Readies Online

Abstract

The research experiment described in this article, “Readies Online,” started as a database to make accessible a rare manuscript of important modernist poets and writers including Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, F. W. Marinetti, Kay Boyle, Nancy Cunard, Eugene Jolas, and many others. Each of these contributors had sent works prepared for Bob Brown's machine, and he called the prepared texts readies. In the midst of building the collection of texts, the researcher realized that moving the texts through an electronic version of Brown's machine, or through the interface constructed on the website to simulate Brown's machine, changed how one read — even changed the essence of what one read. Speed, pace, direction, and visual cues took on new importance already apparent in reading printed texts, but not stressed. Punctuation now represented an illegible and non-representational, visual cue rather than a direct link to the phono-centric pauses and stops that are more commonly represented by punctuation. The futures of reading, and the use of new devices like e-readers, will have consequences for the definition and practice of what we call reading.