cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (12/17/90)
A relatively new book highly recommended to virtual world builders
and explorers:
ECCENTRIC SPACES, by Robert Harbison. Boston: David R. Godine, 1988. $10.95
Subtitled, "A voyage through real and imagined worlds."
"This is a record of a struggle to assimilate more and more to
the realm of delight, which takes up less and less obvious sources of
gratification till in the end we can take the same joy in almost any
made thing. It is about bringing things indoors, about domesticating
reality, and the model for all these objects is a building -- the
palpable idea, the traversible speech, the simplest experience of being
in more than one place at a time. The books movement is roughly from
things to ideas, from the real to the fictional, but it tries to make
these states harder to distinguish. Its boldest aim is to suggest a
history of certain kinds of fiction, certain transformations worked by
the imagination, and to extend our sense of the part the fictionalizing
power plays in our lives.
"...Like many books, it is working itself free of its material.
The goal of learning and of this book as an act is that the critic feel
himself a participant, that the describer become the doer. The end is
not an actual building but the writing by which the writer becomes as
every learner will the exemplar of culture himself. A book is a
thought too big and various to be seen all at once, sturdy but unencom-
passable ideation, and the intimate excuse for a new one after all the
other books is this of giving the mind an existence outside itself."
-- From the Foreword
And here is a brief listing of the Contents:
1. Green Dreams: Gardens
2. Dreaming Rooms: Sanctums
3. Nightmares of Iron and Glass: Machines
4. Cities Dark Places: City Planning and Built Worlds
5. Books of Things: Architectural Fictions
6. Books of Things: Topographical Fictions
7. The Mind's Miniatures: Maps
8. Contracted World: Museums and Catalogues
I hope it's obvious why this book is so crucial and so timely.webber@csd.uwo.ca (Robert E. Webber) (12/18/90)
In article <13118@milton.u.washington.edu> cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Rob ert Jacobson) writes: .A relatively new book highly recommended to virtual world builders .and explorers: . . ECCENTRIC SPACES, by Robert Harbison. Boston: David R. Godine, 1988. $10.95 . . Subtitled, "A voyage through real and imagined worlds." ... . I hope it's obvious why this book is so crucial and so timely. Interesting. My copy was copyrighted in 1977. It also had different publishers: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc in hardcover and a $2.95 paperback from Avon Books. Same table of contents, but no subtitle. Does the 1988 Godine version claim to be an update or just a reissue? --- BOB (webber@csd.uwo.ca) [MODERATOR'S NOTE: Bob Webber is right. My copy is a classed-up reprint. Harbison was just ahead of his time -- or his material is timeless. You decide! -- Bob Jacobson]
peter@nexus.yorku.ca (Peter Roosen-Runge) (12/20/90)
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) writes: >A relatively new book highly recommended to virtual world builders >and explorers: > > ECCENTRIC SPACES, by Robert Harbison. Boston: David R. Godine, 1988. $10.95 I'd like to second Jacobson's recommendation of ECCENTRIC SPACES. It's isn't however new -- I think it was published by Knopf in 1977. My copy is from 1980 and cost $2.50 :-). In addition to the general relevance for 'virtual world builders', the last chapter "Contracted World: Museums and Catalogs" has very interesting things to say to people interested in the implications and presuppositions of hypertext. Peter Roosen-Runge Dept. of Computer Science York University, Toronto