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06/10/2005 Archived Entry: "Amazon"

Amazonian Linkage
On Amazon, my textbook:

In the "Better Together" section, it's paired with McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage. I've always thought of McLuhan's little book as a textbook (and have taught it several times at the undergrad and graduate level, usually as a how-to write for the Web guide). Medium is meant as a how-to; its performative nature meant to be used as model for a new type of writing conducive to digital culture. That it was written before the personal computer makes it all the more interesting: McLuhan proposes what electronic writing might look like based on the new media logic emerging at the time.
So to be paired with his book is a Mailer-esque moment for me. I do not discount the insight of the Amazon linking system. Mere semantics? Or A.I.? Or, as Ulmer might say, intuition of the apparatus. It was hard in the late '60s for folks to take McLuhan's vision of writing seriously ("that's not writng!"). It is just as hard to take cool seriously as not a status or fad, but as a form of electronic writing. This is indeed a Mailer-esque moment (which is itself an attribute of diigtal culture, advertising one's self).
So listen up composition studies! Do not disregard the advice of Amazon. When you are all deciding on textbooks for your next writing courses, or when you, WPAs, are looking to adopt a text for your instructors, listen to Amazon: Writing About Cool is the textbook to use.