Anatomy Meets Typography

I was examining the copy in the Thomas Fischer Rare Book Library from back to front and remember seeing this page in the BookThug 2012 edition of André Alexis essay My Vagina. It struck be as a colophon. And the layout of the name appeared like a headstone given the context.

André Alexis

I was born in Trinidad, in 1957. My mother's name is Adrian Ena Borde. If, after my death, anyone should wish to reprint this essay, Would be grateful if the date of my death were added, so that my time from my mother's womb to the "great cold" (that other womb) may be known.

Turns out this was no colophon but the conclusion of the essay for the previous page introduces the segment with the words "my name is".

For readers accessing the essay via In the Flesh: Twenty Writers Explore the Body edited by Kathy Page and Lynne Van Luven there will be no such misapprehension; there is no such page break.

However, there is a palpable effect that is reproduced in both editions — thanks to the essay's position in the In the Flesh collection (in almost the middle of the book). Alexis plants a footnote midway in his essay which derives some of its charm in how the book or pamphlet falls away in two equal halves. He writes, "This, the exact centre of my essay, seems as good a place as any to talk about the clitoris." The effect is uncanny. The note flows on over the two facing pages.

And so for day 2208
29.12.2012