| |

Received: 23 November 2018    Revised: 24 January 2019    Accepted: 4 February 2019

DOI: 10.1111/oli.12225

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Networked uniqueness
The provocations of Being or Nothingness

Danuta Fjellestad

Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Abstract
This essay focuses on one of the most intriguing literary
puzzles today, an anonymously published volume Being or
Nothingness. Multiplying puzzles and provoking speculative
searches for answers, this spoof on Sartre's seminal philo-
sophical text (if this is what it is), I argue, insists on its unique
qualities as a bound physical object while simultaneously
“unbounding” itself through resolute participation in a vari-
ety of networks. Ultimately, I propose, it can be seen as an
exemplary specimen of what N. Katherine Hayles has
dubbed the “postprint era.” Importantly, although in many
ways a sui generis book, Being or Nothingness is like other,
less baffling, fiction books that through elaborate design
forge an oxymoronic “unique copy”; intensifying artifice,
they tease with the promise of an auratic experience.

KEYWORDS
auratic experience, Being or Nothingness, postprint era, “unique
copy”

1 |  I NTRO D U C TI O N

On August 29, 1952, virtuoso pianist David Tudor came on the Maverick Concert Hall stage in Woodstock, New
York, seated himself at the piano, started a stopwatch, opened the keyboard lid, and sat silently for 30 seconds.
He then closed the lid, reopened it, and continued to sit silently for 2 minutes and 23 seconds. Having closed
and reopened the lid again, he sat without playing a single note for 1 minute and 40 seconds, closed the lid, and
walked off stage. This was the premier of John Cage's composition 4ʹ33ʺ (Four Minutes and Thirty-three Seconds).

Orbis Litterarum. 2019;1–14. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/oli © 2019 John Wiley & Sons A/S.  |  1
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
 |
2       FJELLESTAD

Nearly seven decades later, it remains a highly controversial piece of music. For some, 4ʹ33ʺ is a unique moment in
American music culture (Gann, 2010) and an avant-­garde piece that has “transformed the art of music” in general
(Hermes, 2000); for others it is a perplexing joke, a silly gimmick smacking “of arrogance and self-­importance.”1
I kept thinking about how perplexing Cage's musical composition must have appeared to its audience as
I was trying to come to terms with the bewildering experience of having received a quirky book titled Being
or Nothingness. It is not without some trepidation that I mention Being or Nothingness in the same breath as
Cage's work. After all, a casual Internet search for 4ʹ33ʺ will result in some 111,000,000 entries; a search for
Being or Nothingness yields fewer than 20,000 hits, most of them confusing the title with Jean-­P aul Sartre's
Being and Nothingness. Unlike 4ʹ33ʺ, Being or Nothingness has by and large failed to attract any serious critical
attention. Yet there are a number of striking resonances between the two works. Both are designed to offer
unique experiences for their recipients. Both Cage and the author of Being or Nothingness invert the relation
between the frame and the content, thwarting cultural expectations about, respectively, a musical compo-
sition and a book: the audience of 4ʹ33ʺ, having purchased the tickets and entered the prestigious venue
of a concert hall, sees a pianist at the piano and, familiar with the protocols of listening, expects music yet
hears but accidental sounds; Being or Nothingness arrives unsolicited, the lavishly produced book a free gift,
the volume hindering the reader from accessing the narrative by several physical barriers. 4ʹ33ʺ and Being
or Nothingness are both baffling works that raise the question of the difference between hoax and original
creation. Both, I would like to propose, are predicated on the collapse of “either/or” thinking to create a highly
reflexive “both/and” structure.
Fascinated and inspired by the troubled history of Cage's 4ʹ33ʺ I want to take Being or Nothingness seriously
rather than dismiss it as a trifle written by a “crackpot,” as Jon Ronson does (Ronson, 2011, 28), not least because
this spoof on Sartre's seminal philosophical text appears to be one of the most intriguing mysteries today, multi-
plying puzzles and provoking speculative searches for answers. In what follows I discuss the various ways in which
Being or Nothingness insists on its unique qualities as a bound physical object while simultaneously “unbounding”
itself through resolute participation in a variety of networks. Ultimately, Being or Nothingness can be seen as an ex-
emplary specimen of what N. Katherine Hayles has dubbed the “postprint era,” the era of complete interpenetra-
tion of print technologies and print products by computational media (Hayles, 2018; see also Hayles & Pressman,
2013). Even if in many ways Being or Nothingness is a sui generis book, my general argument holds for other, less
baffling, fiction books that through elaborate design forge an oxymoronic “unique copy”; intensifying artifice, they
tease with the promise of an auratic experience.
Since Being or Nothingness is little known, a rather extensive description of the book is called for. I start with
an account of how the pretty mundane event of receiving a book morphed into a rare experience. I then examine
the book's intricate orchestration of puzzles that propel the reader to search (often in vain) for definite answers.
Tracing the dynamics between containment and dissemination, I ponder the implications of the book's insistence
on its uniqueness as a physical object for our engagement with its ideational content.

2 |  A BA FFLI N G B O O K D E LI V E RY

Some 4 years ago I received a padded brown envelope, my home address penned by hand. Inside there was a
postcard featuring a funny-­looking rat dressed in unmistakably Sherlock Holmes clothing, the speech balloon
admonishing one to “stay calm … and solve the puzzle.” On the recto side of the postcard my name was hand-­
written; a line in Chinese characters (which, as I discovered later, meant “It's been a long time since we met”) was
followed by an illegible signature. The postcard was accompanied by two seemingly identical boxes titled Being
or Nothingness; on them, an image of the Sherlock Holmes rat saying “Don't panic!” Since I routinely order books
from Amazon, I initially assumed this to be one of the packages from the bookseller company. But something was
different, confusing even, about this delivery. It was not that I did not remember soliciting that particular title; I
FJELLESTAD |
      3

