Category Archives: What is a Great Work?

importance of quality book-making

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Charles Richardson discusses the state of book-making in the United States in the article “Book-making in America.” He starts of by saying that more people started to read more and that newspaper audiences increase so do the number of people who read books. Even though there was increase in readership, he says that the quality of new books decreased. He compared the paper, construction, and printing of book in America, Germany, and France.

This article was important to our class since a broad focus in our class was to learn about and appreciate the art of making a book. Making a book is much more than writing a compelling and original story. Many people think that the main labor of a book belongs to the author. However printing pages and binding a book takes a manuscript from being a concept to a marketable book. People may not usually consider all the work that went into the creation of a book. The type of paper, print, clothe that creates the front and back cover of books all play a role in the feel of a book.

Richardson noticed that the books being printed after the Civil War, were not as ornate or beautiful as previous books. A comparison can be made to today. Many books are offered in soft covered and hard covered editions at bookstores and on the internet. Today’s books are also available in a digital format. As Richardson stated, books became more popular but the process was made more efficient. As with most things quick efficient processes create a large number of products but each individual product is of a lesser quality. Mass produced books served to be read by many. Books that were handcrafted were considered pieces of art and collected as heirlooms. Books printed in small numbers were more expensive and highly decorated.

The Little Prince Check In Part 2

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After reading your comments, we have decided to design our book about a book as a presentation of an artifact from the pilot’s actual crash in the Sahara desert. We considered your input on us actually purchasing the journals, and have instead decided to use what will appear to be a pilot’s manual. We found a website titled “Militaryfactory.org” which lists the aircraft information of many planes used by various countries. Through our research of the time period the book was written in, the 1940s, we found that a plane that could have very possibly been flown by the pilot is the “Amiot 354,” a Medium Bomber Aircraft in the French Air Force. Using the website that gives specifications of such an aircraft, we are creating our own representation of the pilot’s manual. The following images are examples of three pages of what will be included in the manual. 

 

Similar to what you suggested that the Scarlet Letter group does, we have decided we will use a file folder (which we will get a better idea about from you in class this week) that will allow us to include a foreword. In this foreword we will cover the following components of the assignment:

  • Labors that went into creating the actual work
  • Analysis of how parts of the work are in conversation with the authors/artists of other works
  • How works have come to be considered great and what we believe makes a work great
  • Bibliography

We will print such a manual on one-sided sheets of paper, leaving the backs blank. From there, we will include the pilot’s entries on the backs of each of the pages. This will contribute to authenticity as we will explain in part of the forward because we will make it look as though the pilot realized he may not survive in the dessert and wanted to record the events of his last days. Being that he was stranded in the Sahara, it is realistic that the only thing he could use would be the manual on his aircraft, therefore he wrote his daily entries in it. The entries will describe the 8 days that he was stranded in the desert.

Similarly to how copies of “The Little Prince,” have a “Translator’s Note” in the beginning of the story, we plan to include one in addition to our foreword. In the translator’s note we will fulfill the overview of the work’s reception and preservation over time  by explaining how our version of the story through the pilot’s log will again add to the already existing versions of the story.

We will incorporate the close reading analysis into parts of the pilot’s actual logs and keep the authenticity of the first person aspect of our book, by using passages of text coming solely from the prince. In this way we can truly go into all of what was being said in the text, but it can be presented from the perspective of the pilot. We will write these log entries as the pilot contemplating something said by the prince, and perhaps how it affects himself.

We will also incorporate the creative response into the actual logs themselves by including a map of what the pilot believes is the positioning of the planets that the prince visited. It will be an image of the night sky in which all of the asteroids are labeled (an estimation), and finally we will see a place where he questions the placement of the prince’s planet.

It would be infeasible for us to handwrite each of the entries for all 10 copies of the book, therefore we will type the journals entries and print them onto the paper we will be using (the back of the manual). To maintain authenticity in the fact that the pilot would be hand writing all of his entries, we will use the font titled HanziPen or a similar one, which resembles handwriting.

As previously explained, we will be making the paper itself appear worn and as though it has been through hardship in the crash. To do this we will use teabags and potentially burn the sides of the pages, giving it a slightly destroyed look. In addition, we will have visible markings on the cover of the manual where the prince would have crossed out the title and wrote the meaning of the new journal, his own last days or at least what he thought would be his last days.

The Little Prince

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The What

Our group is planning on purchasing a set of 10 small journals for this project, to use as our starting point. We will be purchasing the journals rather than making them ourselves to represent the pilot’s connection to the society surrounding him, beyond the reaches of the desert in which he finds himself. The journal cover will appear simple, and be smaller than the size of a normal sheet of paper. This size and appearance is to ensure that it appears realistic as to what the pilot may have on his person while stuck in the desert, in order to record the events of his days. Although we are looking at a few different options for the journals, we are currently leaning towards one that features a brown, sandy looking cover, to give the journal the look of blending into the sand of the desert.

We will decorate the journal to appear as though it has been used as the pilot’s actual daily diary while stuck in the desert, including some visible “wear and tear.” We are not positive how we will do this yet but this may involve something along the lines of using tea bags to make the edges of the pages look worn.  At the top of each page, we plan to organize it as a journal entry being that we will have “Day 1, Day 2, etc.” as the headings. We will then go on to incorporate the necessary information for the project into those “entries” although we have not yet decided if we will organize our information from the perspective of the pilot or otherwise. Another option we are considering is adding certain journal entries which feature the pilot contemplating the existence of the prince, as it was a large uncertainty to us when reading the book ourselves. In this way we can challenge the existence of the prince from the perspective of the pilot’s experiences, and in doing so address part of the reason as to why we see the book as being great.

