This collection of essays by scholars and artists of different disciplines and from different countries is designed to navigate the labyrinth of contemporary aesthetic ideologies with the aim of reassessing how we read both the way in which texts touch us and we them. Theory has transformed texts into mute interlocutors exposed to infinite indeterminacy. While the response to this sense of silence that undermines meaning is often informed by a nostalgia for older notions of close reading the essays in this volume work towards a reevaluation of key subjects such as reader writer and text. The contributors engage with topics such as digital books popular culture alternative ways of bookmaking visualverbal collaborations and thematic explorations of the hand in literature.