had experienced such lapses of memory now and then. But why two copies? Then on the back of one of the boxes
I found the number “0027” and name “Alvar Ellegård” written in script; the back of the other box was marked
with my own name accompanied by number “1718.” I hastily concluded that a mistake was made and that Alvar
Ellegård's copy should be returned, so I checked the discarded envelope for the return address. 2 Not only was it
not there but, apart from the Swedish stamps signaling that the books were posted in Sweden, the envelope had
no sender identification whatsoever.
Although I did not panic (at least not then), I did not stay calm either; my curiosity whetted, I became a Sherlock
Holmes myself as I embarked on a careful examination of the two volumes. Each box contained a hard-­cover book,
wrapped in a sealed paper sleeve. The paper sleeve featured the title, Being or Nothingness, followed underneath
by the name “Joe K,” then an image of a butterfly with the information that it was a “Collector's Edition,” and, fi-
nally, a message that read: “2,500 numbered copies—cut and ready, stamped and sealed. Will the mystery dissolve
or the plot thicken? Break the last seal to find out!” On removing the paper sleeve, a dust jacket emerged: the
title again, then an image of M. C. Escher's famous lithograph Drawing Hands (1948) with the name Joe K beneath
and a sticker reading “Warning! Please study the letter to Professor Hofstadter before you read the book. Good
Luck!” On the back of the dust jacket there was a reproduction of a letter to the chief editor of Basic Books, dated
March 17, 2007. The sender, who self-­identifies as “The Translator” (in quotation marks), informs the editor that
Being or Nothingness was penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that the text, usually referred to as The Giant Rat of
Sumatra, believed to have been lost, had unexpectedly been recovered only to vanish again so that its translation
into Swedish is, purportedly, the only version of the original that is available. On opening the book, on the front
endpaper in deep black (which creates a stark contrast to the bright whiteness of the paper wrap, dust jacket, and
hard cover), the reader finds a folded letter held in place by photo-­mounting corners. The letter, addressed indeed
to Professor Douglas Hofstadter at Indiana University, is dated November 9, 2006, and signed “The Writer,” the
generic noun capitalized and surrounded by quotation marks. “The Writer” references some prior correspondence
with Hofstadter and then informs him that the manuscript attached to the letter was (allegedly) discovered some
years earlier; it also draws attention to the reproduction of Escher's Drawing Hands on the cover. The Escher
drawing is displayed on the next page, right beneath the handwritten name of Alvar Ellegård in one, and my own
name in the other volume. A vertical paper ridge indicates that the page which normally contains publication and
copyright information has been cut out; each of the pages 9, 10, and 11 features a Swedish stamp in the right-­hand
upper corner: on page 13 a rectangular hole signals that some words have been cut out. The high-­quality paper,
the full-­color images, the textured feel of the immaculately white hard cover all create an aura of a luxury item.3
These design components are shared by both copies of Being or Nothingness; however, a few features indi-
vidualize them in significant ways. Most prominently, of course, the names mark different ownerships. But there
are also a number of other material elements that reinforce the distinction between the two books. For instance,
while the box marked with Ellegård's name is but a visual reproduction of a name badge, mine is a real, physical
badge tucked into a plastic holder. The paper sleeve round Ellegård's book features a visual imitation of a string
held together by a red wax seal; the string and the seal stamp with embossed letters J K are physically distinct
objects in “my” book. Real too are the postal stamps on pages 9, 10, and 11. Moreover, my name and my copy
number (1,718) are really written in pen—I found this out by “smudging” them. In short, I have received a facsimile
of Alvar Ellegård's copy as well as my own unique edition of the book.4 Why? How come that was I handpicked?
Were the differences in design negligible or functional?
A quick Internet search left me even more befuddled: a number of other people turned out to have received
similar packages and were similarly puzzled, many trying to find out to whom else Being or Nothingness was sent.
Somebody claimed to have a list of the recipients of the first 250 copies, many of the names well known (for
instance Madeleine Albright, Noam Chomsky, Bill Gates, Gary Kasparov, Stephen Hawking, or Harold Bloom);
somebody else postulated that there was an index of the first 699 of the book's receivers or that she was sent a
book with the pictures and bios of the first 700 recipients (see Talmi, n.d.). There was some buzz about the book
existing in Swedish. And then there was the question of the contested identity of the author. By far the most
 |
4       FJELLESTAD

extensive and often quoted is the account byRonson, the Welsh journalist already mentioned, who in the opening
pages of The Psychopath Test gives a long report of his attempts to find the author. He vacillates between assigning
Being or Nothingness to Petter Nordlund, a Swedish psychiatrist, and Douglas Hofstadter, professor of cognitive
psychology, author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979) and I Am a Strange Loop (2007). Three
years after Ronson, two Swedish journalists, Jack Werner and Kolbjörn Guwallius, published a long article about
their pursuit of the author, concluding that his name was Per Norfeldt. 5 Questions and queries were piling up, the
mystery thickening, each piece of information sending me back to examine the books once again, my sleuthing
turning into an obsession.

3 |  S TR A N G E LO O PI N G

The clever design apart, its “bookishness” (to use Jessica Pressman's term [2009]) obvious, two questions must
be raised. First, what about the text? What is it about? What story is told? Second, what is the connection
between the book's design features and its ideational content? One of the challenges of answering these ques-
tions lies in the problem of identifying the boundaries of the narrative, or, to put it differently, in distinguishing
between paratextual and textual elements. Gérard Genette, as we recall, defines paratext (or a fringe) as “a
zone between text and off-­text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction” (Genette, 1997, 2). The
composition—or perhaps design—of what the reader finds between the covers of Being or Nothingness empha-
sizes such zones of transition and transaction. The title page is followed by a subheading “Preface,” in which
the first-­p erson narrator tells the reader that, first, he has found the book the reader holds in his hands, and
that, second, he and his friend (referred to as “B”) were working on identifying quotations from Conan Doyle's
books when a mouse that referred to itself as “the Giant Rat of Sumatra” challenged them to discuss the mean-
ing of life. Finally, we are told that B, reaching out for Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, found a strange book
that he started to read. Each of the three events is told on a separate page, the bottom margin of each page
between a half-­and one-­t hird of the page wide, this visual marker encouraging the reader to think that only the
first event constitutes a “proper” preface and that the remaining two “belong” to the story. But the “Preface”
section ends on an ellipsis and is followed by the title page Being or Nothingness, then “Dedication,” “Motto,”
and “Axiom,” each section on its own page, left more than half-­e mpty. The section called “Food for Thought”
consists of 21 maxims attributed to figures such as Meister Eckhart, Sören Kierkegaard, Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Martin Heidegger, Albert Einstein, Henrik Ibsen, or Thomas Hobbes. Interlaced with these are maxims au-
thored by Joe K (“Life is meant to be a joyous adventure,” for instance). A one-­p age “Dream” section picks up
the motif of the book introduced in the “Preface,” but this time the character-­narrator tells the reader that he
has authored (rather than found) the book. What follows is a page starting with the announcement (in capital
letters) “THE FIRST DAY AFTER I STOPPED WRITING THE BOOK.” This announcement is repeated on the en-
suing pages, the day that is specified changed each time to cover 7 days, unmistakably alluding to and perhaps
parodying the biblical account of the timeline of God's creation of the universe. Of these days, on the first Dr
Watson makes his appearance to discuss a computer answer to the meaning of life in The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy. On the second, the narrator tells the reader that he has written and read with inspiration. The
third offers a truncated version of what is presented in the preface, the figure of the mouse excluded. Days
four and five contain one-­s entence admonitions that the reader study pertinent sections of the Old and New
Testaments, followed by the information that on the sixth day the character-­narrator sat at B's place and wrote
the book. The seventh day, written in the third-­p erson, is about B's finding Being or Nothingness, scribbling the
words of the Lord's Prayer, and, in an epiphany of sorts, realizing that “throughout the ages the church bells
had tolled for him” (“Joe K,” 2012?, 20). Finally, there is an “Afterword,” suggesting that B's is a cautionary tale
told in Being or Nothingness to help the reader reflect on how to live his/her life. Or at least this is one possible
interpretation of the enigmatic ending:
FJELLESTAD |
      5

With hindsight it is obvious that our hero was lucky.

