Five Books about Books

In the Library of Congress catalog system, books about books are under Z: Bibliography, Library Science, and General Information Resources. That large umbrella covers the history of books and therefore typesetting and the craft of making the media of writing and reading.

Notes from a Public Typewriter edited by Michael Gustafson and Oliver Uberti. Grand Central Publishing (Hachette Book Group), 2018. (UT Library Z 49 N68 2018 MAIN)

Michael and Hilary Gustafson own the Literati bookstore in Ann Arbor. Shortly after they opened in 2013, they provided their customers with a mechanical typewriter for leaving thoughts or often only words, alone or in a string. 

Google Maps view.
124 East Washington Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104

At first, the machine was only a display. The impetus for active use came from the first customer who asked for paper. Makes and models changed. I found the logos for Rheinmetall, Royal, and Olympia; they probably had others. One note asked, “Where is the power button?” 

Whimsical or deep, fleeting or deserving of stone, the random writings of these literati provided Laurel and me occasional minutes away from work, sitting on the living room couch. For myself, given the social context of a typewriter in a bookstore on the main street of a university town, the marriage proposals (and rejections) gave me the most to consider.

500 Years of Printing  by Frederick G. Melcher, et al. American Institute of Graphic Arts, 1940; 31 pages (6-³/₁₆ x 9-⅛). (UT Library Z 127 C5 P9 LIB SCH)

Towns across America and around the world celebrated the 500th anniversary of Gutenberg’s press. This book acknowledged the war that America was not yet formally engaged in: 

“It will often be said, especially in this year of international turmoil, that printing, like all inventions, has great power for evil as well as for good, that false ideas can be as successfully disseminated as sound ones, that disrupting propaganda can be readily put in print as constructive programs, that oppressors can as easily use the press as liberators. This has been true in all of the five centuries since printing began, yet the gains have far outweighed the harm and will continue to do so. Literacy has been extended, libraries established for the free use of books, book ownership has been made more universal and the machinery of book distribution has been bettered.” 

The eight essays deliver richly detailed history about publishing in our America. However, the first three set a foundation with the fifteenth century and Gutenberg before revealing the surviving works of the printing press in Mexico 1539. In the British colonies of North America, newspapers were preferred. After independence many more books were produced; as a consequence of both, machines evolved rapidly.

Books & Readers in Ancient Greece & Rome by Frederick G. Kenyon. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1932. (Z 112 K38 1932 MAIN). Kenyon was the Director and Principal Librarian of the British Museum. This book draws on the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (from c. BCE 100 to CE 200), and other finds discovered only the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One trove came from a home in Herculaneum (79 CE). Much here is from inferences for which the earlier empirical evidence quickly becomes scanty. We know more from allusions to books in books than to actual copies. A nice touch here (and admittedly a problem) is that the quotations in Latin and Greek are not translated. 

In our common culture, proclamations on scrolls are read 

from top to bottom. In fact, a typical papyrus scroll was held 

horizontally fed from the right and unrolled to the left, two 

columns on a page (reading left to right), two pages to a sheet, 

each line about 20 characters. 

This book was intended for an American audience. All high schools taught Latin and many offered Greek. For myself, it was possible to glean a lot from cognates in Latin, though fewer popped up in Greek. I was surprised at how well I could sound out the Greek miniscules. I seem to have learned my letters over the years.

Heidi Kasa reading from
The Beginners at 
Anna's Antiques.

I had to pause at Kenyon’s prejudices. We each have our own. About the library room unearthed at a home in Herculaneum, Kenyon gives reasons for suspecting that the owner was Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher. “It is only to be regretted that the owner was not a collector of works of poetry or history, instead of a philosopher.” 

Kenyon also dislikes public performances. Authors recited in public spaces and they also rented private homes for the purpose. “It was not a healthy phase for literature, since it encouraged compositions which lent themselves to rhetorical declamation; and one may doubt whether it did any service to the circulation of books.” 

As the curator of an endowed institution, Kenyon had no feel for the paths by which words find paper and together they find readers. 

Hungarian Pioneers of Printing Arts: Mechanization of Setting by Dr. Peter Szöke. Hungarian Central Technical Library and Documentation Center, 1972. (UT Library Z 134 H9 V351 LIB SCH). Although culturally an island, Hungary benefited from the industrial revolution and independent inventors patented their solutions to the problems of typesetting. The machines here are similar to others that are known.

