Elevator lady, elevator lady, elevator lady, elevator lady…................. Levitate me.

12.02. filed under: science. 2

Quote, “In the beginning was the Word. There was a little pond and in the pond was a little letter “O”, a word. Soon the pond was full of trillions of O’s, happily mouthing their meaning. And the word was fruitful and multiplied. Then something happened. An “O” changed to an “I”. Another changed to an “A”. (Others changed to “x” and “p”, but these were not fruitful and were, sadly, deselected.) Soon, the pond was swimming with O’s and A’s and I’s. The I’s, in particular, thought they were something special, but the O’s were happy just to be noticed…” Zachriel’s Sea of Beneficence, part of the larger Word Mutagenation.

12.02. filed under: bits&bytes. ideas. ∅

Russell William Porter (1871-1949) was an architect, explorer, mapmaker, watercolorist, and pioneer in the field of “cutaway illustration.” As though this were not an impressive enough skill-set Porter was also an ameture astronomer and telescope builder, sometimes referred to as the “founder of amateur telescope making.” It was presumably this wonderful intersection of talents which lead astronomer George E. Hale to recruit him to work on the design of the 200-inch telescope on Mt. Palomar (for a time the largest telescope on earth). During its conceptual development Porter produced 19 beautiful drawings of the instrument, which amazingly (considering their technical depth and exactitude) were all done before the telescope was actually constructed using only blueprints as a guide. The Prime Focus, from this set, is pictured above.

12.02. filed under: art. history. people. science. space. 2

Reintroducing: Hella Basu

Picked up a 1980 design annual today put out by the venerable (but soon after to fold) U.K printing house Penrose. In it I found many amusing bits about then state-of-the-art computer graphics technology, articles of interest to the design dork with a historical bent, purty pictures, etc. The most striking bit by far, however, was a feature on a calligrapher by the name of Hella Basu. Beautiful work which put me in mind of everyone’s current fave Marian Bantjes, except Basu was born in 1924. A subsequent internet search for information on her work came up empty. Judging by the samples in the feature that’s a real shame. It’s my pleasure then to reintroduce her here, on the web, with the following 10 pieces culled from the Penrose annual.

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11.30. filed under: art. !. design. history. people. 8

Night of the Ground Stars

Or: urban shoe-gazing finds a purpose

Electric light, Concrete, and Chewing Gum, what have they in common? Though, admittedly, both concrete and chewing gum can ultimately trace their roots to antiquity, all three of these items, in something akin to their modern form, entered the American stage in the 1870’s.

Edison invented the first commercially successful incandescent lamp around 1879. At the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 David O. Saylor exhibited the first American made portland cement, though it was not until 1891 that the first concrete street in the United States was paved. Thomas Adams opened the first chewing gum factory in 1870, and a year later Adams’ chicle based New York Gum went on sale in drug stores for a penny apiece. By the beginning of the 20th century all three of these items had become popular and were on their way to being staples of American life.

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This, however, is not a history lesson, and the particulars of each of these items does not interest me as such. What I’m interested in here is rather a result of their intersection, a confluence of forces, which though set in motion way back in the 1870’s, is as near to we moderns as the ground beneath our feet or the sky above our cities. I’m speaking, of course, about Ground Stars.

Let me explain.

The proliferation of electric light, typified by our big cities, has created a phenomena called Skyglow. Essentially Skyglow is simply Rayleigh scattering of artificial light, which is to say its the same atmospheric effect which makes the natural light of the daytime sky seem blue, only in this case diffusing and redirecting the light of our cities back down at us. The ultimate effect for we urban earthlings is, lamentably, a starless (though not bible-black) sky.

In the relative-dead of a New York City night, looking up (and in this city to see a patch of sky you need to look damn near straight up) is an effort with precious little reward. You can count yourself lucky to see the lights of a passing plane, or the underbelly of a helicopter, because even the brightest stars are washed out and absent. Forget about connecting the dots in your minds eye and seeing a giant scorpion, or bull, or lion. There are no dots.

