Friday, 20 December 2013

S a new book looking like a library book

Books that weren't meant to be read.

A new book that appears to be a library book with annotations on it.


It's a piece of dissembling but could it be a trend?

S  reviewed by Mark Lawson in the Guardian here

Maybe this is a reaction to the ebook revolution, which has done away with the hard copy of a book and created a double for practically any book you can buy and hold.People have said that the packaging of books will become more startling as a response to all this cyber-reality.

Mark Lawson refers to AS Bayatt's Possession, for which the author made up poetry that purports to have been written by a poet who is being researched by one of the characters.  
What other documents could be released which are ambiguous about their origins?

  • A book marked TOP SECRET that appears to have been smuggled out of GCHQ.  Perhaps we have that already.
  • A coach's notes on every member of a cricket team with strategies about how to exploit the weaknesses of each player [of interest to enthusiasts, probably sadistic]
  • A book of texts, [yes, it's been done]
Laurence Stern's Tristram Shandy is perhaps the best example of this genre, a rambling comic novel which reveals much while interrupting itself repeatedly and dispensing almost entirely with plot.
     Feigned invitations and letters are an regular part of the realist novel and are used in  Gothic novels to set the scene before wandering off into more fantastical realms.  Mary Shelley employs this technique,  switching between narrators: the creature, Dr Frankenstein and a sea captain.
   There is a whole genre of epistolic novels which include non fiction titles such as Priscilla Wakefield's An Introduction to Botany from the 1830's in which Felicia guides her sister through the orders of plants in a series of letters.  A modern equivalent is Lionel Shriver's We need to talk about Kevin which is constructed entirely of fictitious letters.
    It all goes to show that dissimulation is at the centre of the writer's art.






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