Literary Machines by Theodor Holm Nelson.Project Xanadu. 1980 - 1987.  (UT Library Z 52.4 N46 1987B C.2 MAIN). Ted Nelson was an early advocate and promoter of small computers. Literary Machines continued and extended the ideas presented in his oversize coffee table essay Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) which advocated for the popularization and democratization of computers via microcomputers (and terminals to mainframes). The extensively unstructured delivery of Literary Machines focused (for lack of a better word) on hypertext. Nelson called it that back in 1965. Today, we expect to be able to link information: data and metadata; Github and Get Info. 

• Computer Lib/Dream Machine is available on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/computer-lib-dream-machines and 
• Literary Machines is readable here: https://archive.org/details/lm-81/LM81
• The full Ted Nelson Archive is also open for access https://archive.org/details/tednelsonarchive

Previously on Necessary Facts

Goudy by Bernard Lewis and Goudy in His Own Words. 

Frederic W. Goudy by Peter Beilenson 

Hermann Zapf on Alphabets 

Start the Presses 

For the Glory of Old Lincoln High 

Cover Letters for Resumes

 This is how my typical cover letter starts out when I deliver it as a PDF in a drop box on an employer’s job site.

I write out the full name of the state. If there is an envelope for a printed letter, that carries the standard two-letter USPS abbreviations because envelopes are sorted by machines. But our states have nice names, many of them from Native languages—thanks for the land; now you go live somewhere else—sonorous identifiers: Massachusetts, Michigan, Dakota. 

As my resumes morph by the hour adapting to sporadic suggestions of what is best right now, for the cover letter, I stand fast by the traditional format for a real letter. 

Most people want to shape their public selves into an acceptable image. (The formal study of impression management originated with Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life; 1956, 1959). And I understand that. I also know that sooner or later they are going to find out the truth, so you might as well be upfront about it. 

I am a writer. I like writing. I like to think that I am good at it. I take words seriously. I believe that much verbal understanding develops subconsciously by the continuous integration of events in context. We understand the traffic sign PED XING because we long ago accepted XMAS. However, those are temporal regionalisms that might not cross into your reader’s worldview. (Even though I know the word “Weltanschauung” I did not use it there where it could have held a lofty place.) 

I have met other technical writers who do not criticize their own work. They trace a wiring diagram or a pipe flow and what they say about it is delivered to the reader without any further challenge. I always ask myself: If I did not grow up here and now—If I never saw this machine opened up—If I were new to this interface—what would these words say to me about that? 

Most teams looking for a technical writer want to make sure that I have continuous and direct experience in whatever their current platforms happen to be. They seem not to care if my work is understandable to their clients. I am sure that the hiring team will look at my submission and judge for themselves how well I write but that is another local-subjective fallacy because those managers will not be the ultimate consumers of the works which I create. 

In our world, we accept prima facie that money declares its value in units of account: Five $5 Dollars; Quarter Dollar. That is a relatively recent invention. The traditional gold pound sovereign coin of the United Kingdom now with the image of Charles III still has no unit of account on it. American numismatists know a somewhat rare colonial Connecticut coinage, privately issued by the owner of a mine. The motto reads: “I am good copper value me as you choose.”

Dear [Employer Name]:

Profitable documentation turns the reader into an actor in a story. The best documentation is an asset that is portable and extensible. It can be translated without muddle.

• I have done this for json scripts, fluid piping, industrial controls, and regulatory compliance. 
• I crafted white papers and blog posts for managers and made single sheets to be hung on machines for operators. 
• I interviewed engineers to create procedures that read at a sixth-grade level for a multi-processor industrial controller. 
• The State of Kansas used an article that I wrote on the future of money as part of their standard 11th grade literacy test.

As a freelance writer, I have published business profiles about 

• laboratory and electronics developers
• musical theater
• flight instructors
• retirement communities
• and restaurants. 

My focus is on the ultimate consumer, the person who will be applying the information to their work. 

As a member of the Texas State Guard for five years, I taught the WebEOC emergency management platform. My client learners included frontline computer operators and their commanders in the general staff. 

As a public programs presenter at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, I created and delivered presentations in kitchen chemistry to mixed audiences. Researching the life of the first working scientist to publish a science fiction story, I told the story “From Texas to the Moon with John Leonard Riddell” as a magazine article and as live performances at both numismatic and science fiction conventions. 

