In Literary Figures, the experiment was to communicate the writing style of ten noted authors through graphic imagery only. A prerequisite was that the writer had to have a unique writing style. In researching the authors for this work, I found that most writers do not indeed have a definite style. Their prose is very similar; it is a general form of stringing words together into sentences to tell a story. Care was taken to not confuse style with genre. And yet, each author represented is associated with a particular subject that has become synonymous with that writer. Since I chose a visual medium, and it is easier to communicate emotion through graphics than it is to mirror sentence structure, it may appear that my description relies more heavily on content than style, but it is my opinion that the two are clearly interrelated.
The images are printed on different kinds of paper. The individual color and texture of the paper acts as a background and becomes an integral part of the image. The same way that the background color and texture of paper upon which printed words appear is evinced in and around the letters that they carry. The paper is tipped into place only at the top so the viewer can lift it and feel its surface. Serigraphy and letterpress printing were used to create the prints. I screened the image first and then Mr. Mundell and I printed the letterpress areas.
Originally, the prints in their folios were meant to be loose within a clam-shell box. I changed this when I realized that the prints would make more sense to a viewer if presented in a certain sequence. To assure that they remain in that sequence, the folios are bound within the box. The cover design carries ten rows of illegible writing, each line ending in the legible name of one of the selected authors. The background is a repeating pattern of what could be construed as baby birds with their mouths open and upraised. They are meant to be ambiguous because they are used merely as ornamentation.
Though ten authors are represented, there are eleven prints in this work. The first print is a composite of writing in general. It is meant to convey abstractly the thought process beginning with the author's brain and ending in the printed word form.
The next page is a list of the individual prints, the size and typeface used for the letterpress printing portion of the image, and the trade name of the paper upon which the image is printed. This is followed by a preface in which I state my intentions as an artist. The first page of each folio announces the author, and includes a brief paragraph on that particular author's writing style as perceived by me, the artist.
1 — JAMES JOYCE
This graphic is printed in black on cream-colored paper. The illusion conveyed is that of illegible handwritten words which create an image of a human being with the letter "O" as a head emerging into fractured letterforms.* (The use of an illegible string of words is an obvious signal that it is not meant to be read, but instead meant to be viewed as part of the visual as opposed to the written communication.) This is meant to imply that the author not only plays with various words, but also capriciously puts them together to convey new meanings—communications that are only loosely but clearly related and based on their original definitions. At the base of the image is a copyright as Joyce might have penned it: ©COPYRIGHT NINETIMES SOVEREIGNTY ATE. (1978), which is a word satire of the symbol for an author's legal right to fight plagiarisn.
2 — JOHN STEINBECK
Also printed on cream-colored paper, this graphic is printed in warm-hued colors to convey the homespun feel of the author's writing. A man's facial image looking upward is superimposed over a shanty town, the man's eye being the round leaded attic window of one of the homes. He is not sad, but humble, and using the attic window as one of his eyes conveys his embodiment of hearth and home, and his mental sacrifices in opposition to humankind's baser physical urges. The eye looks to encouraging words printed in an arc as a rainbow, suggesting this man's hope of rising beyond his lowly station in life.
3 — JOHN FOWLES
Printed in forest green and black on cream-colored paper, the illegible handwritten words serve as a background for puppet strings. The strings fall from the word "HERMES," suggesting a man-made god, and ending at the base of the print in humanoid letterforms. The suggestion is that of manipulation. A bespectacled evil eye reaffirms that premise as it peers out from behind illegible script. The eye (the author) is the manipulator of the puppets, who are the readers, and the characters in the story. This rendering is based on Fowles' The Magus, in which the author plays with his reader using mystical gods that emerge and disappear throughout the plot, similar to his other works where plots lean in one direction only to be pulled into another.
4 — SHIRLEY JACKSON
This image is based on Jackson's short story The Lottery, where the essence of things not being what they seem is implied by the hint that a normal and natural situation may be more unusual and bizarre than first assumed. The pleasant humming sound of "MMMMM" at the top of the image turns into the hiss of "SSSS S S" and then into "KRACK, KRACK," by the time one reaches the bottom of the image. Notice that the letter "K" replaces the normal letter "C" in the word "CRACK," to emphasize aurally what is written. The eye has traveled through letterforms both type-like and script-like as one ingests the possibilities of an unexpected horror. The author (using highly subjective adjectives) injects into the story an apprehension of evil to come and at the same time suppresses that notion (by describing normally peaceful situations) until the reader is totally unsure of what to expect next. The surprise ending is alarming because it is nothing one expects at the winning of a lottery. Here, the winner loses. The artistic object is to intimate the possibility of terror so dire that the viewer strives to reject the painful thought only to have it in the end become the reality he or she feared.
