From numbers to words

Whereas the last post was all about numbers, this one is all about words—specifically, artistic ways of dealing with too many words on a page.

I brought home A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel, by Tom Phillips this weekend. I picked it off the shelf of graphic novels because it was a new title amongst the other ones that don't seem to turn over too quickly. I then walked out of the store with it because it is very, very cool. If you ever get a chance to flip through the book, I suggest you do so. Words are artistically eliminated from the page and those that are left visible tell their own story. The art added to the page also lends itself to the message conveyed by the now highlighted text. The title itself is an example of the technique. W. H. Mallock titled his book A Human Document. Creative obscurity turned it into A Humument. All in all, not bad for a 19th-century novel plucked off a used book shelf for three pence.

This reminds me of Stephen Wright's line about not using a highlighter on important passages in texts. He instead uses a black Sharpie marker to block out the unimportant verbiage. Bravo!

Anyhow, I immediately strolled over to the 50-cent or trash cart in front of the store and brought home my own sacrificial text. While my artistic skills are not worth talking about, I thought perhaps I could find words on the page to describe my mood that day or an event or even use it like a hard-copy blog. It's not easy reading a page and remaining detached from the words enough to not get caught up in the author's original intent while cataloging the words enough to see which ones to save.

I'll let you know how my dismemberment of this tome progresses.