Your clients and their customers will benefit from the fact that I am flexible, innovative, adaptable, and creative. I keep track of my goals and I make my benchmarks. I work well in a complex and changing environment. I look forward to discussing with you the talents that I can bring to you, your clients, and their community.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

/s/

Michael E. Marotta

 Dear [Employer Name]:

You need someone who can start training your AIs for documentation. I can do that. I took a class in ChatGPT through LinkedIn Learning and I now work tutorials in AI concepts from Brilliant. I am currently editing a book of science fiction stories set in Austin 2078. Of course, I have decades of experience in technical writing. The most recent ten years of that is on my resume. You need someone who can say, “I have seen the future and it works.” 

That was said by an apologist for Russian Marxism. So, no, that future did not work out well but Lincoln Steffens was enthusiastic. And you need someone who has the spirit within: en-theos-astic. 

The job description and qualifications did not ask for evidence that my writing is readable. You will evaluate the samples I sent but I must ask: against which standard? 

I created procedures for a multi-processor industrial controller at a sixth-grade reading level. The operators must understand the Help and the engineers should grasp it at a glance. I placed a peer-reviewed article on numismatics with the British Association for the History of Astronomy. It read at a 10th grade level. Astronomers usually read at a university level but this was new information for them from a different but equal discipline. The State of Kansas used an article that I wrote on the future of money as part of their standard 11th grade literacy test. I wrote that article in 1995. You will find it included in this application. 

My master’s degree is in social science. Although I am not gregarious, I interface well with development, production, administration, and sales because I take a sociological viewpoint of other cultures. On the Myers-Briggs, I am right down the middle for INTJ / ENTJ. 

=> People with NT preferences … typically take a “what else can we do” approach to leadership. They tend to consider new ways to address tasks and projects, and often have an innovative mind-set that is about changing things up to make a situation better. — https://www.themyersbriggs.com/en-US/Access-Resources/Articles/leadership-and-the-intuitionthinking-nt-process-pair

As a freelance writer, I have published business profiles about retirement communities, political lobbyists, laboratory and electronics developers, musical theater, and restaurants. My focus is on the ultimate consumer, the person who will be applying the information to their work.

As a public programs presenter at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum and at the Texas Museum of Science & Natural History, I created and delivered shows in everyday science to mixed audiences. Researching the life of the first working scientist to publish a science fiction story, I developed the story “From Texas to the Moon with John Leonard Riddell” as a magazine article as well as live performances at both numismatic and science fiction conventions.

I held the rank of petty officer 2nd class (E-5) in the Maritime Regiment of the Texas State Guard. Previously assigned to training and development where I wrote plans and tracked performance, my final post was to be the regimental public affairs officer. As the PAO, I managed our Facebook page.

I worked for Kawasaki and Honda after taking a college class in Japanese for business. At Honda, just “Ohayo gozaimasu” in the corridors was enough. At Kawasaki Robotics, while teaching operations and programming, I also translated parts lists; I even answered the phone one night and routed the call. 

I worked for three German firms: Carl Zeiss IMT, EOS North America, and Kapsch Trafficom. For Zeiss, I translated an engineering booklet from German to English for our office in Detroit. Here in Austin, I did most of the work for EOS with Google Translate which I checked for correctness. I took German from the 7th grade through my sophomore year in college. When I was in the ninth grade, I entered a speech contest. Registering late, all of the slots were taken except for Native Speaker. I took first place. But that was then and this is now. Es ist eine lange Weile gewesen seitdem ich Deutsch gesprochen habe. 

As the AI named Wintermute said to the hacker Flynn in the novel Neuromancer by William Gibson, “Minds are not read. You still have the paradigms that print gave you.” I have been working on this problem for a long time. I can deliver what you need.

Sincerely,

/s/

Michael E. Marotta

ON TECHNICAL WRITING

Documentation is Specification 

Readability is the Only Metric 

Technical Writer Job Description 

Knowledge Maps 

Visualizing Complex Data 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

An Online Class in Astrophysics 

Base 7 

Observing With NASA: An Open Platform for Citizen Science 

Science versus Common Sense 

Sex, Gender, and Newspeak

Looking for work (as I am wont to do), I was taken to a Canadian website and wanted to leave them a message in their Contact form and I faced this:

 The company was Sprypoint in Prince Edward Island. I would loved to have seen this
in French, but I could not find a francophone form on their website.

