What is this? IDEK!OKAY
This looks gorgeous, but as a compulsive reader, I think it would quickly become annoying. Even if it was a favourite page from a favourite text.
(via asterial)
These images come from the fabled manuscript, ‘Liber Floridus’ (Book of Flowers), a Medieval encyclopædia produced some 900 years ago by Lambert, Canon of St Omer, in the NE France/Flanders/Belgium region. via Bibliodyssey
Johann Matthäus Bechstein, “Three-Toed Sloth”
Via Bibliodyessey
The faces of the animals in this collection are charmingly (or creepily) anthropomorphic
“Using knives, tweezers and surgical tools, Brian Dettmer carves one page at a time. Nothing inside the out-of-date encyclopedias, medical journals, illustration books, or dictionaries is relocated or implanted, only removed.” My Modern Met
(via theredshoes)
who made this?
(Source: chromakeyrodox, via jbe200)
Guy Laramee, “Carved Book Landscape
via Colossal
Are we ever going to get sick of book art? I very much doubt it.
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The problem is that Marks seems to think it’s okay to require black kids to be “special” to “succeed.” I don’t.
The economic and social policies that require black children to be “special” to succeed in America made a lot of sense to the racist lawmakers who designed them during Reconstruction. When they sat down after the Civil War to decide how freed slaves and southern whites would interact, Congress explicitly rejected proposals to level the playing field between them, refusing to provide blacks with land, reparations, or equal education. They did not want to create actual equality between blacks and whites. In fact, at the time, many Americans still believed that black people were genetically inferior and therefore incapable of achieving equality. As the Reverend Jared Waterbell, a northern liberal writing for the American Tract Society, opined in 1865, “Hence, even with strenuous efforts for their improvement, the African race must still acknowledge the superiority of the Saxon race.”
In lieu of equality, Congress opted to give black people so-called ‘equality before the law,’ and began amending federal law to give our ancestors the same rights on-paper as whites. We all know what happened next. For the first 100 years, the U.S. government didn’t actually enforce the laws at all, giving rise to the Civil Rights Movement. But even more important than their failure to enforce those laws is this: those lawmakers knew full-well that equal rights would never create equality between blacks and whites, and for most of them, that was precisely the appeal of the policy
"— Kelly Virella: If I Were The Middle Class White Guy Gene Marks
And I’ve posted this here there and everywhere so very many times, but I don’t fucking care right now.
***
This is probably my very favourite passage from Hoban ever, bar none. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve typed it out by now.
***
Barrow full of rocks? said the yellow paper.
That’s just my name for it, said Word. A pneumatic.
Mnemonic, said the yellow paper.
Whatever you like, said Word. The line itself is by Pilkins.
Milton? said the yellow paper.
Something like that, said Word. ‘Hidden soul of harmony’ is what he said. I like that. It sings. ‘Untwisting all the chains that ty /The hidden soul of harmony.’ That’s nice. I’ll think of it again some time.
Do you mean to tell me, said the yellow paper, that ‘Barrow full of rocks’ is nothing more than a mnemonic for “Hidden soul of harmony’?
Precisely, said Word.
That’s outrageous, said the yellow paper. And on top of that they’re nothing like each other.
Of course not, said Word. If the mnemonic is the same as what it reminds you of why bother with it. I don’t even like them to be too close. If you have a nice thing to think about you don’t want to keep it out in plain view all the time, you know, with the virtue getting rubbed off it. Keep it in the dark is what I say.
The whole thing’s quite beyond me, said the yellow paper.
Of course it is, said Word. Beyond me too, and roundabout as well.
But your wretched barrow full of rocks has got into human minds, said the yellow paper. Your miserable mnemonic, not even the thing it refers to. For a flash through your mind, for an odd tune come and gone like lightning, men suffer and die riddling where there is no riddle, digging where there is no treasure.
Why not, said Word. That’s what men are for.
— Kleinzeit
