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January 28, 2007
Volume Five
Subscribers hear this, Volume 5 is under way. The text is complete and the illustration approach finally decided upon. We still don't know the size or shape or exact page count, but these details will bear themselves out in time. We have been meeting every few days, each time adding some new element to the basic concept. The book is a little confusing, but hopefully funny. There will be another explanatory essay contest, so start polishing your rhetorical chops.
I stumbled upon some pictures a few days ago that reminded me of another book in the Idiots'Books universe, a precursor from Robbi's graduate school days. In college I wrote a story called Cops, which in many ways launched my particular prose style. The story is a picaresque of one young man's journey through childhood. I'm not sure what it's really about. But Robbi decided to use it as the text for a project for her typography class.
Here is Robbi's treatment of Cops
For deep, intellectual reasons far beyond my power to grasp, let alone explain, the book was printed on clear plastic, so that the words from one page were visible on the pages around it. This is basically the opposite of what you want to do if your aim is having the book be readable. But this was not Robbi's aim. Robbi was exploring interesting use of type.
See: very interesting. Very cool. Not legible. Not something that the writer can really get behind.
Another view:
Ultimately I am won over by the coolness of Robbi's version of Cops. Did I mention that it is bound with tiny nuts and bolts?
Perhaps we will offer this version of Cops for sale at some point, but it would have to be very expensive, because sheets of plastic that can be run through an inkjet printer are not cheap. (Not to mention the nuts and bolts). But we may also rethink Cops and create a new version. The story is pleasing, though I am still hoping to come up with a better ending.
For now, however, we are focusing on Volume 5, while Volume 6 starts to clamor for attention.
Posted by bogenamp at January 28, 2007 02:26 PM
Comments
I am SO MAD. Matthew acts like I just arbitrarily decided to print it on clear paper because it looked cool. Does he not remember my long and erudite rationale?! You see, he seems to forget what his stories are about unless I remind him with my dazzling distillations of their essence. It's enough to make the ugly stepsister BOIL!!!! It is PURPOSEFULLY not legible, until you open it and read one page at at time. The whole story is about the sort of open crassness of TV culture, so the book, when closed, is meant to look like a box of static (it's in RGB with blocks of closed captioning and the bolts actually look a bit like old tv channel knobs) which you then deconstruct in order to reconstruct the story. It has nothing to do with looking COOL. And "not something that the writer can really get behind"?!!! He was ALL FOR IT when it was made and we were talking about the idea behind it all.
I give up.
I'm going to go work for Stephen King.
Posted by: ribbu at January 28, 2007 02:55 PM
I don't get it.
Posted by: Matthew at January 28, 2007 03:06 PM