McKenzie SSR

McKenzie, D. F. “The Book as an Expressive Form.” The Book History Reader.
Ed. David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery. New York: Routledge, 2002. 27-38. Print.

Thesis: “Bibliography is the discipline that studies texts as recorded forms, and the processes of their transmission, including their production and reception… the study of the sociology of texts” (29). McKenzie criticizes and builds upon Walter Greg’s definition of bibliography, which did not pay attention to symbolic meaning of words in books. McKenzie argues that bibliography does and must contain “the relation between form, function and symbolic meaning” (28), including the interweaving of texts’ history, how they were published, why they were written, what they look or sound like, and what they say symbolically.

In the first few pages, McKenzie gives different definitions of bibliography (principally Greg’s) and offers up his own, more complex definition as “the study of the sociology of texts” (29). He also explains why both the terms “text” and “sociology” open up the definition of bibliography wider (29-31).

In section 2, he turns to his main specific example of “whether or not the material forms of books, the very disposition of space itself, have an expressive function in conveying meaning”: a close reading of the epigraph to Wimsatt and Beardsley’s “The Intentional Fallacy” (31). Here, he discusses their support of the New Criticism and their alteration of a quote by William Congreve for their epigraph. They changed some wording, punctuation, and capitalization, all of which McKenzie argues “obliges us to make our meaning from their misreading” (32). In fact, their misquoting, which highlights the author’s lack of importance, is basically the opposite of what the original implies: Congreve’s purpose and presence in the text (33). He also argues, though, that the misquoting is also historically, bibliographically significant (33): “The history of material objects as symbolic forms… can falsify certain readings; and it can demonstrate new ones” (34). “If a history of readings is made possible only by a comparative history of books,” McKenzie writes, about the history of publishing and republishing, editing and reediting, “it is equally true that a history of books will have no point if it fails to account for the meanings they later come to make” (34).

In section 3, McKenzie moves away from that specific example and instead goes broader, discussing the necessity and inevitability of rewritings and misreadings: “Any history of a book… must be a history of misreadings… Every society rewrites its past, every reader rewrites its text” (35). In thinking more broadly, McKenzie wonders about his own intentions in reading texts, Wimsatt and Beardsley’s potential for either purposefully, subconsciously, or accidentally misquoting Congreve, and the chance for bibliography to revisit and even recover the past (36-37)—“to show the human presence in any recorded text” (37).

I think McKenzie’s willingness to use questions in text is admirable—for instance, “And what of the reader?” (36). Growing up I was always told to avoid these explicit questions in papers, and so I still feel like I’m pushing envelopes when I try it. I also find his ability to bring in other authors and critics near-seamless, like his use of Edward Said in the final page. Also, purely language, but he can certainly turn a phrase, and I like his punctuation choices too: one quote that stands out is “Its epigraph is no celebration of Congreve’s perspicacity in foreseeing a new cause; it is, rather, an epitaph to his own dismembered text” (35). That’s a good semicolon.