Image Machine Book
No pagination. No one expects a graphic novel to be quoted. Pagination would ruin the layout and design.
Coach House Books is reissuing The Cage by Martin Vaughn-James.
The disposition of the pages is important not only to the images but also to the flow of the words... For example, this greets the reader. I quote from the left-side of a two page layout:
erupting yet again against that featureless facade ... repeating all its infinite convulsions slowly, as if each tiny splash had been halted in its course, pinned down, examined and dissected ...and the imaginative space occupied by this observation seems to continue on the right-side, almost as if by way of an answer...
its flight meticulously recorded in the hope that, when assembled, these fluctuating observations would somehow serve to reconstruct and ultimately illuminate that thing whose very nature defied examination ...One almost thinks that what is being described is the object at hand: oneiric layers captured in codex form. Later one comes across this pair. Again beginning with the left-side of a two page spread (though there is no reason to begin with the left except custom).
... wooden framework skilfully constructed with a craftmanship almost excessively meticulous considering the brutality of its purpose ... all joints precisely dove-tailed (where nails would suffice), reinforced with polished metal plates (square, as always) (themselves engraced with labyrinthine patterns) and all its surfaces lacquered like a gleaming brittle sheath ...And again an almost answer from the right side.
less an actual machine than an odd and enigmatic abstraction, totally unnatural, its utility obscured and isolated from the encroaching vegetation ...Abstract machine?
And so for day 377
26.12.2007