As I’ve said here before this strikes me as a real shame. Especially in a city such as New York where where all manner of dreamer, goofball, curbside philosopher, and artistic-minded lout have chosen to congregate. We are effectively as divorced from our universe as we are from the suburbs and geographical armpits most of us fled from. We are people who could use the sense of natural scale a few trillion super-massive nuclear reactions in the sky would provide. We need something bigger, more crowded, and more charged with energetic possibility than ourselves.

Which brings me to Concrete and Chewing Gum.

While electric light was proliferating and radiating outward to blot our stars concrete and chewing gum were quietly spreading throughout the city as well, exhibiting their own unexpected side effect. It seems concrete and chewing gum have a natural attraction to one another. They stick together and stay together. Whether it is love or just a physical thing I can not say but their century old union offers us a solution, of sorts, to our star poverty.

When a piece of spit-out gum takes the gravity-assisted leap to the ground it gets rolled over, and stepped on, and compacted, and stepped on, and compacted, and stepped on, and compacted. We sometimes curse at getting its sticky guts on our shoes, but more often than not we don’t even notice. Over time what was once a chicle-based, flavor infused, treat becomes nothing so much as a single dark point in the firmament of sidewalk. Now multiply this by millions, perhaps billions, and I think you’ll see where I’m going.

A century of this process has provided us with something huge and ambiguous we can call our own; if not a moody sparkling light by which to worship our lovers and unsheathe our knives, an endlessly shifting menagerie of single points all the same, between which we might string the iconography of our hopes and fears.

Think of it! Anti-Stars: small points of light-absorbing darkness dotting a reflective silica-mixed concrete field. Billions of DNA enriched points, all of indeterminate, time-lost origin, waiting only for the connecting lines which would infuse them with meaning; waiting always at perigee to feel the press of human imagination upon them rather than simply that of our boot heels. Look below your feet at any time while walking the 301 square miles of the city and it’s likely you trod upon a constellation, just waiting to be recognized and named.

In short what electric light hath denied concrete and chewing gum hath supplied. Ground Stars, Urban Constellations, a galaxy worth for our interpretation, in which we can do what we love best- see ourselves reflected.

“Sounds all very well in theory” I can hear you mustache-twirlers harumphing, “but does it work in practice? What might such replacement constellations look like?”

I’m glad you asked. I have taken it upon myself to explore this embryonic field of research a bit. Trips into the field have yielded some promising observations which I’m all too happy to share with you.

Below you will find a small cataloging of my findings thus far. I will name, describe, and illustrate the 10 Urban Constellations I’ve identified, and will even offer some slight illumination on each in the form of related quotations. What being born above these signs, or what their position in relation to your own may portend for you, your character, or your future, I will leave to the “geologers,” “odologers,” “topologers,” “despuologers,” or “humusologers” who will surely follow.

Behold!

Status Somnus (The Standing Sleep)

You see them, standing in the road, nodding, body never quite toppling, never quite standing straight. It’s like slapstick and tragedy mixed. You wonder, “Where can he/she be right now that’s so compelling it overrides the innate need to stave off death? Are they on a planet without cars? Are they floating weightless through space? Are they balancing on a pile of white spaghetti? What are they seeing?” You wonder, but are not curious enough to prick the skin and stand asleep in the road yourself.

I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain,
Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper’s eye,
Shifting to light, turned on me like a moon.
So, planing-heeled, I flew along my man
And dropped on dreaming and the upward sky.

I fled the earth and, naked, climbed the weather,
Reaching a second ground far from the stars;
And there we wept, I and a ghostly other,
My mothers-eyed, upon the tops of trees;
I fled that ground as lightly as a feather.

