Fear and Loathing in the Library

I didn’t have any set idea for the kind of book I wanted to make for the found and bound project. I was hoping to find a “cool” book that would inspire me, so I riffled through as many books as I could in the library to find one that was visually appealing inside more than out, but most of them were heavily text and data based. In the Leonardtown bookstore I found a book that was over 100 years old that was beautifully aged, antiqued, and I thought I could do something interesting with it. However, I couldn’t bring myself to destroy something so old even though it was only $10 and virulently intolerant (it said horrible things about Blacks, women and Protestants). I went with the book “Close-Up on the City” that I found in the library.

My process for expanding the book was odd. I wanted to approach it from a standpoint of creatively editing the text rather that completely obscuring its original content—the only part I completely made my own was the cover. I also wanted to do something prolific (who doesn’t?) that I would achieve at least in part by “editing” a vast majority of the book—this is where I made my first mistake because creating artwork and messages on all 200 pages was too much work given the time I had. I should have picked a smaller book with regard to both size and page count. Also, I knew I wanted to hollow out a space in it (my parents wouldn’t let me do that when I was a kid) and put in a mouse trap. I don’t know why that was the only idea before starting the project.

Much of my editing came from adding interesting images to complement the text or subvert it. I found these in magazines and pasted them in. The cover has a religious image of god creating the earth that I cut out to make it look like he was destroying a city in a hurricane-like vortex; the flaming fire image was a somewhat ominous compliment to the title page; the covered face went with the section title Preface; the nude woman served to create a “dirty” undertone for the page in which I highlighted all the vaguely sexual words and phrases. The writing I did in the book was supposed to seem like marginal notes written by a previous and immature reader before I edited it, but I don’t think that was successful.

Overly I thought my book was relatively unsuccessful. I was trying to subvert the theme of the book like a few of the other students did, but I don’t think that is very obvious. I also didn’t edit nearly as much of the book as I would have liked to. Compared to all of the other books mine seems inadequate and half assed. It also doesn’t have the narrative links from page to page that I was hoping for—instead each page is a work in and of its own. It feels incomplete.

I should have put that mouse trap in the book.