I’ve been a big fan of Visual Editions ever since they released Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes. Aside from the well-known fact that I am a Foer stan, I love that book because it was different and refreshing and ambitious. I love the publishers because they dared to do what most people would have written off as impossible.

(Lately, I’ve been thinking about the real difference between ‘impossible’ and ‘difficult,’ and I’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes, what we really mean by ‘impossible’ is that it’s a little bit too ‘difficult’ that we don’t have much of a desire to try. Sometimes, all we really need are a tiny push and a little bit of courage.)

Visual Editions’ latest offering is a re-imagining of Marc Saporta’s Composition No. 1. Initially, I was pretty unimpressed by what it comes off as—a loose-leaf book that seemed to be too much trouble to bother with. However, here’s the clincher: you can rearrange each page to tell the story in a way that makes sense.

It was Jean-Luc Godard who said that “A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end… but not necessarily in that order.” (Marc Saporta is, coincidentally, a Frenchman like Godard.) Composition No. 1 does follow a narrative, but you choose how the story will go. Google’s Tom Uglow writes in the introduction: “This is a work that confounds the convention of literature. Composition No. 1 was the first book to demand active participation, or what we might call today, interactive. There is nothing as disconcerting as the sensation of holding a loose sheaf of papers, with no numbers, no chapters, with a hundred and fifty beginnings and a hundred and forty nine endings.”

Saporta’s novel was first published in the ’60s. Think about how revolutionary and pretty much unheard of this idea was at the time. Today, it’s still considered something that goes outside the box of conventional publishing, what more then?

To push the boundaries even further, Visual Editions enlisted the help of Universal Everything‘s Matt Pike to create an accompanying app. I think it’s a great response to the growing dilemma (dialogue? contest?) between technology and the old ways of life. The presence of an app could discourage buyers from buying the book, but Uglow outlines the difference between the two: “The physical edition of Composition No. 1 is an object to be held, owned and loved. The digital edition is to be read, pushed, shared, discarded and reinvented.”

Most unconventional books have to battle the question–“So, what is it about?”—as though they had any more reason to prove themselves than the typical book. This is what Composition No. 1 is supposedly about:

“Composition No. 1 is about the interconnected stories of a group of Parisians during the Second World War German occupation. There is Marianne: a gifted Sorbonne graduate turned disappointed house-wife and mother. Long shut down by news of her husband X’s extramarital affairs Marianne begins to emotionally unravel when she has to nurse her close friend, Francine, through terminal cancer. Her husband is X, the mysterious narrator of this novel, who never speaks and is never described. A young artist, Dagmar, is working on an abstract self portrait painting called Composition No. 1 and once dated narrator X.”

Obviously, I have not read the book, but doesn’t that sound like an absolute wonder to read, and rearrange, and read again? What I love most about Visual Editions is that it concentrates on creating a unique experience for the reader, where the narrative is a part of the format, which is what they seem to be keen on reinventing. They play a lot around with the meaning behind the “bodies” of these texts.

I wrote about Foer’s Tree of Codes over in my pretty dead book blog, Book Report. It was the second book they ever printed, and it was such a glorious read. I can’t wait for their future books. Their website says they have two new ones on the way!

Visual Editions also claims to concentrate on making works that they file under Visual Writing, which is:

“…writing that uses visual elements as an integral part of the writing itself. Visual elements can come in all shapes and guises: they could be crossed out words, or photographs, or die-cuts, or blank pages, or better yet something we haven’t seen. The main thing is that the visuals aren’t gimmicky, decorative or extraneous, they are key to the story they are telling. And without them, that story would be something altogether different.“

One of their examples is my favorite book in the world, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. It is often thought of as annoying and gimmicky, but I don’t think Oskar Schell’s story could have been told any other way.

I love Visual Editions because they aren’t afraid to take risks, and they aren’t afraid to explore and exhaust all available possibilities. I’ve always wanted to work in books and publishing, and these people represent what I want to be making in the (hopefully near) future. Their work is always exciting to me, and I appreciate that they constantly show me that it can be done.

I just finished reading Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit From the Goon Squad” and you should know that this is not a review so much as a congregation of Things This Book Made Me Feel. I think, before I will be able to write a proper review, I would have to revisit the novel again (which I don’t mind, because I thought it was beautiful) or talk to other people who’ve read it. I thought it was brilliant, because aside from making me care about what—and oftentimes, who—she was writing about, Egan also utilized so many different ways of telling a story, fitting of the characters, the stories, and the circumstances.