‘My fathers’ globe knocks on its nave and sings.’
‘This that we tread was, too, your fathers’ land.’
‘But we tread bears the angelic gangs,
Sweet are their fathered faces in their wings.’
‘These are but dreaming men. Breathe, and they fade.’
-Dylan Thomas

“To achieve the impossible dream, try going to sleep.”
-Joan Klempner

Mercator Pudor (The Shame Trader)

You spot them from a block away, if you’re lucky. The fresh-faced guilt-trippers. Their questions like a slap. “Do you care about the environment?” “Do you have a second for gay rights?” “You don’t support animal cruelty do you?” “The children’s ribs are showing!” You look at them and despise them for trading in guilt. They ask every loaded question but the honest one you hear in your head instantly.

“They who have considered our nature, affirm that shame and disgrace are two of the most insupportable evils of human life: the courage and spirits of many have master’d other misfortunes and borne themselves up against them; but the wisest and best of souls have not been a match for these.”
-Laurence Sterne

Sepulcretum Umbellae (The Umbrella Graveyard)

The wind howls, the sun is gone, the rain hammers your brow. You turn a corner and see it. Mangled, torn, broken, abandoned. It’s a graveyard and you know it, even with your head down and your eyes half-blinded in the storm. You shiver to spite yourself.

And oh they bring to mind the grave,
so humble, so willing to be beat upon
with its awful lettering and
the body lying underneath
without an umbrella.
-Anne Sexton

Dissaepio Indocilis (The Rude Barrier)

The sidewalk so wonderfully wide. Room enough for street gangs to dance their grudges away. And yet here he/she comes. Straddling one edge, dog straddling the other. Between is a leash, strung taut across the entire walking width. You look at the leash and you yearn to tear it apart with your hands and stuff in his or her mouth, yelling, “Choke! Choke you self-involved misborn ass!” They must know you hate them, but they come ever closer. “So it’s a game of chicken is it?”

“It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.”
-Oscar Wilde

Porthmeus Odiosus (The Hateful Ferryman)

You see it’s yellow flank flashing in the traffic. The light is on. You are about to be scooped up! You imagine the seats cradling your tired ass. You raise your hand, perhaps whistle through your teeth, or call out, “Taxi!” But the ferryman rejects you and rolls right by. “Why?” you wonder. “WHY!?” You swear, you doubt, you raise your fists to a deaf God, “Bastard!” Then shuffle on.

Hang out our banners on the outward walls;
The cry is still, “They come!” our castle’s strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn.
-Shakespeare

“After rejection— misery, then thoughts of revenge, and finally, oh well, another try elsewhere.”
-Mason Cooley

Belua Cloaca (The Sewer Monster)

And what is under there anyway? Is it a filth-encrusted albino playground? Is it a dark orgy of disease and blindness held over the sewage-soaked bones of our forefathers? Are the stories true? Is it all alligators, and giant rats, and mole men? Walk a little faster and avoiding the wobbly grates.

“Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden.
-James Arthur Baldwin

Mendicus Beneficiarius (The Privileged Beggar)

Young and sound of body. You look at them and their sign, scrawled with pleas for beer-money or bus fare. You look at their clothes, their accessories, their hair. You make a snap judgement and far off, on some tax sheltered-island, their trust funds accrue interest.

“The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.”
-Thomas Hobbes

“At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”
-Albert Camus

“When you are not physically starving, you have the luxury to realize psychic and emotional starvation.”
-Cherrie Moraga

Aquatoris Indifferentis (The Indifferent Water-Carrier)

It’s 8 AM. Foot-traffic rush-hour on a weekday morning. No one smiles because making it to your destination is painful enough. Another day of wage slavery is beginning and no one’s exactly thrilled. Everyone knows this. You know it, the old lady you just elbowed knows it, and so does the guy with the fucking hose. He sees you coming. He does not care. The water flows like your own shin-level Potomac.

“And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor - never its victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten.”
-Elie Wiesel

“Nature is not cruel and pitiless but indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous—indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.”
-Richard Dawkins

Cumulus Arcanus (The Mysterious Pile)

It is waiting around damn near every corner. It is horrid and putrid smelling and the color is indescribable. Flesh colored crayons melted over spinach linguini and scabs. It is nebulous and gut wrenching and even the thought of it’s origin makes your skin crawl. It’s a pile and you must not look at it too closely!

