I’m thrilled to see Alex’s post about James Joyce, as I believe he figured more of this stuff out than perhaps any other writer in history.

For my last book, Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England, I chose the following passage from Joyce’s novel, Finnegans Wake, for my epigraph:

A bone, a pebble, a ramskin; chip them,
chap them, cut them up allways; leave them to terracook in the
muttheringpot; and Gutenmorg with his cromagnom charter,
tintingfast and great primer must once for omniboss step ru-
brickredd out of the wordpress else is there no virtue more in al-
cohoran. For that (the rapt one warns) is what papyr is meed
of, made of, hides and hints and misses in prints. Till ye finally
(Though not yet endlike) meet with the acquaintance of Mister
Typus, Mistress Tope and all the little typtopies.
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake