The Privileging of Print

When I first came across the phrase, ‘the privileging of print’ I misread it and thought it was the ‘privilege of print’. Yes, I thought, it is a privilege for anyone to have the earth’s scarce resources used to make (semi-)permanent their words or other two dimensional signs. Those who are the recipients of such investment must know themselves to be talented and perhaps fortunate, for physical print is a finite resource.

But I had misread. The point being made was that in the literary world the importance of being ‘in-print’ – and let us assume in a physical rather than digital format – is held as both a means and an end of the journey of art. Although there are other ways of, for instance, poetry being shared, it is considered the very bitcoin of validation. Unlike bitcoins, however, poetry books are real…