The story could have ended infinitely worse.

If, after finishing this text, you find yourself

Sitting with a book entitled Being or Nothingness, beware.

You wouldn't want to trade the eternal loop of your life

For an infinite loop in the world of ideas, would you?

(p. 21)

Subheadings such as “dedication” or “motto” signal “classical” Genettian paratexts, their paratextual character
oftentimes emphasized by the blank page spaces that follow them. However, the fact that the pagination starts
on the first title page indicates that all the material is to be considered as belonging to the fictional world, which
opens up the possibility that we are dealing with a simulation of paratextuality (cf. Genette, 1997, 343).6 Text and
paratext, book and narrative, inside and outside, and, ultimately, as I shall argue, origin and copy, are transactional
in character, the composition of Being or Nothingness suggests, not unlike what Escher's mind-­bending lithograph
visualizes: a pencil held in a right hand draws a pencil held in a left hand that is drawing the right hand holding the
pencil that is drawing the left hand, the two-­dimensional flatness of a sheet of paper magically transformed into
the illusion of three-­dimensionality by marks on paper.7
Although no coherent story can be pieced together, two main motifs or themes run through the textual frag-
ments. One centers, self-­reflexively, on a book, or, rather the book, the one the reader is reading. The book is
varyingly said to have been found by the first-­person character-­narrator or by his friend B, having been written
by the I narrator or by Arthur Conan Doyle or by Joe K, having been left unfinished, the text having disappeared
in the word processor of the first-­person narrator. I and B are thus either the authors of the book, its readers, or
characters in it; or perhaps they have authored a narrative in which they themselves are characters. Or, if one is
to believe the claims that the narrative is a reconstruction of a long-­lost tale written by Conan Doyle, they are his
creations, aware of their status as characters. Or perhaps all of the above. In Being or Nothingness ontological levels
loop, mesh, and nest within each other in ways that make it impossible to determine who has authored whom and
in which narrative the reader resides.
The second theme focuses on the timeless question of the meaning of life. Raised by the mouse that in the
preface presents itself to I and B as the Giant Rat of Sumatra, it makes the I think about how Hume dismissed the
question as incorrect and B to refer to Hofstadter's treatment of the issue in Gödel, Escher, Bach. In the rest of the
narrative the question of the meaning of life is dealt with indirectly only, mostly through a potpourri of citations in
the “Food for Thought” section and references to other texts, especially the New Testament. However, in the “First
Day” section the answer to the question of the meaning of life becomes the central topic of discussion. I and B re-
call that in answer to the question, the gigantic computer in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (a novel written by
Douglas Adams and first published in 1979) provides the number 42. Dr Watson's laughter at the absurdity of the
answer is interrupted by I who offers an elaborate interpretation, claiming that the digit 4 stands for “Being” and 2
for “Nothingness.” The number 42, then, translates into “Being and Nothingness.” This is the most overt reference to
Sartre's magnum opus, a volume of some 800 pages of dense and opaque investigation into the nature of what it is to
be human. Proposing two types of being, one for-­itself (“pour-­soi”) and the other in-­itself (“en-­soi”), Sartre claims that
nothingness is at the heart of being. Weaving together Adam's comic science fiction novel that offers a cutting satire
on philosophy and religion with one of the most influential philosophical tracts, the author of Being or Nothingness
shows cultural preoccupation with reflection on the human condition and inserts his own work into the tradition.
The design of the page slyly complicates what may appear to be a straightforward (if absurd) explanation of
the meaning of 42: the rectangular physical hole between two commas signals a deletion of a couple of words. The
 |
6       FJELLESTAD

sentence reads as follows: “The digit 4 refers to the four space-­time-­dimensions of existence, that is Being, and
the digit 2 stands for the two dimensions of time, , that is Nothingness” (“Joe K,” 2012?, 13). It is important
immediately to point out that this reproduction of the sentence is not quite correct: the blank space does not ade-
quately represent the physical aperture, let alone the fact that the cutout functions as a kind of peephole through
which the reader can see the letter “I” printed on the next page. The letter itself, in a typeface different from that
used for the text, is placed off-­center in the lower half of an almost empty page; easily overlooked, the single
letter looks somewhat forlorn. This design suggests a relationship of equivalence between “I” and Nothingness,
poignantly visualizing the insignificance of the “I” through physical manipulation of the book's page. Yet simultane-
ously and somewhat paradoxically this I is foregrounded, the physical hole making it salient, the different typeface
further enhancing the importance of the first-­person pronoun and the subjectivity it signals. The absurd and the
profound, the abstract and the material, the playful and the solemn are thus intricately woven together by the
ingenious page design.
As must be clear, the “aboutness,” inseparable from narrative strategies associated with postmodern literary
aesthetics, is here threatened to be engulfed by these. Narrative logic is transgressed by mise en abyme and met-
alepsis; instances of self-­reflexivity and intertextuality, starting with the conceit on the title of Sartre's famous
work, abound. Authorship as an issue is brought to the fore: What does “Joe K” reference: Kafka's Josef K. from
The Trial? Hermann Hesse's Joseph Knecht from The Glass Bead Game, to whom Being or Nothingness is dedicated?8
Or is it an anagram of “joke”? Parody and pastiche are the dominant modes. The generic nature of the signateur
of the letter as “The Writer” nudges the reader to think about the postmodern pronouncements about the death
of the author.
Yet despite teasing the reader with a whole armory of postmodern narrative devices and concerns, Being or
Nothingness is not “just” a postmodern text. It is not even a travesty of a postmodern text, since it all too knowingly
provokes readers to think of Fredric Jameson's well-­known characterization of postmodernism as “a new kind
of flatness or depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense—perhaps the supreme formal
feature of all the postmodernisms” (Jameson, 1991, 9). Prodigiously engaging with postmodernism, it is fashioned
as a post-­postmodern fiction book. The question of post-­postmodernism is, in fact, explicitly raised in a brief yet
bewildering typewritten note that appears in the right upper corner of the title page: “This letter was received
recently from an anonymous sender. Could this be the first and last post-­postmodern work? Greetings from R.” 9
Like many contemporary multimodal novels, Being or Nothingness draws attention to itself as a material artifact. An
antecedent of S. by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst (2013), the text can be accessed only after a number of physical
barriers are overcome: the box that holds the volume has to be opened, then the seal broken so that the paper
sleeve can be unwrapped. The cutout hole echoes what the reader can find in Salvador Plascencia's People of Paper
(2005) or Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes (2010). Folded letters, sometimes in envelopes that are sealed, as
well as postcards, are found in a variety of novels: in Nick Bantock's seven volumes about Griffin and Sabine, in
the already mentioned S., in Gordon Sheppard's HA! (2003), or in Bats of the Republic (2015) by Zachary Thomas
Dodson. While the text of Being or Nothingness is printed on the verso side of each page, in Mark Z. Danielewski's
The Fifty Year Sword (2012) linguistic signs can be found on the recto side only. And then there are graphic images,
of course, and the handwritten (think Bantock's Griffin and Sabine series or the first four volumes of the planned
27 of Mark Z. Danielewski's The Familiar). Yet despite such affinities with a number of multimodal print texts,
Being or Nothingness is a sui generis response to the proclamations of the “death of the book” as well as to the
profit-­driven publishing industry, not least because, as I have already mentioned, it arrives as an unsolicited luxury
volume, escaping the economic circuit that other multimodal novels are dependent on.
To describe the narrative structure of a story-­within-­a-­story, so popular with postmodern metafiction writers,
critics sometimes use the metaphor of the Russian Matryoshka dolls (see for instance McHale, 1987, esp. 112–113;
also Livingston, 2003). Being or Nothingness appropriates this nesting-­dolls image to relay it onto the physical
object of the book-­within a paper sleeve-­within a box. But the Russian nesting-­dolls metaphor is inadequate
to render the organization of either story-­telling or the relation of the physical book and its ideational content.
FJELLESTAD |
      7

