Bibliomania, “Bit Rot,” and Fetishizing Time

In Bit Rot, a collection of essays and short fiction (and his 16th book), the polymathic Douglas Coupland continues his exploration of time and the future, collection and archiving, and the broad intersections of culture and technology. His art exhibition of the same name opened at Museum Villa Stuck in Munich on September 29 after being on view at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. It is his second major retrospective in recent years, after Everything Is Anything Is Anywhere Is Everywhere; his art has been exhibited world-wide.

Christian Bök is that rare thing, a celebrity poet; his books include the bestselling, Griffin Prize–winning Eunoia. His artwork, including books fashioned from Lego bricks and Rubik’s Cubes, has been shown in galleries. Since 2002, he has been working on The Xenotext, a “living poem” that, with the help of biologists, he has encoded into the genome of a bacterium. A sculpture of the...