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December 11, 2006
The Week that Was
The days leading up to Friday, December 1 were a frenzied affair. We were working like crazy to complete Volume 3 in time for the book signing at Book Plate, hoping that it would offer the kind of immediate appeal that might lure an otherwise uninterested browser to pause a bit longer at the Idiots'Books table. As of the morning of Friday, November 24, when Robbi left the Thanksgiving celebration with my Dad's family in Denver to head back to Baltimore, the book was yet unillustrated. One week later, we were trimming and binding our freshly finished volume in an attempt to make 50 copies in time for the signing. It was a heroic effort on her part. I wonder if something of that frenetic pace contributes to the resulting weirdness of the illustrations.
For example:
The book's governing concept is that each of the 10 illustrations and each of the accompanying "stories" are sliced horizontally to divide each page into four sections. Each of these sections can then be independently flipped horizontally along a wire-o binding to create new combinations. As show below:
According to the mathematicians we consulted (the finding was corraborated by www.DrMath.com), exactly 10,000 combinations are possible, though my sister Andy, who is a badass math teacher, suggests that there is some possibility that not quite 10,000 combinations exist. She'll have to mull on it a bit. And will get back to us soon. But for now, here's one example.
As you can imagine, a great deal of care had to go into the drawing and writing to make sure that everything lined up correctly in each of the various combinations. To be sure, there are many combinations that yield truly bizarre results (see above), but this angst-provoking rupture of the unexpected lies at the heart of the wickedly ontological criqitue that is Ten Thousand Stories.
At least that's what Seiko said when she read it.
Though not in so many words.
In addition to Ten Thousand Stories, we wanted to have on hand a healthy inventory of the other five books we had completed to date. This is where the frenzy I mentioned in the opening comes in. In five short days (that turned out to be long days), we produced:
50 copies of Facial Features of French Explorers
50 copies of Death of Henry
50 copies of Ten Thousand Stories
50 copies of My Henderson Robot
15 copies of For the Love of God
13 copies of A Bully Named Chuck (we ran out of time for the last two)
In case you didn't know, making books takes a very long time, and in case you also didn't know, it sometimes requires a rubber mallet, which is really the only thing about making books that Robbi enjoys.
Do the books really NEED to be beaten with a rubber mallet? It's debatable. But Robbi loves it so. I undulge her because she's my wife. And because, let's face it, I'm no looker.
Anyway, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were a blur of bookmaking. We were up until 4:00am Wednesday and Thursday. Friday we were making books up until the last moment. At 6:05 we arrived at the Book Plate, freshly showered and overeager, only to find a horde of eager fans impatiently awaiting for our arrival.
Ok, two fans. But they posessed the combined eagerness of at least four. Tom, the proprietor of Book Plate is a masterful advocate, and he has made us his project. In the day or two leading up to our event, he had already shared the many combinations of Ten Thousand Stories with the two eager browsers, sending them into paroxysms of delight and eagerness.
After signing their respective copies of Ten Thousand Stories, we took our seats at the book signing table.
Where we sat signing books for a surprisingly long time. I'm not sure if Tom paid actors to come in and pretend to be interested customers, but a sizable body of people who were not our relatives or friends showed up and claimed to be interested in our books.
After a bit of signing and some pleasant chit-chat, it was time for a little speech on our part. Before we spoke, however, we were first introduced by the excellent Aileen Tsui, Washington College art history professor and all-around very admirable person. She had stopped by the barn the day before to talk with us a bit about what we were up to. We told her all we knew. It only took a few minutes. We gave her copies of our books, which she read, apparently, because she had some very interesting/smart/thoughtful things to say about them--including their indebtedness to Lewis Carroll, their contribution to the long line of subscription-based literary utterances, the pleasing uniqueness of our slightly asymmetrical picture/word combinations. All in all, we felt quite understood.
And then it was our turn to speak. I'm supposed to be the words guy, so I started. I'm usually pretty good at this sort of spontaneous speaking thing, and so I hadn't really put much thought into what I might actually say. Robbi and I had discussed proceeding with an off-the-cuff sort of back-and-forth banter approach which would remain informal, would mirror our collaboration, and would be kind of funny and endearing.
Which would have been so great.
Only...
...I was deathly boring and everyone got uncomfortable. I'm glad that no one took pictures during the speech, because the picture would have been me with my mouth open, a look of dazed desperation in my eyes, and Robbi sitting beside me with her head in her hands, trying to shrink through the floor boards. At one point she interrupted and told me to get to the point. Of course, I wanted to, but I couldn't remember what the point was supposed to be. Other than that we were making books. So I reminded everyone that we were making books.
And then I did a brilliant tap routine on the tabletop and everyone burst into spontaneous applause.
After that, Tom brought out a cake. A marvelous cake, a nod to Idiots'Books.
For those of you that have not seen Volumes 1 and 2, the cake is decorated to look like the covers of these two books. We wept open tears of gratitude. Robbi admired the cake fiercely.
And then plunged her entire face into the cake, making a terrible mess. I tried to take a picture, but the camera jammed.
After Robbi cleaned herself up, we signed a few more books.
And ate that cake until all that was left was our names.
At which point we halted the eating, that we might save that bit for posterity. Our freezer is now full of posterity.
As the evening wound down, there was general milling:
The gentleman on the right side of the frame is our benefactor, Tom. Excellent Aileen is dead center in black. Just to the right of her is Carla Massoni, who I have mentioned several times already in other entries. It is in Carla's Gallery that we will be showing our various Idiots'Books ephemera next month (more on that to come). To the right of Carla is Marcy Dunn Ramsey, Robbi's very first art teacher! Next to Marcy is a guy we don't know, but who will be heretofore known as "He of Extraordinary Taste and Judgment." (On account of his having purchased a book, see?) On the far left is Dick Lange, local potter, writer, patron of the arts. A collection of his very fine Mingei pottery was on display at Book Plate that night as well. Our friend and subscriber Ken Warwick is next to Dick, though apparently, he was more interested in talking with the woman to be heretofore known as "Too Obscured to be Identified" than in mugging for this photo. Next to Ken is Seiko, still so dazed by the brilliance of Ten Thousand Stories that she forgot how to use her camera.
She has since recovered.
Below is Ken Castelli, the excellent (and very talented) fellow who penned the poster that advertised the evening. His work will also be hanging in the Next Generation show at Carla's gallery next month.
And here is the table where the Idiots'Books merchandise was displayed (and will remain so through the end of the month).
We go by Tom's shop once a day to feel good about ourselves. Just yesterday, in fact, like Tom Sawyer at his own funeral, we stood behind a bookshelf and watched a customer approach the table, thumb through Ten Thousand Stories, take palpable delight, and then purchase the volume! We were suddenly filled with great piles of hubris.
The bottom line is, the First Friday was fun and very successful. We sold about 30 books that night, apparently, and more continued to sell throughout the week, with Ten Thousand Stories the runaway favorite.
We stopped by Book Plate yesterday to review the receipts for week one and were shocked and delighted to discover that the sales had totalled $1,100! We! A couple of nobodies having fun making books.
See for yourselves! (Apparently Tom keeps track of every book sold with this highly technical state-of-the-art system.)
Other than the crushing failure of Death of Henry to capture the popular imagination...
...we are starting to believe in ourselves.
It is a dangerous thing.
Posted by bogenamp at December 11, 2006 09:21 AM
Comments
Hops, the face didn't really go in the cake?? or did it?
Posted by: the hose at December 14, 2006 02:58 PM