Instead, inspired by Hofstadter's discussion of “strange loops” in Gödel, Escher, Bach (Hofstadter, 1979, 689–696),
I would like to propose that the metaphor of looping serves better to explain the dynamic structure of Being or
Nothingness. The complex game of metalepsis, just like the text–paratext relations, can be thought of as a narrative
equivalent of Escher's lithograph Drawing Hands. In fact, the drawing could be seen as a pictorial representation
of the self-­reflexively looping narrative method of Being or Nothingness.

4 |  U N B O U N D I N G TH E CO D E X

Being or Nothingness is a post-­postmodern text in yet another respect: exuberantly flaunting the conventions of
the book, it cunningly propels the reader out of the familiar zone of the codex onto other communication plat-
forms in a fashion familiar to the readers of S. or such “printernet” novels for young adults as Cathy's Book (2006)
by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman.10 Here the recurrent anthropomorphic Sherlock Holmes-­rat plays a crucial
role. The two volumes, as I have mentioned, are delivered with a postcard that features the figure of a rat, torch
in hand, a nocturnal high-­rise urban landscape behind it, the speech balloon admonishing the reader to “Stay calm
… and solve the puzzle!” The rat-­cum-­Sherlock Holmes is also on the box cover, the speech balloon reading “Don't
panic!”11 The third image, sent as a postcard to some (but by no means all) of the recipients of the book, features
the rat about to launch a conflagrant charge from a wooden catapult-­like device, a globe (the Earth?) looming large
in the background. Each of these three images can be found in ads in three consecutive issues of the weekly New
Scientist published in 2013 and dated 2, 9, and 16 March. In the first ad the picture of the Sherlock Holmes-­rat
with a balloon speech “Don't panic!” is accompanied by the inscription “Presentation of Quest March 21, 2013.”
The ad in the March 9 issue of the New Scientist shows the Sherlock Holmes figure at the old-­fashioned catapult,
the reader commanded to “Follow the countdown at www.beaconoftherationalnow.com.” The third, full-­page
ad features the familiar figure in front of high-­rise buildings at night admonishing us to “Stay calm … and solve
the puzzle!”; a line in the right-­hand corner at the bottom reads “Presentation of Quest—March 21, 2013, www.
beaconoftherationalnow.com.”12 If one follows the instructions and goes to the Internet site, one finds a poem by
Emily Dickinson “The Brain—is wider than the Sky,” an image of the Sherlock Holmes-­rat about to launch a missile
(this image is gloomier though than the one in the New Scientist), and three quotes: “I don't know why we are here,
but I am pretty sure it is not in order to enjoy ourselves” (Ludwig Wittgenstein); “When you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” (Sherlock Holmes); and “Hell is truth seen
too late” (Thomas Hobbes).13 But the most puzzling and ominous feature is the “Final Countdown” that shows
years, days, hours, and minutes, clicking, taking us closer to—well—what exactly? The site has garnered some
explanatory comments on a variety of blogs, proposing that the countdown is to the Winter Solstice of 2021 or
the Chinese year of the Rat.14
Echoing the print book, the website combines words and images and brings together literature, science, and
philosophy as disciplines pregnant with existential questions. Importantly, the website artfully baits a search for
more intellectual games. How to understand the rubric “Beacon Of the Rational Now”? The capitalization of
letters suggests the abbreviation “BORN,” looping back to Being or Nothingness. Is the rubric “Final Countdown”
intended or inadvertent reference to the 1980s hit song by the Swedish rock band Europe, the lyrics of the song
inspired by David Bowie's “Space Oddity”? What to make of the provocation of the quote from John 12:1–8 at the
bottom of the Sherlock Holmes's comics: “Den största synd en människa kan begå är att tycka synd om någon!”
(English: “The biggest sin a person can commit is to feel sorry for anyone!”) Not only is the message shockingly
un-­Christian but the quote is a fabrication!
The date specified in the ads (March 21, 2013) is also printed on the back of the box that contains the
book. It is preceded by the word tetelestai. While easily overlooked, this is actually an intriguing detail. The
Greek word τετέλεσται means “is over” or “it is finished.” The word functions in two contexts. In the New
Testament it occurs in John 19, verses 28 and 30, which describe the moment of the death of Jesus; they read
 |
8       FJELLESTAD

“After this, when Jesus knew that all things were now completed [or: had been accomplished], in order that
the scripture might be fulfilled, he said, ‘I thirst’” and “Then when he received the sour wine Jesus said, ‘It is
finished’ [or: has been finished] and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”15 In business relations, tetelestai
was written on documents and receipts to certify that a bill had been paid in full. How, then, to understand
the implied equivalence between the launch of a website with its countdown and the last moments of Jesus?
What bill might have been paid on March 21, 2013? At every step the shroud of mystery around Being or
Nothingness becomes denser still.

