Modern Methods of Book Composition

I have an early Kindle. It displays one and only one font (roman only) and no graphics. One of the first books I bought to read on it used italics to denote which character was speaking, which was lost on me, and made the book very confusing. Later, before I learned my lesson for good, I got a history book that had maps & charts in the printed version but not the Kindle version. That one was so confusing I gave up and got the print version from the library. So I really enjoyed Modern Methods of Book Composition, an artist book by Tim Schwartz that I saw at Codex today. According to Tim’s website:

Theodore Low De Vinne is one of the fathers of book publishing in America. He was one of the nine founders of the Grolier Club, the commissioner of the font Century, and the most prolific writer on book publishing methods in the late 19th century. In 1904, De Vinne wrote “Modern Methods of Book Composition,” a treatise on how to layout and publish books.

In 2007 the University of California Libraries scanned in the pages of this book and uploaded the files to archive.org…After the files were uploaded the content of the book was automatically extracted and a variety of digital book formats were created, including one for the Kindle.”

Of course the figures and illustrations were stripped from the Kindle version. Tim printed the scanned version, and redacted much of the text, leaving pretty much only the illustrations. He says

A piece of software was written to take a page from the original book and cover up any content that was extracted with a black box. By repeating this process for every page in the original book, a new book was created that shows only the layout of the original book, that was lost in the digital copy, and leaves uncovered the content that was unable to be converted into the digital version.

Then he packaged this version with a Kindle with the non-illustrated text. Making, I suppose, a complete book. Here’s a picture of it. See more here.

Modern Methods of Book Composition by Tim Schwartz

Mein Blaues Klavier

even-mein-blaues-klavier-s.jpgI’m at Codex this week, and there’s so much to see! One unusual book, from Even Hoshen Press, is called Mein Blaues Klavier and described on the Vamp and Tramp website as “…a tiny blue grand piano. It cannot play, but is equipped with a keyboard cover and a top that opens to reveal taut strings. On its removable paper ‘keys,’ Agassi has printed in Hebrew and German a poem by the German writer Else Lasker-Schüler titled, ‘Mein Blaues Klavier’ (‘My Blue Piano’).” See more from the Evan Hoshen Press here and read My Blue Piano here

Handwriting

Jacob LewRecently I letterpress printed a business card designed by a calligrapher. As I was treadling away, printing her beautiful script, I lamented my own handwriting. While my signature isn’t as bad as the one on the left (for the man who will be the next US Secretary of the Treasury, and that signature will be on our paper money), it’s pretty illegible. And I noticed as I wrote out holiday cards how tired my hand got, even on a short note.
In 5th grade, a new girl at my school really impressed me with her beautiful handwriting. She explained her previous school had required learning to write that way. So I was interested in this article in the Wall Street Journal with the subtitle “Cursive Goes the Way of ‘See Spot Run’ In Many Classrooms, Delighting Students.” In part it says The common core state standards, a set of math and English goals agreed upon by 45 states and now being implemented, sends cursive the way of the quill pen, while requiring instead that students be proficient in keyboarding by fourth grade. It also says that “Jacob Lew assures me that he is going to work to make at least one letter legible in order not to debase our currency,” President Obama said this month when announcing Mr. Lew’s nomination.”

Why We Should Memorize

memorize.jpgLast December, at a Christmas party, someone handed out little booklets of lyrics & we gathered around the table and sang carols. I was quite surprised how many of the songs I knew by heart, sometimes more than even one verse. I’ve thought about this off and on since, asking myself if there’s anything else I’ve memorized (nothing has presented itself yet, save the multiplication tables I learned in grade school).
My favorite book of poetry is Poem a Day, with an introduction that starts

Once upon a time men and women of sense and sensibility knew by heart dozens of poems—Shakespeare’s sonnets, stirring patriotic verse, odes to churchyards and elegies for the departed, the music of Swinburne or Poe or Yeats. Poems are meant to be voiced and A Poem a Day includes 366 poems old and new—one for each day of the year—worth learning by heart. Only two criteria were demanded of each poem for inclusion in this collection—it had to be short enough to learn in a day, and good enough to stand among the great poetry of the English language.

And while I’ve read through the poems numerous times, I’m afraid I’ve never been tempted to memorize any.
Then last week I read Brad Leithauser’s piece on the New Yorker’s blog, Why We Should Memorize. He says Memorized poems are a sort of larder, laid up against the hungers of an extended period of solitude, and a lot more. Read it here.