Production Narrative

by J. Drucker

This project was an enormous undertaking, and incorporated found materials, any and every type of text production I had access to (low tech, and non-standard), and was meant to execute the aesthetic observations of the Dallas built environment as a work that embodied textual alienation. The book was begun by fall 1987, but only finished in early summer 1988, under pressure of departure. A lonely time, in Dallas, teaching summer school, with few friends, no lover, profoundly isolated, but in which I knew I had to finish what I had started or leave it forever undone. Dallas had been extremely difficult. I would have felt cheated if defeated by its cruelties. Making the book meant a kind of triumph over that adversity, costly though it was. I watched television non-stop for several weeks as I finished the project, breaking off only to teach summer school and to swim. Still, the handmade and cunning cleverness of a number of the little book objects seems to have merited the investment of attention.

Critical Analysis

by J. Drucker

Design Features

typographic: Hand written, lettered, using press-type, typewriter, and every conceivable form of non-printing-press modes of typographic production.

imagery: The book's imagery is only apparent in the iconographic form of the small book objects and their resemblance to the postmodern built forms of mid-1980s Dallas.

Critical Discussion

Every book object in the collection was unique, and so each would need its own description. Each was meant to use materials in relation to its theme -- the questions of composition, form, description, and literary conventions-- in order to reinforce the investigation being made in the text. Each object would need to be described and discussed individually.

Bookscape

Agents

Johanna Drucker

type: initiating

role:
author
designer

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

dates:
birth: 1952-05-30

Publication Information

edition type: unique

publisher: A single, uneditioned, unique work, not published.

place: Dallas, Texas.

dates:
publication: 1988-00-00

edition size: Unique

Measurements

horizontal: 36" approx inches closed

vertical: 24" approx inches closed

depth: 8" approx inches closed

Production Information

production means:
offset (local)

binding: other

substrate:
bookBlock: paper
endsheets: paper

media:
ink (local)
drawing media (AAT)
found objects (AAT)
other paint (AAT)

Appearance

format: book object (AAT)

cover: Cardboard covered with metallic paper.

color: yes

Content

pagination: unpaginated

numbered?: unnumbered

signed?: signed

Colophon

none