Critical Analysis

by E. Rettberg

Design Features

typographic: Type appears only on the front and back covers; this "short story" is told entirely in pictures.

imagery: The contrast between Nurse Duck's schoolbook stylings and the animals' equally absurd but more verisimilitudinous appearance helps highlight Duck as the protagonist.

graphical: A variety of comic-style frames help carry the narrative along.

development: Nurse Duck takes a walk through biological evolution, from cellular creatures to fish to plants to insects to apes; almost all of her steps, however, also bear imprints of humanity--butterflies and bats are arranged into ordered towers, for example, and domestic-looking birds provide convenient perches for the nurse. In the end, Nurse Duck quite literally enters the machine of industrial society.

textual: The very name "Nurse Duck," which combines a human occupation with an animal, reinforces the book's collapsing of the realms of natural and artificial, of animal, plant, and human.

General Comments

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Nurse Duck Approaches and Enters and Leaves the Garden of Eden

Agents

Willyum Rowe

type: initiating

role:
artist
designer

Publication Information

edition type: editioned

publisher: Visual Studies Workshop Press

place: 31 Prince St., Rochester, New York, 14607

dates:
publication: 1982-00-00

edition size: unknown

Measurements

horizontal: 10 7/8 inches closed

vertical: 16 3/8 inches closed

depth: 1/16 inches closed

Production Information

production means:
offset (local)

binding: saddle stitching (AAT) two staples

substrate:
bookBlock: paper

media:
ink (local)

Appearance

general description: An impressively large, floppy volume in a vibrant variety of colors; the titular character appears throughout in a consistent pink color and static form.

format: codex (AAT)

cover: The front cover features a light blue background with a cascade of frames in which nurse duck emerges; the title character also appears on the bottom of the cover, dwarfed by the pagespace. The title information is in the upper-right-hand corner in serif all-caps. The back cover features the narrative's end, the front cover its beginning.

color: yes

devices: n/a

Content

pagination: unpaginated 20 unnumbered pages

numbered?: unnumbered

signed?: unsigned

Colophon

This book was made possible by an artist's project grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. Nurse Duck took this walk for Carr Garnett and would like to thank Joan Lyons, Keith Smith and Gary Struebing for making this trek a possibility. Page 14 is dedicated to the memory of Bijou.