5 |  TH E E N I G M A O F D I S TR I B U TI O N

The enigma of Being or Nothingness is augmented by the volume titled Recipients of BorN The Collector's Edition,
which arrived as an unexpected gift after I had contacted Atremi Publishing House while doing research for this
article. The list of 700 names in this volume signals that the novella is predominantly meant to reach scholars from
natural and social sciences: theoretical physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, cognitive psychologists,
neuropsychologists, and sociologists. There are also a number of writers, philosophers, art critics or film-­makers
listed as well, but these are in the minority. The volume echoes the elegantly sleek design of Being or Nothingness;
the name of (almost) each recipient is accompanied by a full color photograph and brief biographical entry, the
entries sorted out in seven chapters (why this obsession with number seven?), each chapter covering 100 people.
Brought together by Being or Nothingness, the group is strikingly heterogeneous: Are there patterns we are sup-
posed to discover? Do the names function as ciphers? Why does the volume end with Paul Virilio? Should we per-
haps treat the titles of his works, such as The Aesthetics of Disappearance or City of Panic as in some way referring
to the concerns of Being or Nothingness?
These are not spurious reflections; the volume itself raises a number of questions, the publisher insisting that
it “is worth studying, since it contains several clues.”16 The acronym “BorN” is itself one of the teasers. Fashioned
as a straightforwardly “objective” catalogue (not least by its employment of two indexes, one chronological and
one alphabetical), on a closer look the book turns out to be permeated with tensions and contradictions very much
like Being or Nothingness itself. Take the list of the first six recipients of BorN:

1. R
2. I
3. B UNDELIVERED
4. Dr Watson UNDELIVERED
5. David Deutsch
6. Douglas Hofstadter

R, I, and B are figures in Being or Nothingness, as is Dr Watson, the well-­known Conan Doyle fictional character.
That the book could not be delivered to Dr Watson, a fictitious person, is obvious, but why was it not delivered
to B, while both R and I are listed as having received it? Is the ontology of R and I different from B's?17 And why
is Douglas Hofstadter, who plays such a prominent role in Being or Nothingness, listed after David Deutsch? Apart
from the first four, all the other recipients are presented with a photo (most often in full color) and brief biblio-
graphical information obtained primarily from Wikipedia. From the start, also this volume seems to create puzzles
rather than provide answers or clues.
And the volume ends on a riddle as well. The “Addendum” casts doubts on the book's actually having been
delivered to all the people listed, even though no “undelivered” tags are attached to their entries. “If you discover
that you appear in the List of Recipients, yet haven't received any books,” we read in the note, “it might be be-
cause we didn't know where to send them. If you provide us with an address, we will mail them to you.” The tag
FJELLESTAD |
      9

“undelivered” forms a sub-­group of its own, as does another feature: penciled circles round seven numbers/entries
in the copy I have received. These are: R (1), I (2), B (3), Robert M. Pirsig (21), Alvar Ellegård (27), Giacomo Oreglia
(72), and Paul Virilio (700). Since the circles are handmade, and the pencil marks erasable, I am encouraged to
assume that there is something that brings this sub-­group together, that the entries (if not the people) constitute
a clue to Being or Nothingness. But hard as I have tried, I have not managed to construct a narrative binding them
together, however nebulous my story may have been.

6 |  A N ( A LM OS T ) AU R ATI C E X PE R I E N C E

Clearly, then, Being or Nothingness excels at multiplying mysteries and puzzles; no wonder that the figure of the
master of detection, Sherlock Holmes, looms large. But the book does not merely make its readers proxies of
the famous detective: it draws them into the process of co-­creating the mystery of Being or Nothingness and co-­
producing its importance. The reader of the book becomes an integral part of the Being or Nothingness project.
As Ronson notes, “Disparate academics, scattered across continents, had become intrigued and paranoid and
narcissistic because of it. They'd met on blogs and message boards and had debated for hours, forming conspiracy
theories about shadowy Christian organizations” (Ronson, 2011, 34). In yet another of the many loops, the book
becomes an analogue to the transformation of a mouse into a giant rat described in the preface. When I and B
express their surprise that the Giant Rat of Sumatra is but a “puny little mouse […] small and unassuming,” they
are told by the mouse that “what men cannot understand they insist on discussing and so, little by little, a strange
transition takes place. The more they talk about me the more I grow—in their imagination. Eventually I will be large
enough to devour them” (“Joe K,” 2012?, 3). The “event” of Being or Nothingness is designed so as to provoke the
expansion of a size-­wise puny volume into a network of stories that feed on the author's anonymity, the enigmatic
affinities between the arts and the sciences, the mystery of the Internet countdown, the puzzle of the gift of two
copies, and so on. What mobilizes the “growth” of Being or Nothingness is actually a shrewd construction of a sense
of uniqueness.
Since each copy of Being or Nothingness is individualized by having the receiver's name inscribed in it, it creates
an aura of exclusivity, a sense of belonging to a privileged group. As Louise Höjer insightfully puts it, the book
“successfully generates the feeling of being part of a selected few that share a sort of lebenswelt” (Höjer, 2010,
20).18 Hidden from the market of mass circulation, it makes itself visible only to its own elite of 2,500 people.19 It
is through a (faux) creation of a hermetically sealed reading circle that the book generates its cult value. In that, it
seems to defy the development that Jim Collins discusses in Bring on the Books for Everybody: empowering amateur
readers by offering literary experiences by mass culture platforms such as television book clubs (the most influen-
tial of which has doubtlessly been Oprah's), Amazon sites, or superstore bookstores. In the age of “universal access
to the universal library” (Collins, 2010, 10), the limited number of copies, the hand-­picked circle of recipients, and
the unsolicited and payment-­free mode of delivery all run counter to the “for the masses” mode. In short, Being or
Nothingness appears to be a unique commodity.
I have used “faux,” “seems,” and “appear” to alert the reader to a paradox: the personalization of each volume
of Being or Nothingness reverberates with the mass cultural trend to empower amateur readers by encouraging
them to share their readerly responses on, for instance, the Amazon websites. Puzzled, provoked or perhaps just
flattered, the recipients of Being or Nothingness share their experiences in blogs or on other discussion fora, spin-
ning tales about the book. In that, the “fate” of the mysterious book is similar to that of such popular best-­sellers as
Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (2006) or Elena Ferrante's four-­volume series of Neapolitan novels (2012–2015).
That each individualized volume of Being or Nothingness is accompanied by a facsimile of a volume evidently
belonging to another person (Alvar Ellegård) sets in motion an intricate interplay between an original and a copy,
the authentic and the fake, the unique and the common. The resonances with Walter Benjamin's “The work of
art in the age of mechanical reproduction” are unmistakable. 20 Inordinately challenging, this essay is shot through
 |
10       FJELLESTAD

