Tuesday 18 January 2011

Visual Shandy

A new London publisher, Visual Editions, has received a lot of attention for its second book, the Jonathan Safran Foer-cuts-up-Bruno Schulz Tree of Codes (more here). I have to admit that, as much as I covet the book, I haven't yet bought it, as I'm not sure that I want to encourage Foer, who is the sort of young writer who bolts great and terrible historical events (the Holocaust, 9/11) into his fiction to give them completely unearned gravitas, and who has now claimed a share in a much greater writer's work.



All of this publicity has tended to overlook Visual Editions' first book, an absolutely gorgeous version of Laurence Sterne's wonderful The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, one of my favourite books, and one which puts most postmodernist literature to shame by coming up with most of its best tricks two centuries earlier.



Largely designed by APFEL Studio, this is a real labour of love. The interior uses black and fluorescent orange inks to accentuate and embellish all of the book's original typographic tricks and quirks, giving the pages an appropriately vivid, slightly demented energy. (Please excuse my thumb in the following photos, which can be clicked for much bigger versions.)










A whole series of images of the making of the book can be found here.

6 comments:

Levi Stahl said...

Is their Shandy readable? The pink type looks a bit shivery on my computer, so while it's definitely stunning, I worry about readability.

I ask because it's time for me to read the book again--it's been 15 years now somehow--and I'd much rather read a beautiful edition than my ugly Norton Critical.

Roger said...

There's also a graphic novel of Shandy by Martin Rowson. Not successful, but worth looking at. His version of The Waste land- a noir mystery investigated by Philip Marlowe- is wonderful.

JRSM said...

Levi, it's very readable--the glow of a computer screen makes it look a bit more eye-warpy than the reality.

(I also forgot to mention that one double-page spread even has spot-varnished water droplets on it.)

Roger--I love that Waste Land graphic novel. I've seen the cover of the Rowson Shandy online, but never seen a physical copy.

Roger said...

Rowson treated Shandy with too much respect- a cartoon version of the original rather than a Shandean transmogrification. He's saidto beworking on another graphic novel now...

Roger said...

Rowson treated Shandy with too much respect- a cartoon version of the original rather than a Shandean transmogrification. He's saidto beworking on another graphic novel now...

India Yellow Pages said...

You've got some helpful information here. I have been browsing the net on this kind of matter and thank you it surely answers my question.