Publication

1999 - Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif, California

Language

English

Word Count

81,250 words, Guess

Page Count

325 pages

Identifiers

  • Open LibraryOL36050M
  • ISBN-100804732361
  • OCLC Control Number40940083
  • Library of Congress Control Number99021523
  • Goodreads5355313
and 1 more
  • LibraryThing236216

Classifications

  • DDC836.009
  • LCCPN98.S46 S5413 1999

Description

This book examines how one aspect of the social and technological situation of literature - namely, the postal system - determined how literature was produced and what was produced within literature. Language itself has the structure of a relay, where what is transmitted depends on a prior withholding. The social arrangements and technologies for achieving this transmission thus have had a particularly powerful impact on the imagination of literature.

First Sentence

After he had spent a lifetime writing letters and piling up grievance upon grievance, the moment came when the words ceased lamenting in order to become "generally instructive" remarks-when the love letters stopped in order to make room for a theory of the postal system.

Subjects

Series Statement

  • Writing science

Other Editions

  • Relays: literature as an epoch of the postal systemStanford University Press1999-01-01

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