Skip to content

From the archives

The Envoy

Mark Carney has a plan

Bubble Weary in Trump's America

A dispatch from the early days of a divided nation

On Familiar Spirits

A senator warns against another witch hunt

Andrew Piper

Andrew Piper is a professor at McGill University and the author of Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times (University of Chicago Press, 2012).

Articles by
Andrew Piper

The Computhor Cometh

When computers start writing their own books, who will be their readers? November 2013
In 1838, Edgar Allen Poe wrote a satirical essay, “How to Write a Blackwood Article.” It parodied the formulaic nature of 19th-century magazine writing by invoking one of the most popular periodicals of its day. After listing a variety of possible “tones” in which articles could be written (didactic, enthusiastic, elevated, diffusive and interjectional), the fictional editor advised: The tone metaphysical is a … good…