weirdest book misprinting incident I’ve ever had

A few years ago, when I first ordered Ian Bogost’s Unit Operations, there was a strange printing problem that left a number of pages purely and simply blank. I was already in email contact with Bogost at that point, and he kindly arranged for MIT Press to send me a new copy.

Today I ran across something far more bizarre. I’ve been reading Adrian Johnston’s Badiou/Zizek book for a couple of days. A few times while flipping through I saw Middle Eastern photos in the Zizek portion of the book, as well as some Arabic words and citations about Syrian culture. And I thought, “that’s weird, I didn’t realize Johnston was into Middle East stuff.” There was a lot about Aleppo, I could see, and I figured Johnston must have travelled to Syria at some point and encountered some examples there to bolster his Zizekian points about desire and the Other. I curiously awaited those sections of the book.

But no, it seems to have been a simple binder’s/printer’s mistake.

My copy of Johnston’s book jumps from page 96 to page 129. Inserted in between are pages 101 to 132 of an utterly different book: Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria, by Jonathan Holt Shannon. This book was published by Wesleyan, whereas Johnston’s is from Northwestern University Press.

As I understand it, these things do sometimes happen with just a handful of copies. (I once found a used Bill Martin book on sale in Toronto with similarly strange issues.)

But it’s also possible that a large batch of copies of Johnston’s book is spoiled in this way. If you have a copy and haven’t read it yet (it’s a relatively new book, 2009) then make sure to check your pages.