Seasickness

In January I posted about the first three Four Corners Familiars--classic books illustrated and redesigned by contemporary artists (but, importantly, with the texts unchanged), such as The Picture of Dorian Gray in the format of a 1970s men's fashion magazine, or an edition of Dracula which mimics the look of the first edition, but with new, disquieting illustrations and careful, inventive typography.

Just last night I bought my copy of the newest in this series, Nau Sea Sea Sick, a collection of short stories about the sea. The artist behind this one is Kay Rosen, whose area of interest is text and language.

As you can see, the cover makes the book look as though it's made of wood, though the pattern is actually meticulously hand-drawn.The internal design is unusual: the text is printed only on one side of each signature, which remains uncut. Like this:

Rosen's own text artwork adorns the stories--words from the text drawn backwards and forwards over the page from one another.

 

As for what the art means, well, I have no idea. But I like the effect. Nau Sea Sea Sick is a very pleasing object, as well as containing a number of ace stories (such as Stephen Crane, Katherine Mansfield, John Moore, and non-fiction from Isabella Bird, plus more) which is the whole point of this series.

Next up from Four Corners Familiars are a collection of stories by Jane Bowles and Denton Welch, with art from Colter Jacobsen, and then Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda, with art by Mireille Fauchon, which I'm particularly looking forward to.

(Click all pictures for much larger versions.)

Four Corners

Just when you think there's surely no gap in the classics literature market for another publisher, along come Four Corners Books and their 'Familiars' series. They take classic, "familiar" texts and present them anew in strange, unfamiliar guises (while leaving the actual text intact, I hasten to add: these are respectful as well as playful publications).

The first Four Corners Familiar is Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Designed by John Morgan and artist Gareth Jones, it presents the book in the form of a 1970s fashion magazine, complete with period ads and photographs.



In another break from tradition, the cover features neither author nor book title, just an appropriate quote from the text.



The second Familiar is Bram Stoker's Dracula. A plain, boldly coloured hardcover, it contains atmospheric drawings by James Pyman, and uses a welter of appropriate typefaces for all of the different voices and sources which make up the novel (newspaper articles, diary entries, wax cylinder recordings, letters, etc).




The most recent Familiar is an unfinished Kafka novella, Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor, about a man who comes home to find that two bouncing plastic balls have invaded his home. The illustrations by David Musgrave are "a series of pencil drawings of curious artefacts and archaeological fragments invented by the artist".




There are more books to come in this series, and given that each of them only costs the same as a standard trade paperback I suspect Four Corners are onto a winner. They're currently accepting proposals from artists at any stage in their careers, represented by galleries/agents or not, for further books in the series.

UPDATE: The magical John Self has a review of Blumfeld over at Asylum, with lots of pictures to give you a better idea of what the book looks like in the flesh.