Richard Prince: Book Pirate?

“This is an artwork by Richard Prince. Any similarity to a book is coincidental and not intended by the artist.”  © Richard Prince - so says the colophon.

Richard Prince has made a very good living out of appropriating and transforming material from the cultural ether. So why not take what many believe is the quintessential American coming of age novel and make it his own.

With the exception of the title page Prince's "sculpture" is an exact facsimile of the first edition with the second issue dust jacket (lacking the author photo). The dust jacket text reads: “Anyone who has read Richard Prince’s New Yorker stories, particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esmé–with Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is full of children.”

The details:

Prince, Richard. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: AP. American Place, 2011.  Hardback, shrinkwrapped as issued, 5.5 x 8 inches. One of 500 copies. The Catcher in the Rye a 'sculpture' book by Richard Prince. Released at the Printed Matter BookFair NYC 2011 and through several ad hoc 'performances' in NYC in late 2011. No longer available.

 James Frey (center) and Richard Prince (dark jacket) selling books outside Central Park, 2011.

In the fall of 2011 Prince took to the streets of New York to peddle the book. Setting up shop on a blanket outside Central Park, with none other than James Frey starring as the bookseller, the book was offered for sale to the public for $40 a copy. My head is still spinning as I try to wrap it around the choice of Frey, an admitted fabricator, as the bookseller for Prince's work, which is a deliberate fabrication. 

It would have been interesting to see Salinger's reaction to such a "performance" if he were still alive. Salinger was never one to shy away from litigation when it came to protecting his work and his brand and this work of appropriation has all the makings of an epic legal battle.

In 1977 Prince wrote a piece called Prior Availability. He says:

The material I appropriate is available to anyone who cares to use it. The  fact that the material has possibly been observed or unconsciously collected by person's other than myself, in effect defines its desires and threats. It's this 'prior availability' that verifies the fictional transformation and helps cool down any reference to an observable reality.

It makes sense that Prince is a collector of many things, luckily books are one of his passions, Here's a look at some of the books in Prince's library.  Library, Books, (Books) Two

Kenneth Goldsmith's post, Richard Prince’s Latest Act of Appropriation: The Catcher in the Rye, at Harriet, the blog of the Poetry Foundation.

And a review of the piece byJohan Kugelberg review at Huh magazine.

The Graphic Side of Dard Hunter

When one thinks of Dard Hunter the word "paper" usually comes to mind first. He was in many respects the king of American papermaking. He authored over fifteen books on the subject and single-handedly revived the art of handmade papermaking in America.

Prior to his obsession with paper Hunter spent his time as a printer and graphic artist. His began his career working for the famed Roycroft Press in East Aurora, New York. Under the tutelage of Elbert Hubbard, Hunter immersed himself in the Arts & Crafts style that permeated the design aesthetic of the press and he emerged as "one of America's most influential graphic artists of the twentieth century."

Thanks to a new monograph, Dard Hunter: The Graphic Works, authored by Lawrence Kreisman and conceived and produced in collaboration with Dard Hunter III, the artist's grandson, we now have a comprehensive look at Hunter's graphic output.

The book features more than eighty of his designs for book covers and title pages, booklets, bookplates, brochures, letterheads, and stained glass windows. It also includes Hunter’s 1904 newspaper article about the Roycroft community, and Hunter’s complete pamphlet text, Make Arts-and-Crafts Things at Your Home (Roycroft Press, 1909). 

We are pleased to offer a limited number of copies signed by the author.

Also of note, Kreisman will kick off the book's publication with a lecture at the Seattle Public Library on April 18th.  The event is co-sponsored by The Book Club of Washington and the Book Arts Guild. Details here

A New Home for Nordic Women Writers

Today is International Women’s Day and one way to celebrate is to visit the newly launched website dedicated to Nordic women writer's. The site spans 1000 years of literature and features hundreds of articles on 800 writers. "The story begins in Iceland during the transition from oral narrative tradition to the introduction of written culture. And it ends with a chapter on Sami and Greenlandic women’s conquest of written language in our own time."

 Karen Blixen, 1923. Better known in these parts as Isak Dinesen, the author of Out of Africa

Aside from in-depth pieces on particular writers the website also includes material on topics such as psychoanalysis, salons, suicide and why women were trapped between new and old sexual ethics. 

The website is based on Elisabeth Møller Jensen's seminal multi-volume work Nordisk Kvindelitteraturhistorie (The History of Nordic Women’s Literature). 

Ásta Sigurðardóttir

As to why the creation of a new digital platform Jensen says "The history of Nordic literature is full of women writers who wrote for their lives and who fought for public recognition. We hope that the new online platform will be a stepping stone for Nordic women’s writers to reach the position within literary history they are entitled to."

David Ishii: 1935 - 2012

A friend, colleague and longtime neighbor (our bookshops were in the same building) died yesterday at 76.

Pioneer Square has never been the same since he closed his shop almost 7 years ago and now that he is gone Seattle has lost one of its treasured souls.

Obit in the Seattle Times, Longtime bookseller David Ishii was quite a story himself

R.I.P.

Some Visual Stimulus Courtesy of Redfoxpress

We would like to welcome the newest addition to our Featured Publishers page Redfoxpress.

Located on Achill Island in County Mayo, Ireland Redfoxpress is the brainchild of Francis Van Maele. Van Maele, whose previous publishing house Editions Phi was acquired by the Luxembourger Newspaper "Tagablatt", launched Redfoxpress in 2001 to focus solely on the creation and production of artists books.

