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.