with tensions arising from Benjamin's attitude toward aura. As Diarmuid Costello points out, Benjamin “both cel-
ebrates and mourns the liquidation of the aura, rather than just affirming it” (Costello, 2005, 165). While Being or
Nothingness may be seen as self-­consciously situating itself in this zone of tensions, it also gives them a new twist.
For Benjamin, the concept of authenticity is predicated on the presence of the original, which, in turn, is linked to
ownership. Inscriptions of ownership in Being or Nothingness flag this type of authenticity while simultaneously
alerting each owner to the fact that his or her unique book can be turned into a facsimile. 21 Each copy's unique
number announces singularity but each owner is made aware that he/she belongs to a community of 2,500. Posing
as a unique object, Being or Nothingness calls attention to itself as a poseur. For Benjamin, cult value is predicated
on the condition that “the work of art remain hidden” (Benjamin, 1969, 225); Being or Nothingness skillfully creates
its cult value by entering the lives of a select number of people but spurring them to go public and discuss their
privately owned book. Each owner is asked to “retain the integrity of the seal” in order to keep his or her copy in
“pristine condition,” but it is of course exactly the act of breaking the seal that customizes the reader's encounters
with the material book: by breaking the seal the receiver of the book can assert his/her ownership and secure a
unique, one-­time experience, tactile in nature. At the same time this unique experience breaks the magic of the
book's uniqueness, as it gives one access to the very narrative that Ellegård and all the others who have the book
have also accessed. Here, however, the uniqueness of one's own book reasserts itself once again in the stamps,
genuinely tangible objects that can be peeled off, unlike the reproduced images of stamps in Ellegård's copy. But
there is yet another twist: however tangible the stamps are, they are mass produced and feature but reproduc-
tions of images. Mine, then, is a “unique copy,” an oxymoron echoing the visual conundrum of the twice repro-
duced Drawing Hands (1948). Being or Nothingness teases with a possibility of (at least partial) revivification of aura,
of an auratic experience by appealing to the desire for exclusivity and privilege while asserting itself as inevitably a
product of “the culture of the copy, simulacrum, and reproduction” (Kaufman, 2005, 122). Unabashedly dealing in
paradoxes and contradictions, it stages an experience of authenticity through an intensification of artifice.

7 |  M O R E PR A N K S …

I have here pointed to some of the ways in which Being or Nothingness sets in motion a dynamic looping between
its material boundness (announced by the box, the seal, the paper sleeve, the handwritten name, real-­life stamps,
etc.) and its networked structure (announced, for instance, by the facsimile copy, the book of recipients, or the
website). But the already complex interplay between the bound and the network poles is further complicated by
alternations within the material book pole as well as by paratextual narratives about the publication.
In mid-­2017, having just completed a preliminary draft of this essay, I accidentally met an owner of Varat eller
Intet, a Swedish version (or edition) of Being or Nothingness. He had but a vague recollection of receiving what he
dismissed as a weird publication; for me of course the book both added new puzzles and (partially) resolved some
old ones. 22 Given my interests, the most striking feature of Varat eller Intet is its design, which is far less elaborate
than what presents itself in its English equivalent: there is no box, no sealed paper sleeve, no stamps, no rect-
angular hole, and, importantly, no name individualizing the recipient of the volume. But the copyright page is in
place, Being or Nothingness listed as the original title and “Per Norfeldt” as the translator of the book into Swedish.
The copyright holder is © Författaren, that is, “the author,” the name unspecified. Printed in Kristianstad (a small
town in southern Sweden) in 2007, the book's publisher is identified as Atremi, a vanity press, its postal and email
addresses provided in full.
This information has turned out to be priceless. Among others, in response to my inquiry, Per-­Anders Lundh
from Atremi let me know that the Swedish publication was distributed in 2007–2008 and that the Collector's Edition
as well as the Facsimile of Collector's Edition was sent off between 2013 and 2014. He insisted that the Swedish
edition was “but a translation” (“blott en översättning”) and that the English one was to be treated as the original
or, more correctly, as Per Norfeldt's reconstruction of the English original. Most importantly, I was put in touch with
FJELLESTAD |
      11

the alleged translator, the issuing correspondence, sparse as it was, not surprisingly adding to the intrigue of Being
or Nothingness. For instance, at some point Norfeldt suggested that a passing reference to Joe K in the film Blade
Runner 2049 was in fact a subtle allusion to Being or Nothingness. What justifies this claim? According to Norfeldt,
the allusion was the result of the book's having been sent to people close to the film's director, Denis Villeneuve!23
Is Norfeldt's claim an expression of megalomania or just yet another prank? It uncannily resonates with the
pomposity of the blurb on the back cover of the Swedish “translation” of Being or Nothingness: the book, we are
told, may be viewed as an attempt to change the fundamentals of the humanities in a fashion similar to how
Einstein changed the laws of physics. Einstein, the text states, “reinserted time into space and, behold, the laws of
physics changed. What would happen if one did the same for the humanities and social sciences?”24 Is this lofty
ambition cocky, serious, or impish? It is tempting to think of Being or Nothingness as attempting “to do unlicensed
metaphysics in a teacup,” to use Annie Dillard's simultaneously grandiose and self-­depreciating description of her
own project, Living by Fiction (Dillard, 1982, 11).
Bafflingly enough, shortly after I initiated my correspondence with the publisher, I received another copy of the
book with my name penned in. This time I was assigned number “0802.” Whether I have ascended or descended
the 916 slots from my “original” number 1,718, I seem to have been moved back in time. This may not be all that
surprising, given the overall preoccupation with temporality in Being or Nothingness. For instance, time turns out
to be of utmost relevance in the design of the cutout in the English edition: a comparison with the Swedish edition
reveals that the words that have been scissored out are “dåtid och framtid” (Eng. “past and future”). 25 It may also
be noticed that the month of March is repeatedly returned to: the New Scientist ads were all published in March,
the letter to the chief editor of Basic Books was written in March, the word tetelestai is dated March 21, 2013,
and, significantly, the volume Recipients of BorN the Collector's Edition has the following dedication: “To my father
who died March 21, 2006.”

8 |  E S OTE R I C N O N S E N S E O R A WO R K O F G E N I U S ?