One of the highlights of the press is their "C'est mon Dada" series. "A collection of small hand made artists' books dedicated to experimental, concrete and visual poetry, or any work combining text and image in the spirit of dada or fluxus."

West of Dodge by Nico Vassilaki, 2010. USA. Volume 38 in the series.

 The series features poets and artists from around the world.

Description du ciel by Jean Delvaux, 2009. Luxembourg. Volume 34 in the series.

All books in the series are published at the fair price of $20.

interior shot from Babylon Ulysses Berlin by Richard Burkart, 2011. USA. Volume 66 in the series

 Also available are 3 of the first 4 books from Franticham's Impossible Polaroid Madness Series. Franticham is the moniker for books made by Francis Van Maele and  Antic-ham, a Seoul based book artist.  In addition to the New York volume below, there is one on London and one on Me & My Car: Vintage Polaroids 50's - 80's.

Franticham: New York, 2011. One of 169 numbered copies signed by both authors.

Click here to view the complete list of the books we have available from Redfoxpress

Colbert talks with Novelist Ann Patchett

 Patchett discusses the importance of brick-and-mortar bookstores and explains what prompted her to open one in Nashville.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Ann Patchett
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

       

The Life and Times of the Dust Jacket

 Noun. dust jacket - a paper jacket for a book; a jacket on which promotional information is usually printed. Also called book jacket, dust cover, dust wrapper

Most books printed since the late nineteenth and early twentieth century have them. Unfortunately, there are many books that once had them that now don't. For the collector of these modern books the dust jacket represents the Holy Grail of value.

One of the most noted examples is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1925 by Charles Scribner's and Sons, the book is considered by many to be one of the great American novels. The book's dust jacket, created by the then little-known artist Francis Cugat, is also considered a high-spot of dust jacket art and design. To find a copy of the book in today's marketplace that still has the dust jacket is a rare event. The book itself is somewhat common and when it turns up usually sells in the $3,000 - $4000 range. But the book with a dust jacket in good condition - now you're talking $125,000 and up!

Those interested in this important part of book history will enjoy G. Thomas Tanselle's new book Book-Jackets: Their History, Forms, and Use. The book provides:

A concise history both of publishers' detachable book coverings (primarily British and American) and of the attention they have received from scholars, dealers, collectors, and librarians. It also surveys their use by publishers (as protective devices and advertising media) and their usefulness to scholars of literature, art, and book history (as sources for biography, bibliography, cultural analysis, and the development of graphic design).

 Though it leans scholarly the book provides a thorough history of a books most valuable friend and can easily prove useful for the bookseller, book collector or any lover of books. The book also includes a 100+ page listing of surviving pre-1901 examples.

 

Book available here

Re-Covered Books: a cool gallery of user-created book designs  for The Great Gatsby

Letterpress and the Restaurant: Patricia Curtan's Menus for Chez Panisse

It has been over 40 years since the legendary chef Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. While the restaurant became known for its single price-fixe menu it also set the stage for the Eat Local movement which would heavily influence the mind-set of many chefs, restaurants, and farmers around the world.

Fortunately, during the early years there was a member of the kitchen staff who was an artist who also dabbled in letterpress printing.

For Waters "saw the beauty and aesthetic of fine printing as a way to communicate at the outset of the diners experience the care and attention given to the preparation of their dinner" hence it wasn't long before Patricia Curtan was designing and creating the menus; the customer's first contact with the restaurant's offerings.

This beautiful monograph, published by Princeton Architectural Press, is also designed by Curtan and features a healthy sampling of her work over the years.

The book:
Menus for Chez Panisse: The Art & Letterpress of Patricia Curtan. Foreword by Alice Waters

Post at the Paris Review by Curtan on the Chez Panisse Menus

A Wild Edition of "The Wild Swans"

The Wild Swans recounts the story of a princess who sets out to rescue her eleven brothers who have been turned into swans by their wicked stepmother and forced to fly away.  The tale was first published in 1838 in the compilation Fairy Tales Told for Children. New Collection by Hans Christian Anderson.

An amazing new wordless version of the famous tale is now available. Illustrated by noted toy designer Thomas Aquinas Maguire and published by Simply Read Books. Maguire has transformed the literary tale into a unfolding visual feast.

 Bound accordion style the book extends to over 60 feet! The illustrations were drawn in 8-feet-long sections and were then married in Photoshop. The book was artfully designed by Robin Mitchell-Cranfield.

This  visual rendering is accompanied by a separate booklet which reprints the original tale and is laid into a pictorial folding box with a magnetic flap.

Clearly a beautiful production of a classic work and hard to beat for $24.95.

Composition No.1: The First Book in a Box, Redux

In the 1962 Marc Saporta published Composition No. 1. It was the first published book that came in a box. Of course, there had been books published in slipcases or that were laid in boxes for many years prior to the release of Composition No. 1 but there hadn't been one that consisted of single sheets laid into a box where "each page has a self-contained narrative, leaving it to the reader to decide the order they read the book, and how much or how little of the book they want to read before they begin again."

There were no page numbers, no chapters, no table of contents. For their third offering the forward-looking London publisher Visual Editions has taken Saporta's work and filtered it through their progressive lens. The result is a compelling production designed by Universal Everything, featuring an introduction by Tom Uglow of Creative Labs Google and Youtube and illustrations by Salvador Plascencia.  Plascencia has also created a chart looking at all the different components that make up a “typical” book.

 Here's the trailer:



Book available here

Other books from Visual Editions:
The Life and Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
Tree Of Codes by  Jonathan Safran Foer

Also worth noting - A portion of the funding for Visual Editions comes from the Arts Council of England which receives some of its monies directly from the Lottery!