Most of all, this novel moved me to want to start writing again.

Currently, my writing has been limited to tiny snippets of semi-fiction and to-do lists, some scenes that would play out in words and paragraphs, but would stay in my head, eventually disappearing forever. Example: a smattering of notes for a YA novel I have had in my head for a while. Another example: a collection of short fiction that I never quite managed to complete.

I used to dream about having my fiction published, and writing a column for some magazine or broadsheet or online tendency catalog group. That was what I always wanted to be, but I think I really just am more sensitive about my writing than my design work. I never really published a lot of my stories, but I wrote all the time. This was the journal I used to bring around with me from when I started college until the end of sophomore year:

Right now, I’ve still been writing, but the level of documentation from then is so much different. It was very entertaining to read through: often funny, sometimes sad and painful. But I loved it because it reminded me of how real those feelings felt at the time, and it showed me a) that it really does get better, and b) how much I’ve grown up, even if sometimes, it doesn’t quite feel like it.

I’ve been writing in tiny notebooks (Field Notes is obviously the brand of choice, LOL), and while it is awesome for to-do lists and keeping me in line when it comes to productivity, it’s not particularly helpful for me when I want to write. Maybe that’s just an excuse I’d been formulating. Maybe it’s not in the tools, but in the want to write, in the desire to keep track of everything, in the love of telling stories.

Sometimes I think that maybe I was never meant to be a writer. This years-long dry spell is a little bit ridiculous. But, Egan’s writing jolted a desire I’d been nursing from before I could even remember: to put thoughts and ideas and lives into words. It moved me to want to start turning possibilities into actual, tangible writing. Maybe I’ll come up with something crappy, but that’s O.K. The important thing is that I always just try to be better. It’s better to come up with creating something that could possibly be good, than giving up before even getting started.

Something from a person whose work (and opinions!) I admire, Ira Glass:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this.

And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met.

It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.“

And so, my personal mantra, until I die:

I have been faltering colossally, on the book front this year. Reading, not buying. (I seem to have no problems with the latter…) I was reading pretty rapidly in 2010, so I felt bold enough to challenge myself to read 75 books this year, as opposed to the usual goal of 50/52. I suppose it’s pretty clear that I overshot and now, I am in big trouble. As of right this very moment, I have read sixteen books, some of which are poetry collections and graphic novels.

Even though I’ve been obviously failing at quantities, I’d like to think that, on the upside, I’ve been exploring different genres and types of books. A smart alec once told me that I should read books other than Jewish fiction, which I admittedly tend to gravitate towards. I would say that I do so unwittingly—I had no idea that Aleksandar Hemon’s “The Lazarus Project,” for one, was such. Anyway, lately, I have been exploring new genres like poetry and non-fiction. So, anonymous smart alec—be proud. I did this for you. (Not really.)

I think I’ve also had very different reading experiences. Out of the sixteen I finished reading, five were borrowed, and I rarely ever finish borrowed books. One was an ebook sent by Aldrin, the third ever I’ve finished reading. I also realized that I can’t really read books in increments, or I will lose interest. I need to be immersed in something for a long time, or else days will go by before I pick it up again. I may have also lost my ability to multi-read! Currently in the middle of about ten books. I am ashamed of myself also.

For the next few days, I’m going to be writing about books again, I hope. I think maybe when I stopped writing about them, it also affected the way I read, and the way I processed what I read. In any case—I’ve been taking down notes, so I hope not much will have been lost with time.

I’m going to start with my January reads: Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger andRichard Yates by Tao Lin. I also read Adam David’s The El Bimbo Variations (which you can download as a free PDF over here), but I might write about that another day. I guess I’ve been feeling really stupid and useless when it comes to books. Some of my February books, I already wrote about here (Jack Gilbert’s Refusing Heaven and Shane Jones’ Light Boxes). Oh! People, you would be pleased (?) to know that I have not read any YA this year… Although I imagine I would have to now. /withdrawals

Under the cut, “reviews” of Nine Stories by JD Salinger and Richard Yates by Tao Lin. And for the curious: a rough list of my 2011 reads, complete and in progress.

Continue reading 2011 & BOOKS (SO FAR)….

It’s Cinco de Mayo! So, naturally, I am hauling ass off to Bangkok. I will be back on the twelfth, so I don’t know, maybe you can email me if you need me. I wanted to put a queue on this thing so there’s some semblance of life during this week-long absence, but I got overwhelmed by laziness and you know, general lack of interesting things to say. However, I will try to blog using my phone. I’m leaving my laptop, and I am already undergoing separation anxiety.