Benjamin's famous essay, to quote Costello once again, “both celebrates and mourns the liquidation of the aura,
rather than just affirming it” (Costello, 2005, 165; emphasis added). A similar both/and dynamics, I hope to have
made clear, is a distinct feature of Being or Nothingness: the book's material qualities insist on its uniqueness as
a physical object, but this uniqueness is enabled and disseminated by networked structures. As such, Being or
Nothingness is an unmistakable product of the postprint culture.
In his letter to Hofstadter, “The Writer” warns that “should the text resemble what its cover [the reproduction
of Escher's Drawing Hands] implies it to be, reading it could be dangerous.” By collapsing the antimonies between
material book and ideational content, between a bound, unique volume and networked structures, the author of
Being or Nothingness has indeed created a highly reflexive structure à la Escher. Baffling it certainly is, but dan-
gerous? No, not really. The danger, I think, lies in the design's ingenuity threatening to make the book's content
become of marginal interest. The mystique of Being or Nothingness may dim its intellectual weight. On the other
hand, had I received the “plain” Swedish edition of Being or Nothingness first, I may, like my colleague, have ignored
the book. It is the ingenious creation of its uniqueness as a physical object that entices the reader (or at least has
done so in the case of this reader) to enter the dense web of intellectual entanglements.
In the above-­mentioned letter to Hofstadter, “The Writer” expresses his hope that the manuscript will not be
dismissed “as esoteric nonsense.” I do not know how Hofstadter may have reacted to Being or Nothingness but, as
must be clear from the above, I have taken the book seriously, feeling both vexed and delighted, accepting the risk
that I may have stepped into an ingenious trap à la the Sokal hoax. Does Being or Nothingness deserve to be the
object of serious academic attention? Does it merit an essay in an academic journal? Or should this book be disre-
garded as a quirky product of a self-­absorbed person, perhaps even “a little bit off his hinges” (if we are to believe
Ronson)?26 The lesson that can be drawn from the fate of Cage's 4ʹ33ʺ is that such controversies have a long life. 27
 |
12       FJELLESTAD

E N D N OT E S

1 Gann quotes a number of dismissive popular responses to Cage's piece that he has extracted from an online comment
board, but scornful assessments have been made by professional critics. In a 1954 article in The New York Times J. B. called
it “hollow, sham, pretentious Greenwich Village exhibitionism” (J. B., 1954, 34); philosophy professor Julian Dodd argued
that 4ʹ33ʺ does not fulfill the criteria of a piece of music (Dodd, 2013).
2 Alvar Ellegård (1919–2008) was a Swedish linguist who was keenly interested in the relationship between religion and
science. Given the mystery surrounding Being or Nothingness, two of Ellegård's books seem to be particularly pertinent:
A Statistical Method for Determining Authorship (1962) and Myten om Jesus: Den tidigaste kristendomen i nytt ljus (1992; Eng.
trans.: Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ, 1999).
3 The book was sent as an unsolicited gift, it has no price tag on it. The overall cost of the project has been estimated to
amount to about a million Swedish crowns, that is, close to 150,000 US dollars (see Werner & Guwallius, 2014).
4 Playing with design intricacies are not uncommon in contemporary fiction books. Take for instance Danielewski's fash-
ioning of four editions of his House of Leaves listed on the copyright page as “Full Color,” “2-­Color,” “Black and White,” and
“Incomplete.” On the novel's first publication in 2000, only two of these editions existed: “Black and White” and “2-­Color.”
In 2006, “The Remastered Full-­Color Edition” of the novel was published.
5 Booksellers list the author variously as Joe K, K. Joe, or [DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER] JOE K.
6 A similar problematization of the distinction between text and paratext can be found in, for instance, Danielewski's House
of Leaves.
7 Genette himself makes the point that paratext as such “does not exist”; it is a matter of “method and effectiveness or, if you
will of profitability,” he writes, to choose to “account in these terms for a certain number of practices or effect” (Genette,
1997, 343; italics in original).
8 Joseph Knecht, the subject of Hesse's Bildungsroman, lives centuries in the future in Castalia. A member of the in-
tellectual elite, he masters the elusive rules of the Glass Bead Game, a game combining knowledge of the arts and
sciences and demands that the players make connections between seemingly unrelated topics, and is awarded the
title Magister Ludi.
9 The signateur R does not make another appearance in the book, but the fuzzy typewriter script used in the note seems to
bind R's note to the letter “I” printed on page 14 and visible through the cutout.
10 The trend of post-­postmodern fiction narratives to send readers to the world of the Internet is discussed in my article
“Dancing with the digital” (Fjellestad 2016). The term “printernet fiction” has been coined by my doctoral student, Julie
Blomberg Gudmundsson, and is central to her forthcoming dissertation; I am using it with her permission.
11
One of its most famous lines in Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide is “Don't panic.”
12
The ads have elicited merely a handful of puzzled questions by a few bloggers, all more or less echoing Val Simon who asks:
“Did [the author] intend BON [Being or Nothingness] as a Christian viral marketing program?” (Simon, 2013).
13 Dickinson's poem is somewhat of a cause célèbre with neuroscientists. The Nobel Prize winner in medicine Gerald
Edelman, for instance, refers to it in the title of his book Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness
(2004).
14 A blogger who calls himself “Chertiozhnik” and who posts his comments on the site Nobody's Friend proposes that the
countdown is to the Winter Solstice of 2021. Although he refers to the ads in the New Scientist, his blog's date (December
22, 2012) predates them. Is this yet another a puzzle? Yet another joke? Yet another time warp?
15 In the New King James Version the text reads as follows: “After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished,
that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, ‘I thirst!’ Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge
with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished!’
And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.”
16 The comment was made in my private correspondence with Per-­Anders Lundh at Atremi Publishing House. Writing on
behalf of Per Norfeldt (listed as “translator” but claimed by some to be the author of Being or Nothingness), he informed
me that Norfeldt wanted to point out that “Recipients of BorN The Collector's Edition är väl värd att studera, eftersom den
innehåller åtskilliga ledtrådar.”
17
The “undelivered” note also accompanies the names of Alvar Ellegård (listed as number 27) and Giacomo Oreglia (listed as
number 72) who died in 2008 and 2007, respectively. Why include them in the list of the first 100 recipients? Why assign
them reversed numbers? Both Ellegård and Oreglia are presented with a photo and brief bio.
18 Höjer's is the only article on Being or Nothingness published to date. It remains rather unknown, since the To Do volume in
which it appeared had the circulation of just 400 copies within, it seems, Sweden.
FJELLESTAD |
      13

