White Magic: The Age of Paper

327 Pages·2015·4.906 MB·English

by  Lothar Müller

White Magic
For E, C, and J
White Magic
The Age of Paper
Lothar Müller
Translated by Jessica Spengler
polity
First published in German as Weiße Magie © Carl Hanser Verlag München 2012
This English edition © Polity Press, 2014
The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International –
Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative
of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting
society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German
Publishers & Booksellers Association).
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-7253-3
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Müller, Lothar, 1954-
[Weisse Magie. English]
White magic : the age of paper / Lothar Müller.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-7456-7253-3 (jacketed hardback : alk. paper) 1. Paper–History.
2. Papermaking–History. 3. Paper industry–History. 4. Printing–History. I. Title.
TS1090.M8513 2014
676–dc23
2014019958
Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Sabon
by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Clays Ltd, St Ives PLC
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Contents
Thanks viii
PROLOGUE The Microbe Experiment ix
PART ONE The Diffusion of Paper in Europe 1
CHAPTER 1 Leaves from Samarkand 3
1.1 The Arab Intermediate Realm 3
1.2 Calligraphy and the Cairo Wastepaper Basket 10
1.3 In Scheherazade’s World 13
1.4 Timur and Suleika 17
CHAPTER 2 The Rustling Grows Louder 22
2.1 The European Paper Mill Boom 22
2.2 Paper, Scholars, and Playing Cards 26
2.3 The Rise of the File: Paper Kings, Chanceries,
and Secretaries 31
2.4 The Merchant of Genoa and His Silent Partner 37
2.5 Ragpickers, Writers, and the Pulpit 46
CHAPTER 3 The Universal Substance 52
3.1 Marshall McLuhan and the Pantagruelion of Rabelais 52
3.2 Harold Innis, the Postal System, and Mephisto’s Scrap 61
3.3 The World in a Page: Watermarks, Formats, Colors 70
vi Contents
PART TWO Behind the Type Area 79
CHAPTER 1 The Printed and the Unprinted 81
1.1 The Pitfalls of a Formula: “From Script to Print” 81
1.2 The White Page 85
1.3 “Found among the Papers ...” 89
CHAPTER 2 Adventurers and Paper 94
2.1 Don Quixote, the Print Shop, and the Pen 94
2.2 Picaresque Paper: Simplicius Simplicissimus and the
Schermesser 99
2.3 Robinson’s Journal, Ink, and Time 104
CHAPTER 3 Transparent Typography 108
3.1 The Epistolary Novel’s Mimicry of Letter Paper 108
3.2 Laurence Sterne, the Straight Line, and the Marbled
Page 115
3.3 The Fragmentation of the Printed Page: Jean Paul,
Lichtenberg, and Excerpts 119
PART THREE The Great Expansion 127
CHAPTER 1 The Demons of the Paper Machine 129
1.1 The Mechanization of Sheet-Making 129
1.2 The Loom of Time, the French Revolution,
and Credit 140
1.3 Balzac, Journalism, and the Paper Scheme in
Lost Illusions 152
1.4 The Secrets of the Scriveners: Charles Dickens and
Mr. Nemo 163
1.5 Foolscap and Factory Workers: Herman Melville
and the Paper Machine 168
CHAPTER 2 Newsprint and the Emergence of the
Popular Press 180
2.1 The Boundless Resource Base 180
2.2 The Newspaper, the Price of Paper, and the
Patrioteer 189
2.3 Émile Zola, the Petit Journal, and the Dreyfus
Affair 196
Contents vii
CHAPTER 3 Illuminated Inner Worlds 201
3.1 Wilhelm Dilthey, Historism, and Literary Estates 201
3.2 Henry James, Edith Wharton, and the Autograph
Hunt 207
3.3 Laterna Magica: Paper and Interiors 215
CHAPTER 4 The Inventory of Modernity 226
4.1 Typewriter Paper, Deckle Edges, and White Space 226
4.2 James Joyce, Newsprint, and Shears 236
4.3 William Gaddis, the Paperwork Crisis, and
Punch Cards 242
4.4 Rainald Goetz, the Mystic Writing Pad, and the Smell
of Paper 249
EPILOGUE
The Analog and the Digital 253
Notes 265
Bibliography 274
Image Credits 292
Index of Names 293
Thanks
Paper is accommodating, and that’s what makes it such a wide field.
It’s not a field you can till on your own. I would like to thank Martin
Bauer for his continual reading of the text, and his suggestions and
objections right from the start; Henning Ritter for discoveries, feed-
back, and encouragement; Eberhard Sens for extensive supporting
work on the basic scaffolding and bibliography; Philippe Despoix for
Canadian commentary and the insight into Harold Innis’s literary
estate; Justus Fetscher—as always—for opening up side doors in the
universal library; and Dirk Liebenow for papers from collections in
Lower Saxony.
Fortunately, print media are not only made of paper; they are also
conversational media. Thank you to my Süddeutsche Zeitung col-
leagues Jens Bisky in Berlin for ideas shared in passing and Thomas
Steinfeld in Munich for his parallel commentary and editing.
In every field there are proven experts, and some of them are open
to visitors from the neighborhood. I would like to thank Frieder
Schmidt, head of the Cultural and Historical Paper Collections in the
Museum of Books and Writing of the German National Library in
Leipzig, for his enlightening discussions and patient/critical review of
the manuscript.
The idea for this book first took shape during a three-month stay
at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin from October to
December 2008. For their suggestions during this hiatus I would like
to thank the rector Luca Giuliani, all of the employees, my co-Fellows
and, above all, the librarians working for Gesine Bottomley and her
successor Sonja Grund.