World Book Night - The Secret History Dinner

The annual collaboration with Sarah Bodman and Co. at CFPR Book Arts to produce an artist’s book in tribute to a particular novel is now complete. The book, print and video will launch on 23rd April, World Book Night.

To date we have made books for Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley and Douglas Coupland’s The Gum Thief. This year we featured Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History. The dinner took place over Easter weekend, in an aptly situated venue in Oxford. Collaborators brought their typewriters and cameras, and food and drinks from the book were served throughout the night, including dangerous-looking mushrooms, an elaborate lentil dish, roast meats, frozen cheesecake, and even food inspired by Bunny’s tasteless wake at the Corcoran’s house.


The typed version of the group’s collaborative essay: The Secrets of Metahemeralism, cobbled together and triple-spaced in the style of Bunny Corcoran provides the core of a photocopied, editioned artist’s book, in tribute to the narrator Richard’s extra paid duties at college. The book will also include postcards, notes, scraps of paper, photos, etc. 


Contributors to the book were: Helen Allsebrook, Helen Barr, Sarah Bodman, Angie Butler, Simon Butler, Arthur Buxton, Nancy Campbell, Jenny Gal-Or, Hazel Grainger, Charlotte Hall, Anna Lucas, Kirsten Norrie, Simon Smith and EF Stevens. 

Angie Butler’s Letterpress Etiquette Network has printed a letterpress broadside edition of lines of text selected from the compositions (below).

An Oxford Alphabet

This winter the Bodleian Library collections have made their way from the inside to the outside of the Broad Street building during renovations. An abecedarium guide to the treasures of the library collections is displayed on temporary hoardings.

Although pedestrians do not seem to be taking much notice of the alphabet over their heads, I was curious to see which authors had made it into the Bodleian's select canon of twenty-seven. Shakespeare was there, of course - albeit under 'F' for 'FIRST FOLIO', but other choices were less conventional.

How has the great library solved the universal problem of the letter X? No surprise there: conveniently hidden behind a traffic light, X stands for ... X-RAY. 

Ending the year in Binsey

Today a walk in watery sunlight to St Fridewide's well in Binsey. The well, known for its healing powers, has been glorified. Someone has hung ribbons from the surrounding yew trees with strings of white plastic doves, miniature glass panels with holy images, and spruce cones. It looks a bit like Cornelia Parker's Shed. Since 'treacle' originally referred to an antidote against venom (from Greek theriake), the well surely sparked the Dormouse's improbable story in Alice in Wonderland:

'Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the Dormouse began in a great hurry; 'and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well—'

'What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.

'They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.

'They couldn't have done that, you know,' Alice gently remarked; 'they'd have been ill.'

'So they were,' said the Dormouse; 'very ill.'

Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: 'But why did they live at the bottom of a well?'

....The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, 'It was a treacle-well.'

'There's no such thing!' Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went 'Sh! sh!' and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, 'If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself.'

'No, please go on!' Alice said very humbly; 'I won't interrupt again. I dare say there may be one.'

'One, indeed!' said the Dormouse indignantly.

Frideswide was an Anglo-Saxon princess, betrothed to the Mercian King Algar. She fled from him and he, pursuing, was struck blind. In her compassion she prayed for the restoration of his vision, curing him with water from the Binsey well. Frideswide dedicated the well to St Margaret of Antioch, who was also a model of chastity.

Found Poem No. 4