“I don’t believe in evil, I believe only in horror. In nature there is no evil, only an abundance of horror: the plagues and the blights and the ants and the maggots.”
-Isak Dinesen

Hostis Dementis (The Demented Stranger)

He approaches. Perhaps you smell him before you see him. Perhaps his madness digs into your ear. It’s one of that most feared tribes, the demented ones. What will he do with his grill fork? What’s that poking out of the hole in his clothes? Is something moving in his bag? Nothing frightens the rational, time-obsessed, grid-walking, metropolitan mind like the demented ones staggering toward you.

“Who knows what true loneliness is— not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad.”
-Joseph Conrad

“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.”
-Ian Fleming

There you have it my friends. I hope I’ve inspired you to connect the dots, or brought even a sliver of relief to your poor, addled, star-starved mind.

If you identify any urban constellations of your own feel free to pass them along. The adventure continues.

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11.28. filed under: !. history. ideas. observations. play. 5

“It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits - like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing a beautiful woman, flying through the stratosphere or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits - involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding - inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, a Roosevelt can feel themselves to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, a Blake. Understanding is ever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention.”
-Malcolm Muggeridge.

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With that I return. Not with a trumpet and throaty throng but quietly, as though by moonlight, avoiding the squeaky step.

“Is that you? (groggily) What time is it?”

“Go back to sleep honey.”

I’ve sprung the trap and survived, and escaped, and so here I am. Home again. The trap is obvious, and in plain sight, but I am forgetful. Each time I look at it I see the glint on the teeth but not the teeth themselves. The glint is bright and shiny and I am a dim, dumb animal. Probability, or Nature, or Destiny, or whatever you’ve labeled the comically inadequate mason jar in which you hold this concept- things take their course.

What can I say?

You turn your head sometimes, as if hearing a coo or whisper, and looking toward the window, expecting to see some winged thing perched on your windowsill, you see instead your own reflection. You see your life and it startles you more than any winged thing would. It is not what you expected to see, but worse it’s not even what you’d expect a life to look like. Its proportions are all wrong, its color off, its shape odd; In truth it looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It looks foreign, and in as much, frightening. But it is your life still, and it’s as if in this unexpected moment you were glimpsing it for the first time.

Of course this is all Balderdash, or Poppycock, or Bullshit, or whatever you’ve labeled your most treasured mason jar- you’ve seen this ugly thing before.

I’m forgetful, as I’ve already mentioned. When I momentarily see past the well-tooled facade, past the fortification of amusements and distractions, over and beyond the ramparts of routine, I get spooked.

More often than not I react to this reoccurring revelation in a predictable way. I cycle through my mason jars, popping their lids in quick succession- Confusion, Annoyance, Anger, Regret, Longing, Sadness. Their smells waft through my rooms, swirling, blending into complex and potent combinations. What began as merely disturbing, through my panic, becomes overwhelming. Like the dim, dumb animal I am I seek a dark place, hidden from predatory eyes, where I can gather myself and think.

Q: “Ever wondered what turns straight-forward drama into melodrama?”

A: “It’s the attempt at spreading a small portion of honest pain over every banal nook and cranny of the proceedings, creating a thin smear, rather than letting it lay, as a thick dollop, just where it naturally landed. That and the bad metaphors of course!”

So where was I?

Oh yes, In my forgetfulness I’d sprung the trap.

There is an incorrect assumption I repeatedly make, which is that through sheer force of will, given enough time and space, I can understand, dismantle, and rebuild existence into something which more resembles the existence of my imagination. Because of this I abandon things in an attempt to carve out that space and create that time. I stop, turn off, take a step back, begin analyzing and over-analyzing. Like a cat with a ball of yarn I smack at my existence with my thumb-less paws and claws and unravel it, only to find finally that my ball is gone, I’m tangled in the yarn, and there is nothing at the center. This is folly but it’s not the trap I speak of, not really.

