Calvino at a Crossroads

The movement described in Chapter 3—from anti-authorial procedures to a new accommodation with the author-subject—should not be seen purely as a division between one generation of writers and another. During the late 1960s, the structuralist climate was thawing in Paris, and it was natural that individual writers and thinkers should modulate their positions. This chapter charts a shift in the thinking of Italo Calvino, around the time that he first meets and then joins the group. It finds him first of all thrilling to the idea of writing machines, where humans are no longer required in the act of literary creation. Within a couple of years, however, he is softening, insisting that the clinamen—the swerve, the deviation from the rules: a concept he takes from Lucretius—is a necessary feature in great literature, and one that can only be provided by a conscious writer.

American Folk Music as Tactical Media

American folk music has long presented a problematic conception of authenticity, but the reality of the folk scene, and its relationship to media, is far more complicated. This book draws on the fields of media archaeology, performance studies, and sound studies to explore the various modes of communication that can be uncovered from the long American folk revival. From Alan Lomax's cybernetic visions to Bob Dylan's noisy writing machines, this book retrieves a subterranean discourse on the concept of media that might help us to reimagine the potential of the networks in which we work, play, and sing.