Cassiodorus, and James O"Donnell. Illustrative example is a major mode of proceeding, and it is usually engaging and thought-provoking. The author's most technical foray consists of a few pages (44-49) on representation of written characters, encompassing ASCII, Unicode, SGML, and TeX. The sketchy mention of 7- and 8-bit characters is confusing, and Unicode is described as "a set running to about 35,000" (46). There is no mention of 16 bits. The central chapter on ancients and moderns seems most sustained, and perhaps gives clearest expression to the possibilities that exist for defamiliarizing and disorienting our sense of civilization. Notable is the role given to China, with a suggestion of how history may appear from an eastern perspective in the future. This may relate to the eastern overtones of the book's title, though no overt connection can be discovered. As an artifact, the book itself pleases with its material, proportions, construction, layout and typography. In part, this coveys the authority of the publisher. Given the author's sometimes uneasy stance toward such authority, it may be appropriate that the text itself contains a quantity and variety of error:
Amusingly, the work itself explicitly recognizes this characteristic of printed works: "we do accept a light admixture of error" (80). Although ink is here frozen on paper, hypertextual sensibility and ambition exist. Four shorter passages are denominated "hyperlinks" and interspersed among the chapters. The postmodern world is asserted to make us all "eclectic hypertexters" (161). An associated web site ( http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/avatars) is seen as an extension of the book, and I agree with the author that "especially illustrations" should be sought there (xi). The only printed illustration (dust jacket in color and facing page one in black and white) is reproduced on the web site, and thanks to the clarity and scale of the latter, I was finally able to find the lion! It seems odd that the most natural hypertextual feature -- the index -- is inconsistent, idiosyncratic, and thin. It leads me to Ennodius but ignores Martianus Capella (146). HTML gets a pointer, but SGML does not. The problem of form of entry for
(using the current Library of Congress name authority record, which provides 19 cross references) gives rise to the six cross-references among the total of 189 entry lines in the index. The text gives us no basis for Mrs. Shoppach having the initial "Y". There is a preponderance of proper names and a smattering of concepts, a prime telltale of quick-and-dirty indexing. I looked forward to the appearance of this book. I enjoyed reading it and I expect to return to some of the examples. One thing it does very well is to convey a sense that we are on the threshold of an era that promises to disrupt many of our ingrained habits and unexamined expectations. Both humanists and educators should find grist here for their mental mills.
Written February 22, 1999 Copyright © 1999 Joseph Jones and Andrew Mactavish. |
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 Author: Title: Publisher: Date of Publication: 1998 ISBN: 0-674-05545-4 Price Info: $24.95 Retail |
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