Enhanced Editions found via James Hogwood

Intrigued by this. A multimedia iphone ebook app that lets you switch between text, audio and video without losing your place. It all looks beautifully seamless.

Despite the fact that I’ve never been one for audiobooks or ebooks, I’m seriously tempted to give this a go.

But although I completely appreciate the amount of work that must go into producing this,  it still feels a bit pricey at £15. I’d pay that much for a hardback. But whenever there’s ever a book that I want so much that I buy the hardback, then I want the actual physical hardback rather than a digital version (if that makes any sense?).

If it were £9.99 I’d be playing with it now rather than writing about it. But then, as I say, I’ve never been one for audiobooks or ebooks.

Saying that, Nick Cave is a brilliant one to launch with because…because it’s Nick Cave for chrissake. If there’s anyone I’m going to watch reading a novel, it’s him. Sod it, I’m going to do it.

I love Thomas Pynchon. I love the richness of his prose. Each sentence feels important, as if cast from heavy metals. And I love how he makes no concession at all to the reader. There is no compromise in the arcaneness of his references, or the number of characters he’ll introduce and fleetingly re-introduce over the duration of a novel.  But because of these levels of complication, you can sometimes feel as slightly paranoid as one of TP’s beleaguered characters that you’re missing something important.

So while I was googling his new novel, ‘Inherent Vice‘, I was very happy to find the Pynchon wiki. It’s loaded up with as many references, character descriptions and nuggets of background info as you could possibly desire. Can’t remember which Traverse is which in Against The Day? Here’s the family tree.

Of course it descends into ridiculous geek/fan-dom in places. Do we really need to know that “It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago”? Actually, yes, we probably do. But in the main the wiki is a really useful thing. It’s not using anything brilliantly new technology-wise (although the wiki as a search-based iPhone app would be great, come to think of it). It’s just being useful, using an existing technology really well. And useful is good, right?

And then I remembered Bruno Latour and Aramis and how he wrote precisely about the transport system we (or at least the Parisians) never had. I wonder what others are out there. There’s still room for technological autopsy, isn’t there?

Have a look:

What this shows (other than that the video camera on my phone is shite):
The orange  digger in the foreground has the job of crushing the mess of sheet metal and steel gridding in the oversized skip. But it’s been struggling to compact it down. The yellow digger behind it finds a girder and places it within reach of the first digger, which picks it up, swivels, stops, readjusts, pauses and  then bludgeons the skip’s contents.

It’s mechanical violence that’s more than just controlled by a human hand. It doesn’t come across in the video how much the cabin of the digger shook with each hammer blow. The driver/pilot physically feels a jolt with each smash, and is one with the machine. It reminds me, quite clumsily,  of this. But in reverse, obviously; with a man wearing a bigger, stronger arm.

So it’s great on a man with machine level. Also lovely is the dirty grace that the diggers show in working together. A bit like gorillas picking fleas from each other’s hair. I love the possibility of silent understanding and assistance. That the yellow digger notices the orange digger is struggling to do its job and,  unprompted, lays down a girder. And that the orange digger immediately understands why the yellow digger has placed the girder there, picks it up and goes to work. I love that the possibilty exists that that’s what happened.

I’ve just been listening to a friend’s last.fm playlist wirelessy through the iTouch plugged into the stereo while doing the washing up. It small pleasures like this that can make a weekend. And another reason why blip.fm feels like a toy (albeit a good one), while last.fm is a mission critical musical life-tool.