Readership changed in medieval Europe and manuscript design changed with it. As Malcolm B. Parkes notes, “The scholarly apparatus which we take for granted,” including tables of contents, chapters, numbered sections, running headers, footnotes, paragraphs, summaries in the margin, identification of authorities, and even the index, “originated in the notions of ordinatio and compilatio by writers, scribes, and rubricators in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries” (6). Ordinatio involves the visual “packaging” of the text into chapters, sections, and stages of argument using running titles, litterae nobiliores, and paragraph marks; these elements of the page facilitated the reader’s access to components of a work with the table of contents functioning as the ultimate reader’s guide to the ordinatio of a text (52-3).
Ordinatio developed from a desire to fully understand authoritative academic arguments (auctoritates) cover-to-cover and led to a compulsion to read the authorities themselves (auctors) in full—i.e. compilatio (54). Though compilations of works were not new, the thought, industry, and refinement of the compilation led to more sophisticated and standardized presentations of texts beginning in the thirteenth century. By the fifteenth century, readers demanded compilations accompanied by visual, bibliographic aids. These concepts both contributed to the academic apparatus of the modern book: “the compilatio derives its value from the authenticity of the auctoritates employed, but it derives its usefulness from the ordo in which the auctoritates were arranged” (59).
In 1972, the Whole Earth Catalog: access to tools released its last catalog—“Note: This really is the LAST CATALOG” (2). Its front outer and inner cover depict the earth in shadow accompanied by two quotes: “Evening. Thanks again.” and “The flow of energy through a system acts to organize that system.” The back cover is a photograph of the earth without shadow, accompanied by “We can’t put it together. It is together.” The first page features the catalog’s function “as an evaluation and access device” and its purpose to provide tools that aid the “power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested” (1). Readers are directed to the index on page 442 in small print at the bottom of this page.
The second page—and the last page of prefatory material—describes “Catalog Procedure” in several sections headed by bolded titles: “Ordering from the Catalog,” “Sense and Patience,” “Current Information,” “Format,” “Blackwell’s Books,” “Suggesting and Reviewing,” “On Getting Stuff,” and “This issue.” From these sections, a reader is generally informed of how to purchase items and politely wait for them, distinguish the catalog from the supplement and the section from the general contents of page, and how not to bother the publication staff. In the upper right corner, a thin black outlined box encloses an illustrated crocodile and an original folk tale to be continued throughout the catalog (2). After this page, the catalog begins.
The procedure page explains that each page has two headings, one indicating the section and the other “the general contents of the page” (2). The term “heading” is a misnomer, however. Both headings appear at the bottom left and right corners next to the page number. The “general contents of the page” are divided up in black outlined boxes, sometimes with dotted lines, sometimes less symmetrical than others. Items on a page are grouped by subject, not at all alphabetically; some page topics include “Buckminster,” “Organization,” and “What To Do.” Catalog entry headings and prices are generally bolded, supplement headings are a thinner font, and descriptions for both are italicized, though this standard formatting is subject to change. The beginnings of sections are distinguished by a slighter larger, bold font near the top of the pages on which they begin.
What’s noticeably missing from the beginning of The Last Whole Earth Catalog? A table of contents. There is one, in fact, but it appears alongside the subject and title indexes at the end of the book—hence the small print directing readers to page 442. The major section divisions are the following: “Whole Systems,” “Land Use,” “Shelter,” “Industry,” “Craft,” “Community,” “Nomadics,” “Communications,” and “Learning.” The table of contents includes “Procedure,” “Divine Right’s Trip,” “Credits,” “How To Do a Whole Earth Catalog,” and “Index” in smaller print. The subject index includes an array of topics and corresponding page numbers, such as “Electronic Equipment,” “Grinders & Juicers,” “Consideration,” “Stuff,” and “Go” (442). The title index extends six pages, features large, illustrated letters of the alphabet as headings to sections beginning with new letters, and distinguishes between book titles and catalog items in regular type and other materials (letters, comments, etc.) in italics (442-47).
The Last Whole Earth Catalog is much like the medieval compilatio as a genre. Where compilations like Vincent of Beauvais’s Great Mirror (Speculum Maius) attempt to assemble all medial knowledge via summaries of auctoritates in one place, the WEC attempts to provide readers access to all modern auctoritates of any importance via catalog listings. The nature of these authorities differ, of course, but the Great Mirror and the WEC are fundamentally practical reference guides for increasing individual knowledge. Yet, the WEC looks nothing like the Great Mirror in terms of ordinatio.
Parkes suggests that the formation of ordinatio was driven by a compulsion to dissect knowledge—to divide and subordinate; this desire lead to visible organization and ease of navigation in medieval texts (56). The Great Mirror is medieval ordinatio at its height with 9,885 chapters, 80 books, and three parts divided into nature, doctrine, and history (60). The orders of friars, founded in the thirteenth century, required collections of auctoritates for the student and preacher to fulfill the orthodox, evangelical, and anti-heretical purpose of the new orders. As a member of the Dominican order, Vincent of Beauvais engaged in the academic discussion based on these auctoritates and his work helped “develop still further the craft of establishing and utilizing the process of discussion” (68).
The WEC, on the other hand, is no field manual for orthodox religion. According to the catalog’s purpose statement, its makers defy institutionalizations of power “via the government, big business, formal education, church.” Instead, the WEC participates in the developing “realm of intimate, personal power.” Items in the catalog are included if they are deemed “relevant to independent education” (1). The entire catalog is built for the individual, and its ordinatio reflects as much. Its table of contents is at the end, its headings are better called feet, its entries are disrupted by a running folk tale, its columns of text are crisscrossed with geometric shapes and dotted black lines. The only conventional element of ordinatio is the title index, organized alphabetically, containing every entry in the catalog. Yet even here, entries include “other items” besides actual catalog entries, like “Apocalypse juggernaut,” “Cut the motherfuckers loose,” and “Tits for Tots.” The WEC consistently defies modern readers’ expectations and counteracts easy navigation, demanding readers explore the catalog like they would an art gallery—meandering through sections, getting lost, and finding things they never thought they needed, “making the CATALOG what it has longed to be, a work of drama” (2).
Speculum Doctrinale (one book of the Great Mirror) verso leaf depicting running headers, section numbers, litterae nobiliores, and rubrication.
Works Cited:
The Last Whole Earth Catalog. Edited by Stewart Brand, Portola Institute, 1972.
Parkes, Malcolm B. “The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book.” Scribes, scripts, and readers: studies in the communication, presentation, and dissemination of medieval texts, Hambledon Press,1991, 35-70.
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