Category: Books on Books

About The Oxford Companion to the Book, this review says “This colossal new encyclopaedic Companion has something to say about almost everything that matters in the world of writing, printing, publishing and book-collecting….not just the history of print, but also the history of manuscripts, libraries, bookselling and book-editing. Dozens of experts have contributed, submitting long essays on general topics or short reference entries. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, a cornucopia of bookish information.” It’s 2 volumes, 1048 pages and costs over $250 on Amazon. You can read excerpts here.

Like many craftspeople, I have a shelf full of resource books. Some are how-to books, some are exhibition catalogues, there are books about binding, type, and different art techniques. I also count my collection of artists books as “resources” as I often use them, as I do those other books, for inspiration. I have a how-to book with instructions I’ve rarely used, but I turn to its picture gallery often to help me when I’m stuck and need ideas for another book structure or a variation to experiment with.
Dorothy Krause’s new book, Book + Art, Handcrafting Artists’ Books is a cross between a how-to and an exhibition catalogue. In particular its photos are a glorious showcase of Krause’s work. While she talks about bookmaking, her subject is really how to use the book format, and even pre-made books, for your artwork in one-of-a-kind books. Her use of books began as a substrate for her prints and other oddments when she traveled. She says in the introduction “my early books allowed me to explore repetition and variation in a small format…I have focused on learning traditional book-making processes and adapting them to meet my needs as an artist.”
Unlike the other bookmaking books on my shelf, Krause includes instructions for many printmaking techniques, from gelatin monoprints to inkjet and image transfers. And the book does pass the inspiration test: a friend and I were talking about what sort of structure to house her small, sewn paper collages, and Krauses’ book yielded a good suggestion for her to try.

At the beginning of the year, Alice Simpson posted a query on the Book Arts List for titles of fiction that had books as a central plot point. Lots of people answered, and I’ve compiled a list HERE (if you have any additions for the list, let me know in the comments section). The list is a smorgasbord, some fiction, some mysteries, some new, some old. I thought I’d start by reading the mysteries on the list, and here’s what I’ve read so far:

• Unsolicited and Uncatalogued by Julie Kaewert (1994 and 2002), part mystery, part adventure-thriller, part romance. Sluggish writing and too much violence for this reader.
• The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (1993). After a few chapters, I had an odd feeling I’d read this book already, but had forgotten to record it in my book log. I said something about this to my husband, who reminded me that the book was made into a movie I’d seen called The Ninth Gate. The book, despite the lack of Johnny Depp, is much better than the movie, especially on how one might go about forging a 17th-century text.
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2000). Not a mystery, but a huge novel about the rise of comics, the Holocaust, NYC, Jews, and World War II. Quite an adventure and fun to read.
• Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (1917, 1919). Parnassus on Wheels is about a fictional traveling book-selling business owned by Roger Mifflin. The Haunted Bookshop continues Mifflin’s story, after he settles down in Brooklyn with a second-hand bookstore. The second is a bit of a mystery story; the name refers to the ghosts of the authors that haunt bookstores. Both books are light-hearted and sentimental — perfect for a Sunday afternoon — and left me feeling full and satisfied.

Sociologist Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman isn’t about books or bookmaking but the larger issue of craftsmanship. It’s a flawed book in many ways, but I kept reading as it was full of thought-provoking ideas. He argues that our sense of well-being is rooted in craftsmanship and that the rewards of craftsmanship — rather than the promise of monetary gain — motivates us to work. Unfortunately our work culture isn’t hospitable to craft — the machine & money rules.
For Sennett, “craftsmanship” is the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake. It’s certainly not unskilled manual labor, it requires the hand & head to work together (To quote Immanuel Kant: “The hand is the window on to the mind”). He also says a lot about risk: A good craftsperson “exuberant and excited, is willing to risk losing control over his or her work, machines break down when they lose control, whereas people make discoveries, stumble on happy accidents.”
To me crafts are marginalized activities — such as bookbinding — but Sennett updates this and makes the case that such professions as doctor, nurse, chiropractor, musician, and computer programmer engage in craftsmanship. All of the skills for these professions are learned and practiced today in much the same way as they were in a medieval workshop: through apprenticeships (or internships or mentors on the job), repetition, access to authority with knowledge, communities of same-skilled craftsmen.
Sennett makes a passionate argument that craftsmanship needs to be recognized and prized. In the current (American) culture, we seem to have bifurcated into the elites (head only) and the unskilled (hand only) — the middle-class is forgotten or ignored. Sennett deplores this, and contends that “nearly anyone can become a good craftsman” and that “learning to work well enables people to govern themselves and so become good citizens.” It’s a timely argument, given the recent financial and economic melt-down and president-elect Obama’s plans for an economic recovery program that includes rebuilding roads and infrastructure (all involving craft/hand work).
The book is full of stories and anecdotes about the history of one craft or another. While interesting and enjoyable in themselves — they often read like a letter or blog post by a really well read guy — they too often digress from the main point. I was forever having to reorient myself as I read. And either Sennett is a horrible writer or Yale Press (who published the book) doesn’t have an editor. Not only are there typos and punctuation problems, but the language is often quite choppy and awkward. (My biggest peeve though is actually with the binding and page layout. The book is thick, the binding sewn. The gutter is so small that I had to constantly press hard on the open pages to read the rightmost words on the left page, eventually breaking the spine. Lousy craft.)
Despite these flaws, I’ve been discussing the ideas and historical anecdotes with everyone I know. But I suspect a more condensed book would have gotten his ideas across just as well. The Yale Press website has several interviews with Sennett that might be a better introduction to his ideas than wading through the bad prose.

I was excited to see my friends Carolee & Jennie, aka PodPost, at the table next to mine at the BABA Book Jam in October. We got to visit and catch up. But best of all was seeing their happy reaction when author Lisa Sonora Beam showed up with her book The Creative Entrepreneur, which features PodPost (you can see their trademark badge sashes in the book spread to the right). The book shows you how to make and keep an Artist’s Business Journal — a visual approach to business development for people who want to make a business out of their creative work. While I only got to browse through the book, what I saw was fun to read and fun to look at. It has a special appeal this time of year when I’m starting to think about getting organized for next year (what is it about November and December that makes me feel like such a disorganized mess that I spend all of January trying to straighten and clean up my life?)