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A History of the Written Word
by Matthew Battles
An intellectual meditation on the history of writing, from Mesopotamia to multimedia.
Why does writing exist? What does it mean to those who write? Born from the interplay of natural and cultural history, the seemingly magical act of writing has continually expanded our consciousness. Portrayed in mythology as either a gift from heroes or a curse from the gods, it has been used as both an instrument of power and a channel of the divine; a means of social bonding and of individual self-definition. Now, as the revolution once wrought by the printed word gives way to the digital age, many fear that the art of writing, and the nuanced thinking nurtured by writing, are under threat. But writing itself, despite thriving for permanence, is always in the midst of growth and transfiguration.
Celebrating the impulse to record, invent, and make one's mark, Matthew Battles reenchants the written word for all those susceptible to the power and beauty of writing in all of its forms.
BookBrowse Review
"Palimpsest, which looks to dip into the history of writing, is based on an interesting premise but unfortunately ends up being too inaccessible for the most part. The book starts off promisingly but the writing is so stilted that it calls attention to itself more often rather than shining the spotlight on the actual material presented. Here's an example: 'This remarkable—and remarkably simple—capacity for writing to become a symbiont of the consciousness, for a craft so sophisticated and cognitively demanding to knit itself securely into our quotidian ways—is as responsible as its great utility for the ineluctable role it plays in modern life.' Here's another: 'With writing's advent, language ends its prelapsarian phase, trading oral language's mythopoeic effusion, innocent and promiscuous, for nominal precision and fixity.' An occasional overwrought sentence would be just fine, one would argue, even necessary, but page after page of such obtuse writing only mars the discussion instead of adding to it.
The author often presents history in the present tense ('Writing begins in China at about the same time it first appears in Mesopotamia'), which only exacerbates already simmering annoyances. A less pedantic approach might have made for a more approachable and enjoyable read."
Other Reviews
"Starred Review. [Battles] powerfully demonstrates that, though all forms of writing are imperfect, they have played a vital role in the cultures which have developed them." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A fascinating exploration stylishly and gracefully told." - Kirkus
"Matthew Battles is brilliant. This is not an encyclopedic chronology but an extended essay that skips gracefully across the centuries, stopping wherever the most interesting stories lie." - Anne Fadiman, author of Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
"Scholarly and poetic, Palimpsest is a beautiful and engaging read for anyone who loves to write." - Ethan Zuckerman, author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection
"At once elegant and mischievous, Palimpsest is a great intellectual adventure that travels around the world on its way from the emergence of cuneiform to the future of cyberspace. It will charm and provoke any reader who has ever put pen to paper or typed into a text box, whether to attempt literature or scrawl today's to-do list." - Elise Blackwell, author of Hunger and The Lower Quarter
"This is book history as dizzying palimpsest. Traveling through centuries and across continents, Battles finds unexpected connections and echoes that resonate with our own day. Surely this is what life in Borges's endless library must be." - Martin Puchner, professor of drama and of English and comparative literature, Harvard University
"The written word changed literally everything, allowing for history, the law, and civilization itself. But rarely is it appreciated for its own sake and its own beauty. Matthew Battles has written an essential text on the essence of writing. Whether it turns out to be an ode or an elegy, we have yet to see." - Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
This information about Palimpsest was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Matthew Battles is the author of Library: An Unquiet History and is a program fellow at the Berkman Center of Harvard University, where he is associate director of metaLAB, a research group exploring the bounds of networked culture.
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