At the center of life is a terror, a mystery, a question, a void. It is huge, and it has a gravitational pull of sorts, and were you to face it and stare into it every day you would not be able to function. We build a barricade against it with whatever materials we can scrounge because were we faced with it continuously we would not be able to attain even the most paltry scrap of contentment. That’s what Happiness, or Peace, or whatever you label your half-full mason jar really is- moments of distraction strung successfully together. If you can string those moments together for an entire lifetime you are a genius, a giant, a lucky son of a bitch.

So the trap is simply this: forgetting the void. When you do that you are apt to start misinterpreting your own defenses against it as something holding you in rather than something keeping it out. Happiness is being successfully distracted from the void, by projects, jobs, entertainments, passions, dreams… the trap is forgetting the void exists.

I’ve spent many an hour in my life scrutinizing my defenses, becoming dissatisfied with their materials, and tearing them down, only to see the void rather than greener grass, and be reminded why I’d built them in the first place. I’ve spent many an hour rebuilding my defenses from the wreckage of older ones. A real time waster let me tell you.

So the lesson, which my forgetfulness forces me to re-learn continually, is this: defenses need only be judged by a single criteria- their effectiveness. No matter what they look like, no matter from what materials they are cobbled, no matter whether they are the shape and proportions you imagined them to be when you were a mere emotional zygote, they need only work. If they do, leave them alone and keep on keepin’ on.

With that I return. As a cobbler returns to his shop on a grey monday morning.

(The bell on the door jingles. In you step.)

“Hi there. What can I do for you?”

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11.26. filed under: !. life. observations. personal. 13

The Picture Frame

Or: the humble boundary between Art and reality

Recently I went on the hunt for some reference on picture frames and a trip to the Strand rewarded me with The Art of the Picture Frame by Jacob Simon. It was created to accompany an exhibition of the same name held at the National Portrait Gallery (UK) in 1996. Looking through the book It dawned on me instantly that I actually had no idea whatsoever what the history of the picture frame was, or indeed, why frames were invented in the first place. Since I picked up the book I’ve been intending to do a post on the origins of the frame. A concise summation of the info contained within the book, however, would be prohibitively difficult so instead I’ve decided to simply share some of the frames themselves and offer, instead of a summation, some related links. See below.

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11.08. filed under: art. !. history. 5

Normal: the romanticized average

What percentage of the time is the concept of “normalcy” referenced in relation to human fears I wonder?

I am wary of the adjective “normal,” as I’m sure many people are, when used to describe anything other than geometric relationships or chemical solutions. It is a dishonest sort of adjective I think, seeking, at worst, to describe something which does not exist, or, at best, to pretty-up something which does exist, but which ought to be called by another name entirely.

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The word “normal” when used in specific, direct relation to humanity does not have any real meaning unless it is as a marker of a mean value or an average. To think there is a quantity called “normal” which somehow exists outside of the quantity called “average” (in human terms) is obviously silly. And yet the connotations of the words “normal” and “average” are so different.

Everyone hopes they are “normal” to some degree, yet simultaneously everyone hopes to avoid being “average.” Isn’t that odd?

“Normal” is, in nearly all of its shades of usage, a positive quantity. Normality is understandable, reasonable, safe and reassuring.

When we seek to embrace a billionaire, or a “genius,” or a celebrity, we say “But I’ll tell you what, he’s really just a normal guy.” That is almost the highest compliment we can pay. The President of the United States? “Well, I like him, he seems like a normal guy.”

When we wish to distance ourselves from a once familiar murderer or rapist or otherwise ugly personage we say of him, “But he seemed so normal.” That is our alibi, “I lived next door to him, baby sat his children, and exchanged Christmas cookies with him because I thought he was normal.” Everyone can nod at that, and if murderer = bad, then it follows “normal” = good.

On the flip-side there is “average.” Averageness is rarely positive, defined, it seems, by only half of what it is not. Average is not exceptional, not remarkable, not gorgeous, not brilliant, not amazing. This is an adjective which seems to carry with it the limitations of its noun.

