Capitalism and Democracy in Print

My reading experience of Chapter 4 was much better than the previous sections. It could be because this Chapter interested me more than the others (except the end of Chapter 3 on Education). Overall, I found the evolution of the printing industry and it's relationship to the postal service fascinating. To think about the creation of governmental policies like copyrights as such an organic process--Do they have rights for 14 years? until they die? After they die? Do they have rights over the characters they create?--to be refreshing after the last chapter. I also liked that Starr pointed out America's fascination with cheap things on page 126: 

    The rise of cheap books and other forms of cheap print in the United States also reflected distinctive patterns for the nineteenth-centure American consumer markets..."Americans readily accepted products which had been deliberately desgined for low cost, mass production methods"  at a time when handmade goods persisted in Britain. Books fit this pattern.

I feel like I can relate to those Americans, as I haven't bought a Kindle/Nook/I-Pad, since I can't buy used books on them for $2.00. And, electronics are expensive! 

Unlike the last couple of readings, I devored this chapter and highlighted/annotated like a mad woman. There are lots of notes saying "Fun!" and "w00t!" on page 133. I like the idea of publishers wanting to have a bit of fun with their readers by "publishing outright hoaxes, such as...a British astronomer's supposed discovery of strange forms of life on the moon" (133). I also found the discussion of writers fictionalizing and spicing up murder cases to make them more alluring to readers of particular interest. I kept thinking about the musical Chicago (particularly the "We Both Reached for the Gun" scence/song) in relation to the Jewett murder case (even though Chicago is supposed to take place during the prohibition-era in the 1920's). I was also surprised to learn that as early as the 1830's material was published about murders that invovled sexual relationships.

Finally, there were two names that popped out at me while reading. First, Mathew Carey (p.122) sounded familiar. However, I realized that the only reason why was because I was thinking of Matthew Carey from Old School (whoops!). I wish that I'd known about the 'real' Mathew Carey sooner; after some googling I found out that he was 15 when he decided to become a bookseller and publisher--talk about a motivated dude--and that he was actually an immigrant from Ireland. He's known for publishing an encyclopedia, the Bible, and a German dictionary, but he also published some interesting pamphlets--one that criticized dueling (according to wikipedia)! I also read about his periodical called The American Museum which is notable because it was possibly the first to treat American culture as one that was rich and valuable in-and-of-itself, instead of comparing it to Great Britain.

The other name that jumped out at me was David S. Reynolds (p. 136), and it was familiar for the right reasons. He wrote my favorite Whitman biography, Walt Whitman's America, which I highly recommend!!! I was also happy to see Whitman's name mentioned on page 137 because it meant that Reynolds was getting closer to a period of time I am familiar with (1870-1970 is more of my kind-of century). I guess the first publication of Leaves of Grass was 1855, but Whitman was alive and furiously editing for a while (until 1892).


Last week, I thought I would be happy to put Starr back on the shelf, but now I have the desire to read/skim through the rest of the book and see what he has to offer!