My plan for may was actually sort of going to be something self-transformational, so I was going to go over goals and make actual plans for things. But obviously, that didn’t happen. I was undergoing a minor crisis yesterday, which isn’t ideal when you are just about to go on a trip, but those are things you can’t really help, I guess.

One goal I actually pushed through with (or looks like I am anyway), is my plan to make May my sci-fi/fantasy reading month! Last month was, with no intent, a non-fic reading month. Maybe themed months are what work for me, who knows? In any case, I’m bringing the first two installments of C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy: “Out of the Silent Planet” and “Perelandra.” I have about eight more titles, because I am either ambitious or pretty stupid, but I’m quite excited.

•

Wrote that entry before I left but never got around to posting it! I’ve spent a day and a half in Bangkok, so far, and it’s so different from what I remember.

Been around so many parts of the city, and I’m still so excited!

Part Two: In which I show you what we made together

I attended the workshop with six other people: my brother, Meggie Ong, Jason Moss, Dex Fernandez, Jigger Cruz, and Paolo Ferrer. I did not know any of them, except for my brother, going into it. Obviously was very nervous and fake-shy, but that quickly went away, because they were all much better at being sociable than I was. This is where I will post pictures of what we made together along with Bongoût (Anna Hellsgård and Christian Gfeller), Manuel Ocampo, and Carlo Ricafort.

We made two-color covers, experimenting with many-colored ink passes through the screen. It turned out okay, I think. Some of the local inks were a bit tricky to deal with though, because you had to mix them with this thing called an extender (if I am not mistaken), but we were mostly happy with the results.

One layer of ink.

Two layers! You can’t see it very well, but there’s a purple overlay over than orange back layer.

Three layers! A blue, a grey-green, and then a purple-y rose color over everything.

Collaboration between several artists feat. a gradient from purple to some pinks and reds.

Each one was hand-sewn! The paper was sort of too thick, in my opinion, so it was harder to puncture and sew.

Some copies are available at DAGC Gallery, I think. You can drop by (Pasong Tamo Ext.) if you want to take a look. I have two in my possession (01 and 09), so you can also ask me to see them, if we’re friends! I’d be happy to show you.

Part One: In which I tell you about most of it.

Last weekend, I was a part of a three-day silkscreen workshop conducted by Bongoût (Berlin) and DAGC Gallery (which is located along Pasong Tamo Extension. I posted about their formal opening over here). I was going to be all profound and was planning on waxing poetic about how much of a privilege it was to have been part of the workshop, but I will spare you, whoever you are, and let these pictures speak for themselves.

A couple of things:

One, I did have a lot of fun.

Two, I learned a lot.

Three, sometimes being thrown into something big and meaningful with a bunch of people you don’t know is the best kind of adventure there is. Aside from my brother, I didn’t really know anyone else who was part of the group. I laughed like a lunatic, though. It’s great when you can joke around and work with the same people.

To breeze through the process, here’s what happened:

1.) We drew stuff. We had a bunch of books we could trace from. Sarie calls it cheating.

2. We exposed these drawings to BLINDING LIGHTS so as to make impressions on the silkscreen. The screens have been coated with photo-sensitive emulsion.
(P.S. This is one of our teachers, Christian. He’s been doing this since he was in school.)

3. We print them on with silkscreen ink! We made approximately 30 editions of each sheet.

5. We cut/trim, bind, and sign everything!
(We ended up just having 29 copies… because apparently, we cannot count.)

Anna! The other half of Bongoût.

A list of some of the things I took away from this experience:

• I never want to hold another 9-to-5 again. If I could do these things and just make stuff for the rest of my life, without having to live in a box, I would be very happy.

Which is to say, I really had so much fun. I imagined myself waking up every morning and just thinking about what I could draw or make or put together, and it was just such an attractive option for me. Of course, the dread of Living In a Box loomed over me, but I think I’d rather be happy this way, than sort-of happy with a bank account I don’t even get to use. If that makes sense.

More photos under the cut! Under which, we draw a lot, drink some beer, and act silly. Also, you may notice, I may or may not be really attracted to tattoos. Not people with tattoos, just tattoos, in general. I just love how they look, but that is all I have to say about it. They have a knack of disappointing you, though.

And, since this is pretty image heavy already (and maybe also to prolong the suspense—although, not really, really), I’ll be posting photos of the finished books in another entry, aka part two.

Continue reading Avant-Garde Silkscreen Sweatshop!…