This picking apart of a work, note taking itself, is reminiscent of Barthes's "text." It allows individuals to pick certain parts of a whole and choose what is transmitted, what is kept, in not only the human memory but also one's "references" that are then also utilized in the reading of other texts.

This reminds me entirely of Benjamin's nostalgia for oral storytelling, and how as storytelling transforms into the novel, so does our transference of "storage," so to speak, from the human mind to other devices.

Melville portrays the bond between two males that is then struck by tragedy, specifically, the death of one or the other, in not only Benito Cereno, but also "Bartleby" and Moby Dick. While that bond can take the form of friendship, it is strangely, often one of dependence. Here, Benito Cereno follows Babo even into death, when previously, he was so eager to be rid of him. While we briefly discussed the homoerotic subtext in "Bartleby," I wonder if that same relationship can also be seen here. This is especially intriguing when one learns about the close friendship that Melville shared with Nathaniel Hawthorne as well.

While Delano is undoubtedly our narrator, it does make me wonder, especially in lines like this, if we are also getting a glimpse of Melville's own perspective. While this line could undoubtedly be read a variety of ways, it sounds, to me, like admiration.

The appearance of power, the illusion of it, therefore does not at all speak to its actual presence. The reader and Delano both are disillusioned by the way things appear to be, for there has been an unspoken acceptance of the way things are (be it in the context of the story or in that time period and at that particular time) and therefore are temporarily unable to see past them, at least until all is unveiled. Is Melville, then, speaking to the institution of slavery as a whole? Perhaps Melville is condemning the notion that the superiority of one person over another, based solely upon race, as a mere fabricated illusion.

Some say that love is the difference between animal and man. In this passage, Delano's observation of the woman interacting with her child initially pulls him away from his animal comparison from before. Delano even refers to her as a woman, albeit an "uncivilized" one. However, she is instantly forced back into the "other," into the position of animal, as he once again compares her love for her child to that of a leopardess or a dove.

While there has been a continued "other-ing" that occurs throughout Benito Cereno, with the use of color, specifically, in order to designate and refer to the Africans, this passage seems to surpass that entirely. Delano compares the woman and her child to a doe and fawn, and this description as a whole seems to render them entirely animal. Delano peers at these two people like animals in their natural habitat (caged?), as seen by his focus on their bodies, with the woman's breasts, and her child's hands - "paws" - and "its" features.

This reminds me of Nathaniel Parker Willis's "Night Funeral of a Slave," wherein a slave owner mourns the death of his slave. In the piece, there is a deliberate emphasis by the owner that his slave is also his friend, his most trusted companion. However, that manipulation can be seen blatantly throughout the text as ownership and possession are hidden in the guise of friendship, through the use of extremely racial rhetoric, specifically, the emphasis on color. This type of manipulation, or perception perhaps, can be seen often in Benito Cereno, particularly when Delano perceives Babo.

And yet.

The state of the spirit seems entirely connected to the state of the body, the "frame." What then is Melville trying to say about race? This play on the "goodness" of black and white is undoubtedly related here as well, and perhaps it is this ambiguity that not only speaks to the similarity of spirits (in dissimilar frames) but also the shades of grey in the human condition as well.

Engraving of "The Vision of The Valley of The Dry Bones" by Gustave Doré.

I was uncertain what this was referencing and had to look it up. Just as the ship seems to come to life before Delano's eyes, so do the bones of humans before Ezekiel. In a vision, the prophet Ezekiel is given a prophecy from God and through him, the "dry bones" of the dead are resurrected and brought to Israel.

This play on light and dark is extremely fascinating, particularly if one considers Melville's use of the color white in Moby Dick. While the color white is often used to symbolize purity and goodness, Melville inverts this idea entirely. Ishmael ponders over the what Moby Dick's whiteness means - is it evil? And if so, is black then, good? Or is the color white the combination of both evil and good, or perhaps the absence of both altogether? Melville may be playing with these ideas again in Benito Cereno, as he likens the whiteness of the ship to religious motifs of the monastery and the monks, and yet he also fills that very same ship with shadows.

This is fascinating. The ability to annotate not only on text but also on images feels a lot like being handed a sharpie and permitted to go wild. There will be arrows, notes, circles, and exclamation points all over a webpage. Barring actually drawing on your computer screen and the ability to actually draw and underline things in a text or image, there is a similar notion of taking something and making it yours, of playing with it and seeing what you'll find.

This is one area in which the ebook does trump the paperback for me. Especially in a time crunch for an essay, there's nothing quite like being able to see an entire compiled list of all the highlights and notes you've made throughout the novel. Command+F is truly a beautiful thing.

Reminds me of think tanks or open platforms online where people use open sourced material in order to collaborate on a variety of artistic projects; specifically, HitRecord, an online production company.

https://www.hitrecord.org/

Shall we re-evaluate the scorn that so many people have for dog-eared pages as well? There's nothing like an old, beat up, and dog-eared paperback.

Reading with the highlights on in Hypothes.is is something that I am not a fan of. When doing so, I generally find myself wandering towards passages that have already been highlighted, a natural reaction at the different colored text as my brain instantly blares, "IMPORTANT! Pay attention!" in all caps. Without the highlighted feature on, I find myself more prone to looking at the piece in all of its detail.

By annotating on the work of others, students are not only able to build upon the foundation of knowledge laid out by others, but they are also engaging in a critical conversation, a dialogue, of thought. This back-and-forth between texts and ideas undoubtedly also aid in the formation of one's own perspectives.

