From Codex to Hypertext: Reading at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century by Anouk Lang, ed. (review)

In her introduction to From Codex to Hypertext, editor Anouk Lang characterizes the volume as “seek[ing] to situate individual instances of reading in relation to the broader fields of relations (discursive, institutional, intertextual) that organize the cultural terrain of specific text-reader encounters” (2). Because the volume seeks to situate these individual instances of reading at a moment of both great technological change and rich scholarly investigation into the idea of what readers are and what reading is, Lang states that four key themes animate the choices in this volume: the democratizing effects of literacy, the challenges new reading practices pose to existing ways of establishing literary value, the role played by textuality in subject formation, and questions about the identity work that readers do through book-related technologies. The breadth Lang promises is definitely in evidence in the volume, but whether each article illuminates the stakes of various reading practices at the turn of the twenty-first century is less clear.

Lang divides the volume into two parts. The first, consisting of eight chapters, focuses on studies of communities and practices, while the second, consisting of four chapters, focuses on methods. Though there is logic to such a division, each of the four chapters on methods covers types of reading communities and practices that are addressed in the communities and practices section, which makes for a strange echo effect.

For example, Ed Finn’s “New Literary Cultures: Mapping the Digital Networks of Toni Morrison” foregrounds digital humanities methods by using data derived from automated recommendation systems to demonstrate how Toni Morrison has been discussed and categorized by professional critics, lay readers, and the marketplace. Because both traditional literary tastemakers and more popular readers have been responsible for the canonization—and commodification—of Morrison, Finn argues for a consideration of the reader as an increasingly active contributor and collaborator in reshaping “the structures of distinction.” Finn finds that “digital media are expanding opportunities for collective consciousness about how and why we read” (199). Julian Pinder’s and David Wright’s contributions find this to be the case as well. Pinder’s “Online Literary Communities: A Case Study of LibraryThing,” a theoretically informed and neatly contextualized piece, shows how the LibraryThing website connects different agents—readers, libraries, online booksellers, and publishers—in the chain of book distribution. The site is especially useful for publishers seeking bloggers or reviewers who might especially enjoy, and thus review favorably, a given volume. Wright’s “Literary Taste and List Culture in a Time of ‘Endless Choice’” develops the concept of “list culture” as a means of investigating how readers choose what to read. Wright’s immediate focus is Great Britain, where “cultural lists have joined best-seller lists as a staple of cultural journalism” (115). The list, Wright finds, is about the ways digital algorithms show us the management of the reading public, and though Finn’s essay is categorized under part two, “Methods,” it is uncertain whether the methods he uses would transfer to studies of other writers or if Toni Morrison’s position in American letters and American public consciousness—given, for example, her frequent appearances with Oprah Winfrey—makes her a unique phenomenon.

Likewise, Danielle Fuller and DeNel Rehberg Sedo’s and Daniel Allington and Benthan Benwell’s contributions foreground their methodologies, with the first utilizing mixed qualitative and quantitative methods of interpreting reader-created data and the second employing a narrow ethnomethodology of “discursive analysis.” Both essays, however, focus on the dynamics of reading groups, as does Joan Bessman Taylor’s “Producing Meaning through Interaction: Book Groups and the Social Context of Reading,” which appears in part one, “Communities and Practices.” Of the three, Benwell and Allington’s essay presents the finest grained use of a method, analyzing what readers do at the micro level when they produce an account of their reading experience. With the...