I am grateful to all the writers from the distant past to the immediate present who have thought deeply about words and stories and books and set those thoughts to clay, parchment, paper, and pixel for magpies like me to feast upon.
I especially appreciate my ongoing conversations with Carla Douglas and Kate Pullinger about the future of books. They have been prods throughout my process, forcing me deeper into that word, “book,” and all it did and can and might mean.
Thank you to my agent, Martha Webb, for her steadfast faith, her hard work on my behalf, and her many kindnesses. Thank you to Sandra and Richard Gulland for encouraging me to pursue what seemed like a passing idea. Thank you to Alison Pick for introducing to me to Scrivener, which speeded the writing. And thank you to the Canada Council of the Arts for providing the material support that made it possible.
How lucky I have been to work with Susan Renouf, an editor with a deep love of books and a rare appreciation for the arcane. She deserves more thanks than words can convey. The entire team at ECW Press is a writer’s dream. I want to thank, especially, Jen Knoch and Rachel Ironstone for their copy-editing acumen and enthusiasm, Sarah Dunn for her innovative and indefatigable promotional zeal, Crissy Calhoun for her patience and fine visual sensibility, and Jack David and David Caron for keeping this publishing house vibrant and growing to become one of the best of Canada’s indie presses.
As always, my deepest gratitude to Wayne Grady, my loving partner in all things literary and in life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Merilyn Simonds is the author of sixteen books, including The Holding, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; The Convict Lover, finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award; and most recently The Paradise Project, flash-fiction stories hand-printed on a hand-operated antique press. She is founding artistic director of Kingston WritersFest and a past chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada. She teaches creative writing and mentors emerging writers around the world. She lives in Kingston, Ontario.
TRY ANOTHER GREAT READ FROM ECW PRESS...
Across Canada by Story More adventures from one of Canada’s premier editors and storytellers
Canada is a country rich in stories, and few take as much joy as Douglas Gibson in discovering them. As one of the country’s leading editors and publishers for 40 years, he coaxed modern classics out of some of Canada’s finest minds, and then took to telling his own stories in his first memoir, Stories About Storytellers.
Gibson turned his memoir into a one-man stage show that eventually played almost 100 times, in all ten provinces, from coast to coast. As a literary tourist, he discovered even more about the land and its writers and harvested many more stories, from distant past and recent memory, to share.
Now in Across Canada by Story, Gibson brings new stories about Robertson Davies, Jack Hodgins, W.O. Mitchell, Alistair MacLeod, and Alice Munro, and adds lively portraits of Al Purdy, Marshall McLuhan, Margaret Laurence, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Margaret Atwood, Wayne Johnston, Linwood Barclay, Michael Ondaatje, and many, many others. Whether fly fishing in Haida Gwaii or sailing off Labrador, Douglas Gibson is a first-rate ambassador for Canada and the power of great stories.
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Copyright © Merilyn Simonds, 2017
Published by ECW Press
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Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4M 1Y2
416-694-3348 / [email protected]
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Simonds, Merilyn, 1949–, author
Gutenberg’s Fingerprint : Paper, Pixels and the Lasting Impression of Books / Merilyn Simonds.
Issued in Print and Electronic Formats.
ISBN 978-1-77041-352-8 (hardback)
Also issued as: 978-1-77305-003-4 (PDF)
978-1-77305-002-7 (ePub)
1. Books and reading. 2. Hand-printed books. 3. Electronic books. 4. Communication and technology. I. Title.
Z1003.S56 2017 302.23’2 C2016-906358-5 C2016-906359-3
Editor for the press: Susan Renouf
Cover photo: Wayne Grady
Author photo: Wayne Grady
The publication of Gutenberg’s Fingerprint has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. Ce livre est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada. We also acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,709 individual artists and 1,078 organizations in 204 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Gutenberg's Fingerprint Page 28