Ampersands

[David Casseres]

Paul Di Filippo  sez
>Can the ampersand be read as a kind of primitive foreshadowing
>of computer icons, a non-alphabetic signifier pointing toward
>pre or post-literacy?

Nice idea, but really it's more of a lone survivor of a whole tribe of 
calligraphic abbreviations that used to flourish amongst the flourishes 
of the old manuscripts.  Monks loved abbreviations, it would seem, not 
only for their efficiency ("Gotta finish this & get to Vespers on time 
... I know, I'll leave out all the vowels") but also for their heiratic 
inscrutability.  So with a Squiggle here and a tiny Superscript there, a 
dash of Ellipsis, a Pynch of Apocope, they created populations of lively 
little black cryptoglyphs that you could learn to read if you just cared 
enough.  Gutenberg's Press stamped them out, of course, as it did so many 
other Delights of the Written Word.  Suddenly they were inefficient 
instead of efficient, just because there were Too Many of them.  Off they 
went to the Dustbin, to lie with Thorn and Digamma and divers Dead 
Letters and Lost Signifiers, and mutter monkishly about their rude 
Usurpation by mere Printer's Ornaments, devoid of any Meaning at all, let 
alone Secrets.  Except for Ampersand.

Too grand in his Semanticks to be dispensed with easily, too likeable in 
his all-conjunctive unsecrecy, crying aloud for all to hear "Et!  And!  
Y!", and indeed just too damned Handsome to be Hosed like the rest, 
Ampersand was spared by popular acclaim.  We have him still among us, 
along with his bastard son the At-sign, his crass imitators the currency 
symbols, and his lovely, secret, unseen but ever-Rumored Sister, she who 
will one day be written, and printed:-- she who is the Yes per se, si, 
sim, sic, est, that Blooming Breath of every Molly, oh, and, and, 
a-a-&!....  That we don't yet know Her as the fair Glyph she must be, is 
only Proof that there's More to come, and neither Gutenberg nor yet his 
Press's siliconic Progeny have uttered any final Words after all.  Until 
then, Ampersand is a well-found Heraldry for a Book about both Sides of a 
Dividing Line, and, And! so many other things.  May his Image ever guard 
against the Dust, and Join us all in Reading What is so clearly and so 
darkly Written.




Cheers,
David