- How was the food at Chez Mullah? “Eh. Just average.”
- What did she look like? “uh… average.”
- How was your weekend?! “Average, didn’t do much.”
- “You are a C student and average students just don’t get into good schools!”

So though “normal” and “average” are, in essence, synonyms, in usage they are fairly distinct. Normal would seem to describe what is desirable, warm, and human about the collective “we.” While Average feels colder, more distant, and less comfortable. It would seem “normal” has done a better job transcending its mathematical roots where as “average” still has a strong whiff of the statistical.

When a human life hangs in the balance the choice is clear:

- Doctor how is my wife?! “Her vital signs are normal, she’s going to be OK.”

People’s vital signs are never “average.”

This disparity would seem to cast some doubt, somewhere, and if we accept that “average” feels more mathematical a quantity in common usage and “normal” feels more human a quantity… well, I would aim my suspicions toward “normal.” Math would seem to have the better track record when it comes to matters of precision and clarity.

So what’s with this word “normal” then? I propose the following:

The word “normal,” when used in relation to humanity, is the product of fear. I say this because “normal” seems most often used as a bulwark against it. It is “average” fortified. It is “average” gussied-up. It is “average” humanized. It is “average” pimped-out with comfy cushions. It is the cashmere of “average,” knit into a soft blankey we can hide under when faced with all those things which make us want to go pee-pee in our pants.

Do you disagree?

Last thing I’ll say is this: If you are one of the many people on Earth whose fondest wish is to “just be normal,” to simply attain that coveted, seemingly mythical state of normalcy, one of the… let’s say… awkward, the unpopular, the dissatisfied, the lonely, the self-hating, the confused, the depressed, the unhappy, let me assure you of something- your fear of not being “normal” affirms your averageness, and in as much, your normalcy. So hooray!

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11.02. filed under: !. humanity. observations. 9

I am about a third of the way through Jeff Vandermeer’s newest novel Shriek: An Afterword and am enjoying it immensely. I’ve been a fan of Jeff’s works since first getting a whiff of City of Saints and Madmen way back when. Shriek is an incredibly satisfying book thus far, with a unique structure that fractures time, as so many contemporary “post-modern” narratives do, but in an altogether more intimate and rewarding way. I won’t say anymore since this isn’t a review, I haven’t even finished the book yet after all, but anyone interested in more in depth reviews can see the following: SFCrowsnest, Shaken & Stirred, or Infinity Plus. What I wanted to share with you tonight was something entirely more specific, a short section that might very well represent the greatest book rejection ever put in print. With Jeff’s kind permission I will reprint it for you below.

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By way of setting the scene briefly I’ll just say Duncan Shriek, the protagonist of our story, has been summoned to his publisher’s office a month after submitting a manuscript on a rather controversial subject. When Duncan arrives at the publishing house, Frankwrithe & Lewden, he is escorted into the president’s office, where said president, one Mr. L. Gaudy, “a bearded man of indeterminate age, his gaunt flesh wrapped across his cheekbones” is waiting, sitting behind his desk, staring calmly into the depths of his fireplace. Denied the comfort of a seat Duncan stands there, in total silence, for over five minutes, waiting…

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As the fire behind them began to die, Gaudy smiled and broke the silence. He spoke in a “perfectly calm voice, level and smooth. He stared at the fireplace as he spoke, and steepled his fingers, elbows on the desk. He appeared not to draw a single extra breath.”

