Portable Magic by Emma Smith (2022)

 Can't say I'm not relieved that this one is over. It feels, to use a shortcut, like a very "Islington" book. The chattering middle classes of the twenty-first century performing. That's not to say that there aren't interesting things in it. One is left with the feeling of having been apprised of a few worthwhile titbits of information, and having waded through a slough of other stuff, mainly "theoretical". It strikes me that the author is the equivalent of someone like David Olusoga - a retailer in a thirsty domain, books in her case, social history via houses in his. The thirst brings us to them, and the hyperbolic stew of language pushes us back again: the "subverting of expectations", the "disjunctions between form and content", the "dematerializing the book as object". It's not that statements of that ilk are not true or correct in some cases, it's the toxification that comes from overconcentration on signifier-language over straight statement. It's also the case that too much of that kind of Islingtonism is indeed a drawing away from useful truth, an obfuscation. So any power that might have come from the piece's simpler facts is traduced. Olusoga operates in such an interesting territory, it's only practitioner, that one still looks forward to his programmes, despite expecting to be irritated. Unfortunately Smith's is very trodden ground. The case (she calls it that) that she wishes to make here is that the form of books is as important as their content. She seems to feel that this is new and exciting. I have no idea how new it is (has no-one covered the importance of form before? I'd be surprised) but it's definitely not exciting. Books ultimately are about content, and form can take on importance in some cases. That's it. And the proof of the pudding is in the feeling one has on finishing: I've not been told anything conceptually new. I am enlightened about some interesting instances of form in books. I wish I could thank her for those, and do, but with the proviso that I'd like to have been saved the energy of dealing with everything else.