Even back in the 1960s, science fiction suggested species with more than two sexes. Since then, we have decoupled gender from sex. Gender is grammatical; sex is biological. And even before there were seven billion humans on Terra-1, hermaphrodites happened. Now we call them "intersex." And, now, we all have the right to choose our genders within those sexes. The problem with nine pronouns is that we have no social linguistics to support it.

We learn language by hearing it and repeating it. You heard the tones, rhythms, and accents of your native language before you were born. You did not learn it by reading a grammar and copying out the declensions. Until people start talking like this, there is no way to enforce it. In the second declension, why is the possessive of the second person singular hir and not zir or zer? And who decided this?

I do not know French well enough to help them out with this, but if this were German, I would suggest: er, sie, es;  ger, gie, ges; zer, zie, zes; fer, fie, fes; and so on.

Note, also that they allow a Custom choice: you can make up your own. How you enforce that (or any of this) without a name tag is difficult to imagine. And with name tags some are wearing Magen Davids so as not be mistaken for Aryans. 

I like the clicks of Xhosa and other Bantu languages. "Hi! I am Michael: !e, !im, !is." However, I can see where that might cause some people to yell back at me. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Reflections on Sex and Gender

Linguistics Debate: What Colors are Your Rainbow 

The Living Fish Swims Under Water 

As You Speak So You Think 

Books Read and Not

Heidi Kasa’s The Beginners is a collection of prose poems. The first, “A Grief That Shatters Oceans,” tells about the eponymous Beginners. “One day, without warning, we all woke up in black robes.” The Enders refuse to accept that this is a good thing though the Beginners embrace their new condition as their nature, eventually and literally true. 

I like Heidi Kasa’s style, her choice of words and their positionings. She reminds me of reading Toni Morrison and F. Scott Fitzgerald. She did not invent that kind of writing but she learned from it. She writes what she knows and she knows herself from the inside. She chose a medium that lets her paint with bold economical words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that deliver a gallery of introspections. 

From "Ghosts are Hungry" in The Beginners by Heidi Kasa
https://digging-press.myshopify.com/collections/chapbooks

I read about twenty pages of The Murderbot Diaries Volume 1: All Systems Red. Even though I checked out Volumes 2 and 3, I did not open them. Martha Wells has won Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards among many others. (See Wikipedia here.)

Lots of people like her work and find it masterful. I did not. 

Wells attended Texas A & M University and lives in College Station. TAMU is the home of the Texas Cadets, an ROTC corps that is historically recognized. Their former commander, Col. Jake Betty, was later my commanding general in the Texas State Guard. I mention that because Murderbot reflected no special understanding of the warrior guardian ethos of the military and the police.

Murderbot's getting wounded did not resonate with me: I did not feel it, even though I have been burned and punctured mostly from being a boy and not from being a soldier or a security guard. Wells did not write the words that I needed to read. 

Her style is easy to read. I understand how voracious readers consume her many books. You never stop to read a nice sentence twice.

Murderbot does not murder anyone, gratefully; he gets murdered time and again. 

Murderbot hacked his own software to give himself free will. Leaving aside that chicken-and-egg problem, not explaining how to hack an operating system is like not knowing how to hotwire a car. “I didn’t have the keys but I got the car started and drove off.” A robot who hacks his operating system is a story with ponderous consequences. Maybe Martha Wells got around to that later.

I did not get too far into Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton. Mickey is a protective services android or cyborg and before he gets killed in action, he is supposed to upload his most recent experiences in order allow a seamless download to the next Mickey. In our story, Mickey-7 does not get killed in the last split second and he returns to his station to find Mickey-8 waiting there. This is against the law and can get them both killed. One of them must go. 

They know that they must never be seen together or even allow happenstance encounters that challenge their rival and exclusive natures: they cannot be seen in two places at once. 

Then they meet at the garbage dump. This is an entropy pit into which refuse is thrown for the matter-t0-energy conversion that runs the ship. Jumping in or being thrown in would be fatal and Mickey-8 does not mind that Mickey-7 has considered this. The oubliette is easy to access, lacking any special barrier, to say nothing of an interlock or someone posted there. So, I just stopped reading. And I had at least one reason to continue, even though there are now only two people alive who still call me Mick: my brother and my ex. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

ArmadilloCon 40: Part 2 

Do You Know Your Military 

Why I Served 

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security 

More on The Forever War