He said:

“You need not sit and thus defile my perfectly good chair because it will take no time at all to say what needs to be said to you. Once I have said what I am going to say to you, I would like you to leave immediately and never return. You are no longer welcome here and never will be welcome again. Your manuscript has performed the useful function of warming us, a function a thousand times more beneficial than anything it might have hoped to accomplish as a series of letters strung together into words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. The fire has purified it, in much the same manner as I would like at this moment—and will desire at all moments in the future—to purify you, were it not outside of the legal, if not moral, boundaries placed upon us by the law and society in general. By this time it ought to be clear to you, Mr. Shriek, that we do not intend to buy the rights to your ‘book’—and I use the word ‘book’ in its loosest possible sense—nor to its ashes, although I would sooner buy the rights to its ashes than to its unblemished pages. However, on the off chance that you still do not comprehend what I am saying to you, and allowing for the possibility that you may have entered a state of shock, I shall continue to talk until you leave this room, which happy event I hope will take place before very much longer, as the sight of you makes me ill. Mr. Shriek, as you must be aware, Frankwrithe & Lewden has a history that goes back more than five hundred years, and in that time we have published our share of controversial books. Your first book—which, by the way, you may be fascinated to know is as of this moment out of print—was the forty-first book to be banned by the various Antechambers of Ambergris over the years. We certainly have no qualms in that regard. Nor have we neglected to publish books on the most arcane and obscure topics dreamt of by the human brain. As you are no doubt aware, despite the fact that many titles no longer have even a nostalgic relevance, we keep our entire, and considerable, backlist in print—Pelagic Snail Rituals of the Lower Archipelago comes to mind, there being no such snail still extant, nor such an archipelago; still, we keep it in print—but we will make an exception for your first book, which shall be banished from all of our catalogues as well. As I would have hoped you had guessed by now, although you have not yet left this office never to return, we do not like your new book very much. In fact, to say I do not like your book would be like calling a mighty tree a seedling. I loathe your book, Mr. Shriek, and yet the word ‘loathe’ cannot convey in even a thousandth part the full depths of my hatred for this book, and by extension, you. But perhaps I should be more specific. Maybe specifics will allow you to overcome this current, potentially fatal, inertia—tied no doubt to the aforementioned shock—that stops you from leaving this office. Look—the last scrap of your manuscript has become a flake of ash floating above the fireplace. What a shame. Perhaps you would like an urn to collect the ashes of your dead newborn? Well, you can’t have one, because not only do we not have an urn, but even if we did, we would not allow you to use it for the transport of the ashes, if only from the fear that you might find some way to reconstruct the book from them—and yes, we do know it is likely you have a copy of the manuscript, but we will feel a certain warmth in our hearts if by burning this copy we can at least slow down your reckless and obstinate attempt to publish this cretinous piece of excrement. Returning to the specifics of our argument against this document: your insipid stupidity is evident from the first word of the first sentence of the first paragraph of your acknowledgments page, ‘The,’ and from there the sense of simple-minded, pitiable absence of thought pervades all of the first paragraph until, by the roaring crescendo of imbecility leading up to the last word of the first paragraph, ‘again,’ any possible authority the reader might have granted the author has been completely undermined by your inability to in any way convey even an unoriginal thought. And yet in comparison to the dull-witted pedantry of the second paragraph, the first paragraph positively shines with genius and degenerate brilliance. Perhaps at this point in our little chat, I should repeat that I don’t very much like this book.”

Gaudy then rose and shouted, “YOU HAVE BEEN MEDDLING IN THINGS YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT! DO YOU THINK YOU CAN POKE AROUND DOWN THERE TO YOUR HEART’S CONTENT AND NOT SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES?! YOU ARE A COMPLETE AND UTTER MORON! IF YOU EVER COME BACK TO MORROW, I’LL HAVE YOU GUTTED AND YOUR ORGANS THROWN TO THE DOGS! DO. YOU. UNDERSTAND. ME??!”

What other rhetorical gems might have escaped Gaudy’s lips, we will never know, for Duncan chose that moment to overcome his inertia and leave Frankwrithe & Lewden’s offices—forever.

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Ha!

I have to imagine that anyone who has ever had a manuscript rejected, which is to say every writer alive, or anyone who ever hopes to have a manuscript rejected one day (like myself) will appreciate that monologue very much. Read it over and over again and the terse rejection slips you receive in future will seem infinitely kind and sweet by comparison, like delicious little form-letter bon-bons. Yum. “Thank you sir may I have another?”

