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In A World Rife With Unsolicited Messages, Typography Must Often Draw Attention To Itself Before It Will Be Read. Yet In Order To Be Read, It Must Relinquish The Attention It Has Drawn. Typography With Anything To Say Therefore Aspires To A Kind Of Statuesque Transparency. It's Other Traditional Goal Is Durability: Not Immunity To Change, But A Clear Superiority To Fashion. Typography At Its Best Is A Visual Form Of Language Linking Timelessness And Time.

-Robert Bringhurst

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In A World Rife

Robert Bringhurst

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In A World Rife With Unsolicited Messages, Typography Must Often Draw Attention To Itself Before It Will Be Read. Yet In Order To Be Read, It Must Relinquish The Attention It Has Drawn. Typography With Anything To Say Therefore Aspires To A Kind Of Statuesque Transparency. It's Other Traditional Goal Is Durability: Not Immunity To Change, But A Clear Superiority To Fashion. Typography At Its Best Is A Visual Form Of Language Linking Timelessness And Time.

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Essay On Adam" There Are Five Possibilities. One: Adam Fell. Two: He Was Pushed. Three: He Jumped. Four: He Only Looked Over The Edge, And One Look Silenced Him. Five: Nothing Worth Mentioning Happened To Adam. The First, That He Fell, Is Too Simple. The Fourth, Fear, We Have Tried And Found Useless. The Fifth, Nothing Happened, Is Dull. The Choice Is Between: He Jumped Or Was Pushed. And The Difference Between These Is Only An Issue Of Whether The Demons Work From The Inside Out Or From The Outside In: The One Theological Question.

Poetry, I'm Often Told, Is Something Made Of Words. I Think It Really Goes The Other Way Around: Words Are Made Of Poetry.

Typography Is The Craft Of Endowing Human Language With A Durable Visual Form.

Literature In The Written Sense Represents The Triumph Of Language Over Writing: The Subversion Of Writing For Purposes That Have Little Or Nothing To Do With Social And Economic Control.

My Own View Is That Violence Is A Part Of Classical Haida Literature - And Of Every Mythology Everywhere, So Far As I Can Tell - Because It's Part Of Life Itself. In The World Of The Hamburger Stand And The Supermarket, Or The Vegan Café And The Ashram, You Might Try To Tell Yourself It's Possible To Be Nonviolent. In A Hunting And Gathering Society, Violence Is More Difficult To Hide.

In The Nineteenth Century, Which Was A Dark And Inflationary Age In Typography, Man Compositors Were Encouraged To Stuff Extra Space Between Sentences. Generations Of Twentieth-century Typists Were Then Taught To Do The Same, By Hitting The Spacebar Twice After Every Period. Your Typing As Well As Your Typesetting Will Benefit From Unlearning This Quaint Victorian Habit.

Typography Is To Literature As Musical Performance Is To Composition: An Essential Act Of Interpretation, Full Of Endless Opportunities For Insight Or Obtuseness.

Endless Opportunities

When You Think Intensely And Beautifully, Something Happens. That Something Is Called Poetry. If You Think That Way And Speak At The Same Time, Poetry Gets In Your Mouth. If People Hear You, It Gets In Their Ears. If You Think That Way And Write At The Same Time, Then Poetry Gets Written. But Poetry Exists In Any Case. The Question Is Only: Are You Going To Take Part, And If So, How?

The First Function Of Violence In Native American Literatures Is Simply To Acknowledge That Violence Is Implicit, Like Gravity And Sunlight, In The World And Our Relations With The World.

Native American

In A World Rife With Unsolicited Messages, Typography Must Often Draw Attention To Itself Before It Will Be Read. Yet In Order To Be Read, It Must Relinquish The Attention It Has Drawn. Typography With Anything To Say Therefore Aspires To A Kind Of Statuesque Transparency. It's Other Traditional Goal Is Durability: Not Immunity To Change, But A Clear Superiority To Fashion. Typography At Its Best Is A Visual Form Of Language Linking Timelessness And Time.

Typography Is The Craft Of Endowing Human Language With A Durable Visual Form, And Thus With An Independent Existence. Its Heartwood Is Calligraphy - The Dance, On A Tiny Stage, Of The Living, Speaking Hand - And Its Roots Reach Into Living Soil, Though Its Branches May Be Hung Each Year With New Machines. So Long As The Root Lives, Typography Remains A Source Of True Delight, True Knowledge, True Surprise.

Typography Exists To Honor Content.

Typographic Style Is Founded Not On Any One Technology Of Typesetting Or Printing, But On The Primitive Yet Subtle Craft Of Writing.

Every Native North American Text I've Ever Grappled With Has Taught Me Something Important About How To Live On The Continent Where I Was Born.

A Man Who Would Letterspace Lower Case Would Steal Sheep, Frederic Goudy Liked To Say. If This Wisdom Needs Updating, It Is Chiefly To Add That A Woman Who Would Letterspace Lower Case Would Steal Sheep As Well .

Anxiety Projection Can And Does Occur - In Myth, In Music, In Fiction, And In The Doctor's Office Too. That Doesn't Make It The Basis Of Everything.

If Language Is Lost, Humanity Is Lost. If Writing Is Lost, Certain Kinds Of Civilization And Society Are Lost, But Many Other Kinds Remain - And There Is No Reason To Think That Those Alternatives Are Inferior.

We're Into The Era Of Desktop Bureaucracy, Where People Sit At Computers Building Websites And Analyzing Data Rather Than Listening Or Reading.

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Wings Are A Constraint That Makes It Possible To Fly.

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By All Means Break The Rules.

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Russian Literature

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I Think Of Something Quite Different From A Snapshot. I Know Of A Lot Of Poems, Some Very Fine Ones, That Are Like Snapshots, But I'm More Interested In Poetry That Is Like An Endless Film, Long Stories, Things That Weave Together Many Different Strands, Like A Big Piece Of Cloth, Not Like A Photograph.

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