The What
We’ve decided unanimously to create a series of black and white pencil sketches coupled with explanatory text and analytical details in a handmade collage and mishmash of pieces bound together by string and hole punched. These black and white pencil sketches will include etchings of the Underground Man and the various villainous characters he meets along his journey that eventually lead him to hide underground. The cheekbones of the Underground Man are very defined; this is one characteristic of his face that the readers can use to differentiate this character from the others. Additionally, his eyes have very dark circles, from the lack of sleep and heavy buildup of anxiety he suffers from. All of these elements have textual evidence to back them up. There will also be one sketch reflective of our field trips, most likely influenced by the anime event some of us attended. Our descriptions will include a few, extremely brief poems inspired by the Underground, essay-like analyses, and an introduction to our book. Unfortunately, with the formatting we’ve chosen, there can only be one true original and nine copies but even this too is significant.
The Why
I doubt the Underground Man was sitting in the underground handwriting dozens of copies of his manuscript. Of course, there was only one, original manuscript in the story. This manuscript will be represented by the Book About a Book that we formulate. Additionally, the Underground Man’s obsession with math, with his own appearance, and with the haven-like qualities of the Underground will all inspire the way we craft the Book About a Book. More specifically, we will include formulas, drawings of his face, and dark poems and sketches that reflect the romantic appeal of the Underground. Furthermore, this format best allows us to display what we’ve learned about the craft and labors that go into making a book, since we will be making everything from scratch, in collage form. The repetitive nature of our work will reflect the repetitive nuances of the Underground Man’s thoughts as he ponders humankind’s free will over and over throughout the text. All these darkly romantic and confused pieces will come together to form a somewhat incoherent whole that captures the essence of what makes Notes from Underground great. It is quite literally a text that is befuddled–that is precisely the point. It was written at a time when the world was feeling confused, when an author finally admitted to and encapsulated that feeling in a text for the world to behold, and it had never been done before. By taking bits and pieces from god knows where, we will form a Book About a Book that is the ultimate homage to Fyodor Dostoevsky.
I like this idea a lot. I like the contrast between black and white and between simple line sketches and dynamic collage. That seems to get at the tension between pursuit of an ideal (that is a pursuit for a fixed perfection that eliminates unknowns and excess) and the belief that such a pursuit is a pursuit to eradicate the messy, irrational, and indeterminate mysteries that animate humanity.
I have a couple of comments:
What kind of book do you imagine your book to be? Meaning who is your audience (other than me and yourselves)? Some of your classmates are making archival alternatives to their book for historians to find and scholars to obsess about. Some are making textbooks for classrooms studying a particular book. What is this book? Is it an ARTIST’S RENDITION of the novel aiming to explore/engage a particular aspect of the original narrative (in which case it might be of interest to artist and other scholars)? OR is it an ARTISTIC RENDITION of the novel meant to help teach the novel by way of making it more graphic (in which case it might be of interest to teachers and students)? OR is it an ARTISTIC INVOCATION or ARTISTIC SAMPLING of some part or parts of the narrative for the purpose of actually thinking through and exploring some contemporary controversy, event, question, etc.?
I would like you to have a clear sense of the answer to this question. It will inform your content and formal choices and how you understand your choices (and explain them in the write up).
I’m not saying you need to radically rethink your book project. On the contrary, I like where you’re going a lot. I just think that certainly the Why? and also the finer details of the What? require more clarity about the goal/aims of the book.
Some random other things you might consider:
You might consider playing with some other contrasts/tensions. I’m thinking the tension between linear narrative (characters one encounters on a journey implies a linear narrative) and a nonlinear and circuitous meandering of thought. You can play with this idea in any number of ways. You can use lines from previous part to signify in new ways in later encounters. You could make repeat copies of certain pages and have them appear again out of order. You could play with the orientation of the page, asking your readers to turn the book upside down only to have them start going backwards (because to turn the pages when the book is upside down is to go back in the text rather than forward).
Also since you plan to have such a strong graphic element, you might look at ABC or other graphic novels for clues about how to utilize the visuals to do a lot of the work you’re trying to get at. For example, can you have a mathematical proof that runs along the bottom or top margins of all your pages but which never actually comes to its conclusion? Perhaps it could be seemingly independent of the story, but also underscoring some of the major tensions you want to emphasize?
While it seems like an odd choice perhaps, I’m wondering if The Diary of a Wimpy Kid graphic narratives might not be good models for your form?
Lastly you plan to hand make the graphics for every copy of the book because you are making the graphics out of collage? And you don’t want to lose the texture? That’s awesome. I’m just wondering if there are non-collaged parts that you can actually photocopy and then incorporate them into the individual collage elements for each copy??