The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine [Paperback]

Craig Conley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 26, 2010

This repository of ghostly images was never meant to be. The specters were conjured unwittingly, through a mechanical process of book scanning. Their portraits technically do not exist, except within this context. To explain: in old books, frontispieces were typically protected by a sheet of translucent tissue paper. So thorough is the Google Books scanning process that even this page of tissue paper is scanned. The figure in the plate beneath the tissue-"beyond the veil," as it were-emerges as from a foggy otherworld. The frontispieces were never meant to be seen this way. Their wraithlike manifestations have been artificially "fixed" in time by the scanning process. In essence, timeless phantasms of dead writers have been captured and bound into a new age.

And so we call this phenomenon "unforeseen art," as it constitutes an aesthetic expression without original intent. Just as artists often credit their inspiration to a Muse, the accidental art herein is in the domain of real ghosts; every author here has departed to the Other Side. We call it "necromancy by proxy," as the scanning machine serves as our "spirit medium" or shaman.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

I love the way Conley creates these series of what I want to call visual poems, only by default--only because there is no proper designation for a novel form. [In The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine] we experience juxtaposed images of historical and not-so-historical personages cleanly engraved and then suddenly disappearing in a xeroxial fog of reproduction, a Banquo's feast of mirrors. These visual-textual series allow Conley to create the visual analogues of the serial poem, and into these delicious confections he works some of the best quotes in the English language (and many others, translated) to create an almost Midrashically complex, anachronistic interplay between image and text that often leads the mind to question the impossible interface that occurs daily--i.e., to ask how it is that words and objects could ever even come to a sort of harmony in the first place? It begins to seem beyond us. And beyond us is the metaphysical. So the circle runs, chasing its tail like the cat in that Siouxsie and the Banshees song. --W. B. Keckler, author of Sanskrit of the Body

About the Author

Eccentric scholar Craig Conley, "America's most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation" (Encarta), left academia to pursue his esoteric research. He is author of Magic Words: A Dictionary (Red Wheel-Weiser), One-Letter Words: A Dictionary (HarperCollins), The One-Minute Mystic, Tarot of Portmeirion, The Minimalist Coloring Book, and dozens of other titles. His websites are MysteryArts.com and OneLetterWords.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 158 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace (May 26, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1452895341
• ISBN-13: 978-1452895345
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 8.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

More About the Author

CRAIG CONLEY has been called "a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure" (Clint Marsh), "America's most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation" (Encarta), a "language fanatic" (Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams), and a "cult hero" (Publisher's Weekly). An eccentric scholar, Conley's ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the "virtual pet" in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular "Tamagotchi" in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley's ONE-LETTER WORDS: A DICTIONARY is published by HarperCollins, and his MAGIC WORDS: A DICTIONARY is published by Weiser Books.