Hope the bookish among you enjoyed as much as I did.

For a broader, perhaps more representative excerpt see: The SF Site or visit Jeff himself at his blog.

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10.27. filed under: books. fiction. observations. ∅

Graphis Annual 1971 / 1972

So I managed to get my grubby hands on yet another vintage Graphis Annual, this one, a loner, representing 71 / 72. The book and its contents are beautiful, as always, though stylistically this books represents a bit a of a shift from the late 50’s issues I’ve showcased thus far. (See parts 1, 2, and 3.) I’ve limited the post to 18 examples, drawn from nearly all of the 20 subject groups, simply displayed in the order they were scanned. Before we get to It here are a few words from editor Walter Herdeg…

“Our society relies for its existence on the consumer behavior of its members. And consumption depends on– inter alia –advertising. Is this yearbook of advertising graphics, then, concerned with our society? Is it, indeed, a critical commentary on society? We leave the reader to form his own opinion.”

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By: Hitoshi Morishima / Carl Seltzer / Lou Jrimkess. Poster for an exhibition of Japanese advertising art in Las Angeles. Gold Seal, Red Sun.

By: Milton Glaser. Poster for new Olivetti Typewriter. (I must say if there is one thing I’ve noticed looking through old Graphis Annuals it’s that Olivetti consistently has some of the best work. In this case it’s no surprise considering the designer of course.)

By: Giancarlo Iliprandi. Poster for an exhibition of graphic design in Milan on the theme of aggression and violence.

By: Gunther Kiesre. Poster for blues group.

By: Dimitar Tassev. Poster for theater performance for young people. Polychrome bird, blue ‘rain.’

By: Hrnryk Tomaszewski. Poster for theater performance. (Were “rock and roll hands” already a “thing” back then? Or was this play about a starving horse which died, in rigor, on its back?)

By: Enrich Huguet. Advertisement for a new diuretic.

By: Arnold Varga. Newspaper ad for avant-garde clothing from John Wanamaker dept. stores. (Very avant! I’d love to wear a giant body-covering lion head to work.)

By: Dietmar R. Winkler (top) / Arnold Saks (bottom). MIT booklets / Business reports for Colt Industries.

By: Jane Wright / Warren Webber / Don Trousdell. Double spread mailer about umbrellas issued by the Beckett paper company. (Fucking brilliant. Umbrellas are the focus, disguise mustache, bowler, lucky clover, etc, the “accessories.” Love.)

By: Peter Bradford. Catalog cover for an AIGA graphic design exhibition. (For confused youngsters and 21st century graphics professionals: those yellow things are called “pencils.”)

By: Currie & William Haines. Illustration from an annual report for VSI Corp. who was active in the aerospace industry. Polychrome on blue ground.

By: Roman Cieslewicz. Cover of magazine TY I Ja. Polish.

By: Hans-Georg Rauch. Cover for Der Spiegel featuring “Mao’s new revolution.”

Detail of Der Spiegel cover above.

Charles Goslin / David Barnett. Covers for the magazinebedside Nurse. (Look very modern don’t they? But the bigger question “Bedside Nurse magazine?!”)

By: Kohei Sugiura. Front and back covers of Marketingram, the Shiseido house organ, here dealing with the morphology of the human head.

By: Ron Hughes. Cover for a record about ecology. (Gore could have used this for An Inconvenient Truth 35 years later.)

By: Tomi Ungerer. Air-India Poster.

As always these were just the examples that caught my eye, not necessarily perfectly representative of the state of design and illustration in 71 / 72.

This annual had an added bonus in the form of an introduction by one Paul Rand, a fella you designey types might have heard of. I decided rather than chop his text up into little quotes in the post I’d just make the whole thing available as a pdf, and here it is: Paul Rand Intro to Graphis Annual 71 / 72. Enjoy you design dorks.

More to come.

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10.21. filed under: !. design. 12

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