The Why

We want to use a physical book in this way to connect the story as much as possible to the actual events that took place in the pilot’s life. In reality if the story were to have actually happened and the pilot had wanted to record it, he would have done so on whatever he had with him. For most taking part in such travels as he was, this could very likely be a small journal in which he keeps track of what happens every day during his time away from home. In this way, we can bring our own description and interpretation of the key elements into the form that most accurately represents his experiences.

Much of this interpretation also came from one of the field trips which I attended, at the Grolier Club. In this exhibition I witnessed a variety of different paper forms which featured different engravings. What was noteworthy about this samples on display was that the engravings were simply added to regular paper after they were completed, without using paper that has meaning such as what I learned many did from the panels at the Center for Book Arts. In addition, the engravings often had personal meaning to the artist, and not even the people for whom the engravings were being done. This relates to our own project because we will be taking already made paper, and adding something to it such as the “wear and tear” as earlier explained. In addition, the features of the book such as its sandy color and the worn appearance we will attempt to create, will relate to a personal meaning the narrator of the story may feel and not necessarily its readers. The sandy cover can remind the pilot of the desert while not impacting readers in any way. Although final details of our physical book are not yet set in stone, we plan to follow this description as closely as possible to give our book the greatest possible accuracy as it relates to the original story.

Graphic Novel Wkshp. – Bring Three Panel Graphic Strip Idea

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For next Wednesday you should come to class with an idea of what you want to represent in your three panel graphic.   Think about a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end.  Having a beginning, middle, and end doesn’t necessarily mean you  have to squish a novel’s worth of action into three panel.  You can think about a scene or a moment.

Your moment, scene, panel should in some way engage the book which  your group is working on for the final book project. Think about the assignment as fan fiction in a a graphic art form.   So, for example, you might revise a scene in your primary text, or maybe you add an additional scene, or change the end or beginning.  Or perhaps your panel is something like a prequel, or the beginning of a spin off.  You can also insert  other characters from other stories, from  history, or your own life into the story.

While I hope you find the experience fun, you should also keep in mind how revision and adding and mixing can actually be a powerful way to make a point about  what a text is doing or about it’s limitations and possibilities.   Remember how in ABC the image of Chin-kee is a visual allusion and revision of the 1882 political cartoon in a way that calls forth so as to challenge and put pressure on the racist imagination at work in that image and how that racism persists even into the 20th and 21st century imagination of the Chinese/Asian other.  You might consider how your own graphic illustrations might engage something in the book you’re focusing on in such a way that helps make an argument or emphasize your interpretation of a key part of the novel.   Your group might decide to use some of the graphic illustrations in the final project.

Invisibility vs. Existence? The reasons behind his invisibility

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Ralph Ellison conveys an important message at the beginning of the prolog, from the fourth to the fifth paragraph, that the main character ‘invisible man’ does exist, but he is not visible. His invisibility is caused by people’s failures in identifying their own fallacies which made them not be able to acknowledge the invisible man’s existence.

This conclusion arrived after proving the invisible man’s existence and invisibility during a fight between him and a tall blond man. Ellison carefully hinted readers of the invisible man’s physical existence by describing his actions: “I bumped into”, “I sprang at him”, “seized”, “butted him again and again”, and “kicked him repeatedly” and so forth, which indeed caused the tall blond man “profusely bleeding”. But the invisible man all of a sudden gave upon his revenge when he already got out his knife and was almost about slit the white man’s throat. Why? The invisible man abruptly realized that the white man firmly believed that the invisible man does not at all exist, because the white man still refused to see the invisible man even he was beaten up to the point of death. When facing the threat of death, a rational man can still hold onto his belief must mean that he is deadly convinced by his belief, no matter if it is out of rationality. Just like people who devoted their lives to serve Nazi during WWII, even if the consequence of them holding onto their beliefs, later on, are proved to be catastrophic to the human race, they were unshakeable toward their convictions. There is no point in arguing with a person when he doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the argument itself. What are you arguing about? Thereby, the invisible man developed a deep sense of shamaness and disgust—that he can change people’s mind. He even felt “amused” by his innocent fancies and the efforts of proving his visibility to people who do not recognize his existence in the first place. But the every fact proves that he does EXIST, it is not the invisible man himself, but the people who made him INVISIBLE. What a brilliant way to name the real criminals of the invisible violence.

Great Works Vs. Action & Belief

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Throughout Ralph Aldo Emerson’s oration on August 31,1837, “The American Scholar” a constant theme arises, take action and listen to your beliefs. His speech was kind of a bizarre way to reach out to the Phi Beta Kappa society which were the elite members at the top of their class at Harvard.

“Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, — the act of thought, — is transferred to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly, the book becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.” (Emerson,13).

In this paragraph in particular Emerson has a way of kind of challenging what these students have been taught their whole college careers. Action versus reading books. Emerson is very insistent that just because great leaders of the past have shared their intellect via books and novels doesn’t mean that these are guides on how to go about leading your life. Emerson states that the ones who first wrote these “great pieces of work” were just young men like yourselves sitting in a library, challenging other great works and the authors who wrote those books. Great works are only great works because they are viewed that way. By reading great works they are suppose to inspire you and ignite the creation from within, not create a “bookworm” who accept the views of another person.