The phrasing of this, and the image Jones paints of annotations reminds me of a set of building blocks. By annotating a text, we are not only able to build upon the original foundations of the text (the original knowledge we are able to garner from it) but also add to it ourselves, thus creating something new altogether. Keeping with the analogy, annotations also seem to allow us a method with which to dive beneath the original building blocks of a text, and discover its framework and bones as well.

Medieval marginalia is so well-known that amusing or disconcerting instances of it are fodder for viral aggregators such as Buzzfeed and Brainpickings, and the fascination with other readers’ reading is manifest in sites such as Melville’s Marginalia Online or Harvard’s online exhibit of marginalia from six personal libraries.

A story within a story (within a story?). The notes jotted down in the margins is often a private act, something that is profoundly for the self, however, Jones's mention of the variety of now-famous marginal notes (be it Medieval or otherwise) speaks to the act of annotation as a whole; an act for the self as one communicates with the text, that is made famous through publication, and that ultimately informs others as well.

As a side note, this reminds me of the book J.J. Adams and Doug Dorst published a while back, where one of the stories unfolds mainly through an endless conversation in the margins of a book.

http://www.amazon.com/S-J-Abrams/dp/0316201642

The comparison here between a close reading and a close listening is absolutely crucial. Listening to an audiobook is not any less an act of reading. The notion that it is somehow less "work" than reading, and that it in anyway spoon-feeds the listener/reading is ridiculous. Analysis and understanding is still required regardless of whether information is relayed to someone oratorically or written on paper. In fact, there may even be extra layers of analysis available when something is heard as it gives the listener a chance not only to read the book and its author, but also its reader.

Fascinating that the push for audiobooks came as a way to deliver literature (stories) to specific groups, only for them now to be enjoyed by many.

In hindsight, this is hilarious considering that Kindle itself pops up on many of our iPhones in the form of the Kindle eReader app. We can now start books on one device, and pick it right up on another. The Kindle now seems to join the hardback and paperback on the shelves, yet another one of our many choices on how we might choose to read.

Absolutely agree with this! I find myself doing small tasks when I listen to audiobooks. Be it running errands, cooking, or cleaning, I am able to focus on the words and the story while also being on the go. It is a strange intersection of entirely focused and pleasantly busy.

This question is fascinating. I had never thought about it quite like this before. It is especially interesting when one frames this question along with the resurgence of the audiobook. Is listening to an audiobook still considered reading?

And among those who have written down the tales, it is the great ones whose written version differs least from the speech of the many nameless storytellers (84).

Benjamin's point here fails for me, specifically when one thinks of the individual reimaginings that the "great" storytellers take from oral tradition. This is reminiscent of the tale of King Arthur, a tale that was almost entirely oratory. While I believe that Geoffrey of Monmouth was the first to make mention of this legendary king, Arthur's tales were later penned by an imprisoned Sir Thomas Mallory. The sheer multitude of different Arthurian legends that has semerged is nothing short of extraordinary (T.H. White and Tennyson to name a couple!) and the very epitome of this collective listening and individual reinterpretation that Benjamin describes.

His nesting places - the activities that are intimately associated with boredom - are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the country as well (91).

We currently has so many modes of input now that we barely have the capacity to absorb it all! The multitude of options that we have from cable at the touch of a finger, an endless stream of information at the press of a button, to a countless number of cat videos at a single thought, boredom does seem to be dead. We have the entirety of the internet to explore when we're bored, but perhaps it speaks to the resilience of the human mind that we continue to read, and to explore the depths of our own minds, even though external influences do often prove to be so wonderfully interesting.

It is left up to him to interpret things the way he understands them, and thus the narrative achieves an amplitude that information lacks.

Benjamin's emphasis on the space that stories leave for interpretation, for personal re-imagination, and understanding, is something that he believes to also separate stories from information. This room to play, so to speak, as a defining quality of a story is especially interesting when we consider the audio book. As a format that leaves the reader to interpret and portray the author, and the listener to further re-imagine the listener's perspective as well as the text itself, this opens up a conversation about the function of stories and the return, of sorts, to the oratory tradition.

But they enjoy no less listening to the man who has stayed at home, making an honest living, and who knows the local tales and traditions (84).

While Benjamin does emphasize that not all stories are captured and wrangled home to be told around the campfire, and that many are in fact born organically by the hearth and in the homes themselves, I find myself wondering, where are the women? Folktales that later gave birth to fairy tales were originally a predominantly female activity as women had to entertain themselves within the home, and later, entertain and caution children. The exclusion of this entire side of storytelling is more than a little disappointing - we are, in fact, not getting the full story here.

As someone who has listened to audio books quite a bit over the past few years (specifically when I am traveling, be it in on trains, planes, or automobiles) I have to absolutely agree with Rubery that the audio format does not seek to replace books, but instead, to supplement them. Instead of a type of reading that "emphasises silence, solitude, and introspection, a model of the individual reader closest to our own antisocial experience of reading books" (60), it instead allows the individual to interact with an entirely new variety of forms and creators. Not only is the reader (or perhaps listener would be more appropriate?) interacting with the author and reader(s) of the book itself, but with the audio book's very format, it also allows listeners to interact with different forms of media, thus allowing them to tweet instantaneous reactions to the novel as they receive it, allowing them to further interact with it.

Any reading done on any type of digital format does tend to be less "serious" for whatever reason. Is it because of the sheer mass of content, and that quality is instantaneously believed to be lost to quantity? In "Novel Hacks," Allred adresses this as well when he speaks of the "superficiality of web culture" (119).

There is an interesting emphasis here on the social aspect of reading, especially since reading is often thought of now as a solitary activity. While reading returns to its social roots (oral traditions, etc), it is also transforming itself by colliding into and integrating with the age of social media.