Palimpsest

Starred review from April 20, 2015
Battles (The Sovereignties of Invention) makes a dazzling foray into the history of text, from cuneiform to computer screens, narrating the evolution of the written word in captivating detail. The book begins with the appearance of writing in fourth-century B.C.E. Mesopotamia and proceeds through the invention of the codex by early Christians, the dissemination of manuscripts, and the history of printing. Drawing on accounts from varied cultures and eras, Battles finds that Socrates compared rhetoric to the planting and sowing of seeds, and that the fourth-century C.E. Chinese poet Su Hui conceived of writing as a “perceiving-through: a look through a window or a lens.” Battles also explores the insidious link between writing and power, using Great Expectations to illustrate writing’s liberating effects. Elsewhere, he quotes A Room of One’s Own on writing as a system that can “absorb the new into the old” without tearing the fabric of the whole. In the digital age, computer code represents a new kind of writing, though one not visible to most readers. In the end, Battles powerfully demonstrates that, though all forms of writing are imperfect, they have played a vital role in the cultures which have developed them.