ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes perforations in printed books. Though holes are based on absence, they foreground the materiality of the surrounding book most forcefully. Moreover, they are a feature peculiar to paper pages. The primary works are Tove Jansson’s Hur gick det sen? (1952), Kevin Osborn’s Tropos (1988), Marc-Antoine Mathieu’s L’Origine (1990), and Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman’s Chora L Works (1997). They offer variables toward a typology of literary holes. Theoretically, the article draws on media archaeology. Perforation relates to the early digital media of punched cards, but in later experimental literature it emphasizes the specific possibilities of the book.