5 — ANDRÉ GIDE
Everything I have read by Gide has been a translation from the French so l can only guess that I am correct to state that he writes prose as pure as my eyes have ever seen. I can honestly state that in my researching the works for this book, André Gide became my all-time favorite writer of prose. That uncluttered pureness translates into a style of writing that brings his characters into ever closer relationships with each other, and consequently shapes the story plot. This print conveys that message and includes the familiarity of his writings by using the French word for familiarity: TU. The word "TU" is printed over varicolored overlays of illegible script-like writings that separate an image of the bottom of a rioting mob at the top of the print, and the top of the same mob at the bottom of the print, which, in representing a chaotic situation, is the exact opposite of the way it should realistically be. The implication is that understanding one another is the key to social civility. And it may take turning everything upside down to clearly view the problem and to find a solution. The scream of the mob is pleading for sense and logic to overcome fear and ignorance. The illegible writing implies the original venue, which is that of words.
6 — THOMAS MANN
Thomas Mann's works reflect basic human emotional needs in stressful situations and plot their deterioration into disgrace and disrepair. To reflect abasement through color, the paper is the color brown that hay turns when it is no longer useful to humankind. The paper carries white fibers (over the brown background) which cling to the top surface in a swirling repeating pattern. Through the use of a similar coloring the printed image is almost totally integrated within the paper's surface design. Illegible script-like words twist and twine through the paper pattern, and become an integral part of it. Only through careful scrutiny can the eye determine a naked male at the base of the image, his legs up in the air and his hands hidden between his legs, doing something obviously questionable. The visual obfuscation conveys those human urges that most of us wish to remain in their own private realms.
7 — LAWRENCE DURRELL
This print, although the seventh in the sequence, was the first one that was completed. I will never forget the joy that Mr. Mundell and I felt when we integrated the printed type with the visual serigraphy and looked at the completed print for the very first time. It was everything that we wanted it to be: Sex in the desert. The image exudes eroticism from the dropout image* (*An image that is created and evinced solely by the area around it. The image becomes a shape with the color of the base paper upon which it is printed. White letters on a black background is a good example of the dropout technique. The black area only is printed leaving the white of the paper in the shape of the letters.) of the erect penis complete with testicles to the female legs made of script-like words wrapped around that central shape. The colors are those of the desert, from the dark maize-yellow paper to the dark brown of the earth, and the clear blue of the daylight sky to the warm tones of sunset. This print is a good example of the concept of reading words from a page while subliminally comprehending the color of the paper which surrounds those words. A designer should be constantly attuned to background color as well as to typography. Both should be based on the subject matter of the story.
8 — JAMES AGEE
This print defines James Agee through his one work: A Death in the Family. Consequently, mirroring the subject matter, it is printed all in black ink on cream-colored paper. One side of the image carries bold type letterforms while the opposite side carries script-like words, both of which are illegible, and both of which convey the genesis from the printed word to a visual one. In between and throughout the imagery are sad and sober overlapping male and female faces, the central male face having, additionally, a naked body as seen from the rear. The overlapping faces are meant to convey the backtracking and overlapping time sequences that are the method of Agee's storytelling. The naked figure illustrates the baring of the author's own soul. The faces are clearly those of family relatives and friends, both old and young and all part of the experience of family death.
9 — LEO TOLSTOY
The great Russian writer constantly expounded on the sad state of the common man. Printed on a textured gray-green surface, illegible script-like words create the effect of an agrarian landscape with the ground centrally shattered by red crosshatching, symbolizing humankind's social complexities. Rising above are slate-gray fractured type-like letterforms indicating the futility of the situation. I wanted to project the dichotomy of land acquisition in two of my favorite Tolstoy stories: War and Peace (a long narrative), and, How Much Room Does One Man Need? (a very short story).
10 — ÉMILE ZOLA
The author is defined in this print by one work: Nana. A female nude in gray tones is depicted on a bed made of black type-like letterforms. The entire image is printed on black and white marbled paper, which in turn adheres to a larger cream-colored carrier paper. Because the image of the nude is more of an outline, one can see through it to the swirling marbled effect of the paper. The idea conveyed is of sexual complexity in opposition to simply basic sex. Because the paper is hand marbled and not machine generated, no two sheets carry the exact same pattern. And since one can see through the dropout image of the female nude, the visual texture of her body changes from print to print, causing a decidedly different communication of emotion. The object was to show the multifaceted female that Zola had projected.
Over the years, I have been asked to do another edition of this work using authors suggested by others. The criterion for representation is that an author must have a distinctive writing style, and, in my opinion, many of the authors recommended to me do not have a unique style. Because I chose a visual medium to present the authors, without a distinctive style, each graphic print would look exactly like the other because the authors' method of setting prose on paper is identical. Yes, the subject matter may vary, but I can't equate "genre" with "content." An author may write mystery stories that all take place in one part of the world, but without some basic human element endemic to all of the stories, as an artist I have no basis from which to proceed However, be assured there are a number of contemporary writers I would certainly feature in another edition of this work. Among the mystery writers I would have to include are Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith, but not P.D. James.
From A Memoir of Book Design © Book Club of California