Reading Machines in the Modernist Transatlantic

Reviews / Votes

Just when we might think we've got the twentieth-century figured out, along comes a book like Reading Machines to reveal a lost continent of esoterica just below the surface. Eric White plunges intrepidly into a swirl of technical manuals, legal documents and all manner of memorabilia in this lavish exposition of the material substrate of high-flying ideas like Bob Brown's Readies, Mina Loy's "verrovoile," and the "dazzle ship" camouflages of the Great War. Altogether an astonishing spectrum, at once scholarly study and funhouse mirror reordering the visage of modernism. * Jed Rasula, University of Georgia * Eric White continues his outstanding work on the transatlantic avant-gardes in this brilliant, deeply researched exploration of the relationship between avant-garde creative practices and technological innovation. Ranging from art and technology in the contexts of WW1 to African-American experimental writing and the railroads, and opening up the fascinating history of the 'reading-machines', or 'readies', of Bob and Rose Brown, this compelling and important study offers new terms for an understanding of the role of technology in modern culture and its broad and far-reaching impact. * Laura Marcus, University of Oxford * In Eric White's acutely-observed study, it is the modernists who first understand that the machines are us, intrinsic to our culture, perceptions and potential, and capable of transforming both our textual experience and social relations. * Tim Armstrong, Royal Holloway, University of London *