{"title":"Alan Loney","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"beginnings-book-alan-loney-9780986083624","title":"Beginnings","description":"Literary Nonfiction. Beginning is impossible. To imagine a new work is to know that it is impossible to begin. I cannot think of origins. They are too far back. They are far too close. One is not only already on the way, one's 'beginning' was never one's own, nor was it theirs who gave you birth, and surrounded you with the unfulfillable hope of their hopeless longings. So, how do I understand all these stops and starts the unstoppable fragmentary sputterings of the uninterruptedly continuous.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49738666148113,"sku":"NGR9780986083624","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0986083623.jpg?v=1751266239"},{"product_id":"not-reading-herakleitos-book-alan-loney-9780648728214","title":"Not Reading Herakleitos","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Ancient Greek philosopher Herakleitos wasn't called \u003cem\u003eobscure \u003c\/em\u003efor no reason. Allegedly Socrates himself read the manuscript and said you'd need to be a professional pearl diver to get to the bottom of it. And \u003cem\u003ehe \u003c\/em\u003ehad the whole book and spoke the same language as Herakleitos, something you can 100% rely on \u003cem\u003enot \u003c\/em\u003ehappening these days. Evidently that's not stopped anybody from making the attempt, however - even if they don't all end up clutching their pearls. That's where Alan Loney comes in. What he has done in this book is to attend, in an utterly unique fashion, to the \u003cem\u003emateriality \u003c\/em\u003eof this situation from the pure position of a poet and a printer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs Ted Jenner puts it: \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat are the barriers to engaging with Herakleitos for the neophyte in Greek with no Latin? What is particularly valuable about this book is its bibliograph- ical approach to ancient texts and their transmission, an approach which is all too often overlooked by contemporary scholars. A background in printing and a fascination with the book as a cultural artefact have served our author very well indeed. This is a book which will prove to be invaluable for all graduates embarking on a study of any branch of literature, the texts of which stem from ancient handwritten documents. Are they to rely solely (as did I, even as a post- graduate) on the sometimes dubious authority of the modern editor and their selective critical apparatus?\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe results that Loney achieves are literally incredible: what is it that we know of Herakleitos other than misrepresentation, hearsay, and fantasm? Until you've read this book, we can almost guarantee that you really have no idea.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51005377315089,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51005380788497,"sku":"NIN9780648728214","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52454372344081,"sku":"NLS9780648728214","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0648728218.jpg?v=1751198863"},{"product_id":"melbourne-journal-book-alan-loney-9781742589114","title":"Melbourne Journal","description":"Alan Loney's work has always been at the cutting edge of world literature. His mastery has become a resource for us all. ROBERT CREELEY","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52486121521425,"sku":"NLS9781742589114","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53493706785041,"sku":"NIN9781742589114","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781742589114.jpg?v=1759858735"},{"product_id":"in-search-of-the-book-as-a-work-of-art-book-alan-loney-9780648680703","title":"In search of the book as a work of art","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Search of the Book as a Work of Art asks questions about how we understand the words 'art' and 'book' and what happens when we put them together. It argues that the categories by which we have distinguished different kinds of books no longer tell us what we are looking at when we look at new books, including many made by trade publishers. Categories like 'fine press book' and 'artist book' have served useful purposes in the past, but are now redundant in the face of the incredible range of categorical overlaps in books that people are actually making. Along the way, this book explores and explodes a number of current ideas about books whose use-by dates are seen by the author as well and truly passed. This work supplements the author's earlier essays, The Books to Come (Cuneiform 2012) and The Printing of a Masterpiece (Black Pepper 2008), with a summation of four decades as a poet, printer, commentator, and publisher in the field. Taking his cue from a long-felt need for 'the book' to be a serious conversation outside of specialist discourse, the author presents an account in plain language about art and about the book that implies no expert knowledge - no technical terms, no specialised concepts, and no need to have the artist or their curators on hand to tell us what we are seeing when we see or pick up any new book. If this book is a critique, it is not a critique of any book made by anyone under the banner of the old categories (private press book, fine press book, artist book, limited edition book, and so on) but it is an examination of the words we use to talk about these books. It wants to know how the non-expert already talks about books and to see if a greater sensitivity to that ordinary language, 'the language of the tribe', is what we need instead of an increase in the complexity of the language with which we talk to each other about books - a turn to the books themselves.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52735642468625,"sku":"NIN9780648680703","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780648680703.jpg?v=1763402992"},{"product_id":"books-to-come-book-alan-loney-9780986004018","title":"The Books to Come","description":"Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History \u0026amp; Criticism. Typography. Foreword by Jenni Quilter. Of Loney's long-anticipated collection of essays, Johanna Drucker has written: Few people have mused with such imagination on the topic of the book as Alan Loney does in this volume. His reflections distill a lifetime of practice and reading, of knowing books and living with and around them. His thoughts about libraries, writing, texts, the codex, printed books, the artist's book, fine press traditions, and bibliography are at once philosophical and poetical. Though writing in the tradition of Mallarm , Jab s and Blanchot, Loney's sensibility is contemporary and original, informed by his practice as a printer and a profound engagement with books as expressive objects and objects of contemplation. I predict that this thoughtful, provocative, book will become a crucial reading on the codex. Loney's writing is wonderfully suggestive, but clear, fresh, and precise. He addresses issues much debated but rarely articulated so well and with such a skillful ability to open up the field for investigation and discussion.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53487560655121,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53487561146641,"sku":"CIN0986004014G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780986004018.jpg?v=1777654857"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-alan-loney.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}