For the past week the news has been full of pieces about the upcoming 9/11 anniversary. Ten years ago I’d just started a year-long class on artist’s books at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Many weeks we had an assignment to make a book for an upcoming class, and the one prior to Sept 11 was to make a book using a paper sleeve from an old record and the text from 2 letters written by Kafka to his fiance Felice. The letters are completely over-the-top — I don’t have the 2 we used, but here’s an example:
Dearest, what have I done that makes you torment me so? No letter again today, neither by the first mail nor the second.
You do make me suffer! While one written word from you could make me happy! You’ve had enough of me; there is no other explanation, it’s not surprising after all; what is incomprehensible, though, is that you don’t write and tell me so.
If I am to go on living at all, I cannot go on vainly waiting for news of you, as I have done these last few interminable days. But I no longer have any hope of hearing from you.
I shall have to repeat specifically the farewell you bid me in silence.
I should like to throw myself bodily on this letter, so that it cannot be mailed, but it must be mailed.
I shall expect no further letters.
As I stood at my workbench after 9/11, reading the letters and fingering the record sleeve, I wondered how to recover from such a horrible shock, how to feel safe again. The book I made was an attempt to work through what I’d seen on TV and in the photos that filled the newspaper.
I titled the book “Within the Envelope: Fear and Comfort.” It’s got an accordion spine and each page is a small record sleeve with a piece of paper where the record would go. I was taken with the idea that what one saw through the hole in the sleeve was about fear, but there might be comfort after pulling the page out to see the entire picture. This is an idea I’ve returned to several times, but none, I think, as successful as this first attempt. I’ve made a video of the book below.