19
Listed on the Amazon site, the book's availability appears to vary. At times the item is marked as “currently unavailable”; at
times several used copies are listed, the prices varying between U$ 34 and 600. However, a complete text can be read on
the Internet site given in the ads, although none of the design features (for instance the stamps) is reproduced.
20
The text, first drafted in 1935, was rewritten twice. For an overview of the changes in emphasis and formulations, see
Caygill (1998).
21 Charles Lindholm notes the widespread rhetoric of authenticity today in reference to any aspect of our existence: “we
speak of authentic art, authentic music, authentic food, authentic dance, authentic people, authentic roots, authentic
meanings, authentic nations, authentic products. […] Authenticity can describe tourist sites, the scent of floor polish, and
the president of the United States” (Lindholm, 2008, 1).
22 I want to express my deep gratitude to Peter Luthersson for lending me his book and for the most helpful discussions about
the publication.
23
Norfeldt writes: ‟Eftersom jag sänt boken till personer i Denis Villeneuves närhet tror jag att ʻJoe K’ är en subtil blinking till
BorN-­projektet.”
24 The Swedish text reads in full: “Einstein stoppade tillbaka tiden i rummet och plötsligt förändrades fysikens lagar. Vad
skulle hända om man gjorde samma sak för humanvetenskaperna? Du är välkommen att försöka, men tänk dig för en extra
gång. Nu duger det inte med en ʻtänkt observatör’; du måste själv bli en del av projektet! Se till att du har ordentligt på föt-
terna, och be en bön … om att du kommer undan med livet i behåll!” The English translation reads: “Einstein reinserted time
into space and, behold, the laws of physics changed. What would happen if one did the same for the humanistic and social
sciences? You are invited to try, but think it over before you proceed. This time it will not be sufficient with an ‘Imagined
Observer.’ You have to become a part of the project yourself. Take every precaution and pray… that you will survive the
journey!”
25 There is no letter “I” on the page that follows.
26
Talmi (n.d.) reports Ronson's opinion in her own personal page about Being or Nothingness.
27
I owe a debt of thanks to N. Katherine Hayles for her insightful comments on an earlier version of the article. In addition,
I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the anonymous reader of the manuscript for his/her meticulous reading
of the text and for prodding me to think through my interpretation of the cutout.

ORCID

Danuta Fjellestad  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5066-8023

REFERENCES

Benjamin, W. (1969). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In H. Arendt (Ed. & Introd.), Illuminations
(H. Zohn, Trans.) (pp. 217–251). New York, NY: Schocken Books.
Caygill, H. (1998). Walter Benjamin: The colour of experience. London, UK: Routledge.
Chertiozhnik (2012, December 22). Beacon of the rational now. Nobody's Friend. [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://no-
bodysfriend.blogspot.com/
Collins, J. (2010). Bring on the books for everybody: How literary culture became popular culture. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Costello, D. (2005). Aura, face, photography: Re-reading Benjamin today. In A. Benjamin (Ed.), Walter Benjamin and art (pp.
164–184). New York, NY: Continuum.
Dillard, A. (1982). Living by fiction. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Dodd, J. (2013, June 10). Is John Cage's 4'33’’ music? TEDx Talk. Retrieved from https://concreteandgreen.
com/2016/06/02/is-john-cages-433-music-prof-julian-dodd-at-tedx-university-of-manchester/
Fjellestad, D. (2016). Dancing with the digital: Cathy's Book and S. Digital Literary Production and the Humanities (T.
Rapatzikou & P. L, Eds.). Special issue of GRAMMA: Journal of Theory and Criticism 23, 76–91.
Gann, K. (2010). No such thing as silence: John Cage's 4’ 33”. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Genette, G. ([1987] 1997). Paratexts: Thresholds of interpretation (J. E. Lewin, Trans., R. Macksey, Fwd). Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Hayles, N. K. (2018). Human and machine cultures of reading: A cognitive assemblage approach. PMLA, 133, 1225–1242.
Hayles, N. K., & Pressman, J. (Eds.). (2013). Comparative textual media: Transforming the humanities in the postprint era.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
 |
14       FJELLESTAD

Hermes, W. (2000, May 8). The story of 4'33”. NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2000/05/08/1073885/4-33
Hofstadter, D. R. (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Höjer, L. (2010). “Too good to be true.” To do: Short essays (J. Thelander, Ed.) (pp. 7–15). Stockholm, Sweden: möte09.
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
J. B. (1984, April 15). Look, no hands! And it's “music.” New York Times, p. 34.
“Joe, K.” (2012?). Being or Nothingness. [No place, no publisher].
Kaufman, R. (2005). Aura, still. In A. Benjamin (Ed.), Walter Benjamin and art (pp. 121–147). London, UK: Continuum.
Lindholm, C. (2008). Culture and authenticity. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Livingston, P. (2003). Nested art. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 61, 233–246.
McHale, B. (1987). Postmodernist fiction. New York, NY: Methuen.
Pressman, J. (2009). The aesthetic of bookishness in twenty-­first-­century literature. Michigan Quarterly Review, 48,
465–482.
Ronson, J. (2011). The psychopath test: A journey through the madness industry. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.
Simon, V. (2013, February 16). Joe K.'s Being or nothingness revisited: A new (and bizarre) interpretation?. Retrieved from
http://valsimon.com/wordpress/?p=69
Talmi, D. (n.d.). Deborah and Being or nothingness. Retrieved from http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/deborah.
talmi/
Werner, J., & Kolbjörn, G. (2014, July 14). Jakten på Joe K. Metro. Retrieved from https://www.metro.se/artikel/
jakten-p%C3%A5-joe-k-xr

Danuta Fjellestad (danuta.fjellestad@engelska.uu.se) is chair professor of American Literature at Uppsala

University, Sweden. Her research interests are the twentieth-­and twenty-­first-­century novel with a special
focus on postmodernism and post-­postmodernism, narrative theory, gender studies, word-­and-­image
studies, and media studies. She is the author of, among others, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Gravity's
Rainbow: A Study in Duplex Fiction (1986), Reading Texts (1995), Eros, Logos, and (Fictional) Masculinity (1998),
and editor or co-­editor of several collections of essays, the latest of which is The Futures of the Present:
New Direction on (American) Literature and Culture (2014). Among her most recent articles are “‘A figment of
someone elseʼs imagination’: Intermedial games in Paul Austerʼs Report from the Interior (in Intermediality and
Life Writing, 2018), and “Testing the limits: Leanne Shapton's ekphrastic assemblage,” Poetics Today (2018).
Fjellestad is currently completing a monograph “A Culture of Bookish Surplus, or Multimodal American
Fiction Today.”

How to cite this article: Fjellestad D. Networked uniqueness. Orbis Litter. 2019;00:1–14. https://doi.
org/10.1111/oli.12225