The Readies

In 1930, Bob Brown predicted that the printed book was bound for obsolescence. The time has come, he insisted, to rid the reader of the cumbersome book. He invented a machine that would allow one to read books and any text extremely fast and in a hyper abbreviated form. He called these abbreviated texts, with em dashes replacing words: readies. He envisioned sending the condensed texts through wireless networks. The Readies, describes these eponymously named abbreviated texts and his plans for a reading machine, but since he printed only 150 copies, the volume is practically unknown outside of a small circle of scholars. With this new edition, Craig Saper hopes to introduce Bob Brown's Roving Eye Press books to a new generation of readers.

Robert Carlton Brown (1886-1959) was an American author, journalist, publisher, and collector. Born in Chicago. Brown wrote pulp fiction, non-fiction, cookbooks, avant-garde publications, and experimented with a book of visual poetry; he also contributed pieces to various magazines and newspapers in New York City and established journals in Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, and London. In 1929, he and his wife temporarily settled in France where they became involved in the expatriate literary community in Paris. While there, he established Roving Eye Press to promote a reading machine that he invented.
Craig Saper is Professor and Director of the Language, Literacy, and Culture Ph.D. Program at UMBC in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He is the author of Intimate Bureaucracies (2012), Networked Art (2001), Artificial Mythologies (1997) and has edited or co-edited volumes on Posthumography (2010), Imaging Place (2009), and Drifts (2007). He has published widely on Fluxus and visual poetry and serves as the Reviews Editor and Blog Report columnist for Rhizomes.