Jeans and Tee Girl

Na jesieni 2010 wyszła w Londynie nowa książka Jonathana Safrana Foera, którego kojarzy się głównie z debiutancką powieścią „Wszystko jest iluminacją”. Książka, nie-książka, może projekt:książka? Rzecz jest zatytułowana „Tree of codes” i powstała przy zastosowaniu techniki die-cut* na „Ulicy Krokodyli” Bruno Schulza.

Foer ideę „Tree of codes” wyjaśnia tak:

„I took my favorite book, Bruno Schulz’s “Street of Crocodiles,” and by removing words carved out a new story. It was hardly an original idea: it’s a technique that has, in different ways, been practiced for as long as there has been writing — perhaps most brilliantly by Tom Phillips in his magnum opus, “A Humument.” But I was more interested in subtracting than adding, and also in creating a book with a three-dimensional life. On the brink of the end of paper, I was attracted to the idea of a book that can’t forget it has a body.

Working on this book was extraordinarily difficult. Unlike novel writing, which is the quintessence of freedom, here I had my hands tightly bound. Of course 100 people would have come up with 100 different books using this same process of carving, but every choice I made was dependent on a choice Schulz had made. On top of which, so many of Schulz’s sentences feel elemental, unbreakdownable. And his writing is so unbelievably good, so much better than anything that could conceivably be done with it, that my first instinct was always to leave it alone.

(...)

At times I felt that I was making a gravestone rubbing of “The Street of Crocodiles,” and at times that I was transcribing a dream that the book might have had.

(...)

“Tree of Codes” is in no way a book like “The Street of Crocodiles.” It is a small response to that great book.”

A sam „przedmiot rzeźbiony”, jak określił „Tree of codes” wydawca – Visual Effects – wygląda tak:

(więcej zdjęć i "making of" tutaj)

Pewnie można by na poczekaniu ukuć kilka teoryjek: po co to? Ale nie zamierzam, bo rzecz traktuję w kategoriach ciekawostki i to niesłychanie sympatycznej** ciekawostki.

*Ktoś podpowie ładne polskie słówko na określenie takich wycinanek?

**Sama nie wiem czemu.