Illuminated Manuscripts, the next generation

This article about Jonathan Sarfran Foer's new book got me thinking. Normally I'm not really a fan of the writer, but I found the ideas he raised here interesting. His new book is essentially an art object. An already published novel that he has cut up to make a sort of a literary Mad Libs/Lift-the-flap novel. As a novel, I'm not willing to give it my time, but to me it holds far more credibility as  as an artist's book. This feels both snobby and elitist of me, and a bit close minded too. But I'm old school. A book is a book. And I'm not interested in it being diluted with anything. All I want is words, and all on one page, in regular sentences. I can't get through Breakfast of Champions because of the rudimentary line drawing of an asshole. Not only is this perspective close minded of me, but it also reveals my own myopic vision of the future. A vision that I'm trying hard to improve with this blog.  "Foer counters that only in writing do such incursions from other art forms draw much attention." And he's right, if text can appear in visual art, why do images somehow devalue literature? Maybe because to us old school types, images don't seem to add anything, they instead feel like a crutch. Your words should be able to create the visual you want to add. And yet here I am, incorporating images, using them to further my ideas, to help me reach beyond my own limited range as an artist. I began this blog with the dim understanding that, as Foer points out, "It’s not enough. . . for authors to tell stories in the same old ways, even as publishing transforms." Maybe I'm the worst kind writer, standing on the sinking ship, lightening striking the rocks ahead, saying, "the weather's fine, this is just a shower."  All while I'm frantically strapping on my life vest. 


When I spent a month at the Vermont Studio Center (a shamefully long time ago), one of the great lessons that stayed with me was that writers often think too literally about their craft. That as a group we get stuck thinking that being productive and committing to our creative process has to mean sitting in front of our computer for hours everyday (frog you, Stephen King). The painters and sculptors I met in Vermont showed me that your process can be anything that fuels your desire to make work. One painter said, "today my process will be sitting in the river all afternoon." Maybe some of being walled off in our writer's world has to do with the way people experience our art. Reading is a private experience. It does not have the benefit of being able to be enjoyed immediately, en masse, like visual art. (Don't even talk to me about going to readings, that can only give you a suggestion of what someone's work is truly like) We are a bunch of antisocial nerds, writing for a bunch of antisocial nerds and we don't want anyone questioning our perfect, bitter isolation. So we have built a wall around our genre, hanging a hand scrawled sign, "No visual artists allowed, keep out, this means you."  I may not be ready to take down that sign when it comes to my fiction. But at least here, in this completely topsy turvy world of the interwebs, I am able to chisel out a brick in that ridiculous fortification. 


That said, here are some artists' books to help inspire the inevitable crossover. Like Euraka and Warehouse 13. 

lastly, an image from Max Ernst's graphic novel