Artists' Books
S.
Description
xiv, 456 pages : illustrations. Konfidentiell letter (2 leaves) [insert between pages viii-ix] + Pollard State University : VMS accused of ... (1 leaf) [insert between pages 10-11] + Xerox copy of journal article (1 leaf) [insert between pages 20-21] + Newspaper clipping (2 pages) [insert between pages 32 -33] + Telegram (2 leaves) [insert between pages 54-55] + 1 newspaper clipping/memo (1 leaf) [insert between pages 68-69] + Letter from Desjardins (1 leaf) [insert between pages 86-87] + Letter from Jen (4 pages) [insert between pages 100-101] + 1 Brazil postcard [insert between pages 112-113] + 1 photograph of stone wall [insert between pages 130-131] + 1 Birds of Brazil postcard [insert between pages 178-179] + 1 postcard of palms [insert between pages 190-191] + 1 postcard of a beach [insert between pages 192-193] + 1 Pictorial Brazil postcard (20 April near Marau) [insert between pages 200-201] + So ... My Uncle Zeke (5 pages) [insert between pages 202-203] + 1 photograph of woman [insert between pages 242-243] + 1 newspaper clipping within 1 greeting card [insert between pages 256-257] + 1 map on napkin [insert between pages 306-307] + 1 in memoriam card [insert between pages 360-361] + Letter from J (4 pages) [insert between pages 376-377] + Letter from Esmerlinda Pega (1 leaf) [insert between pages 416-417] + 1 decoder wheel [insert between end leaf and pages 3 of cover]. Altered book. Issued in slipcase. Title and statement of responsibility from slipcase. "Bad Robot, Melcher Media."--Spine of slipcase. Title page and cover title of volume inside slipcase: Ship of Theseus / V.M. Straka. Imprint on title page: Winged Shoes Press, New York, 1949. Title page and page [3] of cover printed with "stamps" of Laguna Verde High School Library; spine includes a Dewey call number label. Includes 23 items purporting to be documents concerning the "author," V.M. Straka, and his "translator," F.X. Caldeira from the Straka Arkiv; decoding wheel, letters, postcards and notes by the "readers," Jennifer and Eric; and other related materials. Marginalia printed in various colors. "A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown. The book: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V.M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey. The writer: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world's greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him. The readers: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they're willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears."--Slipcase. Curated title for Fleet Library Special Collections exhibition Stacked & Altered, summer 2022.