Production Narrative

by J.Drucker

Transforming this book from a typescript to a letterpress book only happened after I had an epiphany for the design. That came from exposure to the work of Peter Eisenman, in particular, his House X project. I had been grappling with a way to structure the design so that it would have an internal logic. The first pages I printed, in the initial trial version, followed a tabloid format, but they seemed too parodic. I wanted a stricter formal integrity to the work, so when I read House X and saw that a procedure with a degree of repetition and variation, and some random variable in it, could be used as a method for design, I suddenly saw a way to deal with the structure and design of this book. I decided to use certain mathematical progressions: four pages (one signature) of pages with one paragrah, eight pages (two sheets) with two paragraphs, twelve pages (three sheets) with three paragraphs, and sixteen pages (four sheets) with four paragraphs. That made a total of ten sheets for the body of the text, plus title, half-title, colophon etc. Within that regular progression, each section had its own variants. The first section began with a single paragraph that was set in type that began with the largest point size and went to the smallest. The second page had large type on the top and bottom of the paragraph and the smallest type was in the middle, the third reversed this, and the fourth went from smallest to largest. Every sequence had a regular set of changes and alterations to it, but one element of random change or variation was allowed per page as well. I always compose in the stick, which is to say, much editing and selection occured as I went. The original text manuscript was longer, and I think (though I'd have to compare them), more prosaic. I wanted a more condensed and tighter text. Also, I was learning so much at Berkeley that the ideas I was absorbing from critical theory, in particular, issues about language and psychoanalysis in relation to feminism, that these kept coming into the text as I worked. The content of the book shifted somewhat in focus, towards a sense of the polymorphous voice as a feminist mode. The images were produced using a ruler as guide to the lino cutter. My goal was a mechanistic look, one that didn't seem at all in the expressionist or conventional traditions of woodblock. Also, it was a fast way to work, though it took a bit of just sheer daring to cut fast with only a small guiding sketch of the lines. It was also cheap. The book took about 400 hours, as I recall, to produce. Forty pages, each with about a 5 hour setting time, 2 hours for printing, 2 for breaking down, and then the lino cuts, plus collating, sewing, etc.

Critical Analysis

by J. Drucker

Design Features

typographic: The type is Stymie, all the way through. The shift from majuscule to lower case and then to descending or ascending order of point size were all determined simply by limited resources. When I ran out of the type in one size or register, I began to substitute until it became impossible to say what I wanted (even within the composing in the stick compromise approach to the text). At that point, I would shift to the next size.

imagery: I used newspaper and snapshot images as the basis of the linocuts.

graphical: The force of the layout is quite strong in this book, partly because the Stymie type and the massive paragraphs are so imposing.But it was also meant to encourage browsing. Knowing how dense and difficult the texts were, I wanted to provide various ways of engaging with it. A reader was supposed to feel they could browse, reading only headlines, snippets, chunks, as in the reading of a newspaper, rather than feel they had to follow the text in a linear fashion.

development: The mathematical progression organizing the layout is evident, and was meant to create a sense of the fragmenting discourse, increasingly unreconcilable into any unified authority.

textual: The text is meant as a commentary on fictional forms, and as an indulgence in fragments of production. The work shifts register from critical to metaphoric language. Each paragraph, often each line, references different discourse fields.

Critical Discussion

The book is meant as an exercise in critical design. The use of layout borrowed from the popular press to create a work that is theoretically and textually dense was a deliberate move. The themes of women and narrative, news and mediation, language and material, and the ongoing human comedy are all present here.

Edition 1

Against Fiction

Agents

Johanna Drucker

type: initiating

role:
author
printer
artist

nationality:
born: United States
active: United States
citizenship: United States

dates:
birth: 1952-05-30

Publication Information

edition type: editioned

publisher: Druckwerk

dates:
production: 1983-06-00:1983-10-00
publication: 1983-00-00

edition size: 97

Measurements

horizontal: 13.25 inches closed

vertical: 16.5 inches closed

depth: .4 inches closed

Production Information

production means:
letterpress (local)
linoleum (local)

binding: hand sewn (local)

substrate:
bookBlock: paper Warren's Oldstyle for 100 of the attempted copies, newsprint for 25 of the attempted copies.
endsheets: paper Warren's Oldstyle for 100 of the attempted copies, newsprint for 25 of the attempted copies.

media:
ink (local)

Appearance

format: codex (AAT)

cover: Thick black paper over board forms the cover. the front cover has a piece of Warren's Oldstyle pasted on the front with the title printed on it.

color: no

Content

pagination: unpaginated 48 pages

numbered?: numbered

signed?: signed

Colophon

Of one hundred and twenty-five attempted, one hundred were on Warren's Oldstyle, twenty-five were on newsprint. Handset Stymie. Printed on a Vandercook Proof press. In Oakland, California. From June to October. By Johanna Drucker.

Exhibition Information

exhibition history: See c.v. or Artist's Profile.

reception history: See c.v. in Bibliography. Not extensive.

General Comments

An interesting aside: At the time I was printing this book, Zuzana Licko and Rudy VanderLans were beginning the various undertakings that became Emigre. Rudy invited me to contribute a page from Against Fiction for inclusion in the very first issue of the magazine of that name. So odd, seeing it there in all it's old-fashioned letterpress integrity within the newly hatched digital universe of graphic design. [J.Drucker]