from Tom Phillips' first edition of A Humument (1970), which used to be W.H. Mallock's A Human Document. All available for your viewing pleasure, here. And many revised editions, here, here, and for your i-pad, here, and some discussion about how wonderful the i-pad is for A Humument, here.

From Paul Klinger's chapbook Fescue (Dusie, 2006), which used to be J.P. Bailey's 19th century epic poem Festus. You can read more here and here, and you can read Klinger's introduction here, and some discussion here and here.

Robert Rauschenberg, Erased De Kooning Drawing (1953). In SFMOMA's collection, here. And some discussion of it at the Tate, here: "It was a performative act - the erasing is the important part of it - resulting in a conceptual work (you have to know that there was an actual de Kooning that was erased, with the artist's consent, to have full understanding of it)."

from Brian Dettmer's Brave New World (2008). And we can see so many more of his wonderful "books," here, his website here.

The new Quarter After Eight erasure issue! Mary Ruefle: "You see, I don’t actually read the books. I don’t read the text, unless the book is very, very, very interesting to me, and that has only happened twice in ten years and thirty-nine books. The only way I can describe it is like this: the words rise above the page, by say an eighth of an inch, and hover there in space, singly and unconnected, and they form a kind of field, and from this field I pick my words as if they were flowers." And lucky us, we can read her whole essay, "On Erasure," here.

World Famous Paintings (undated), by Keith Lord. Here.



Because if you're Keith Lord, you can actually build a house, or a city, inside a book....

Accounts & Deeds (1999 -- or 1991?) by Maureen Cummins, "inspired by two sets of record books that were altered by the artist--unbound, overprinted, then rebound." More at the artist's website.

Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes (which used to be The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz)--just out. More here. and here. and here. and here. and here. and here. Buy it here.

From Doris Cross's altered dictionary, col.umns (San Francisco: Trike, 1982 -- or, at least I think so. Maybe the project began in 1965?). Karl Kempton explains: "the awe begins immediately while viewing, scanning with the eye, then by reading, listening with the ear, then the blending as one learns the language of site and sound, sound and silence, visual image and word image, language as a visually sensual pleasure in itself, the visual image becoming its word, object turned word turned thing come alive by sound. " More here. And here.

Star Trek TNG: Survivors (w/ Eric Elshtain) (2009)

Springboard (w/ Michelle Taransky) (2009)

Both from this slightly outdated site, Altered Books -- super-fun to look at!

From Yedda Morrison's Darkness (chapter 1), published in 2009, a white-out of the first chapter of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. You can download or buy it from the publisher, Little Red Leaves, and Morrison's entire book may be forthcoming from Make Now Press. I'll keep my eye out, obviously.

Tim Rollins + K.O.S., The Temptation of Saint Antony XV-XXXIV. Crown Point Press, 1990. Here.

"L.H.O.O.Q., a cheap postcard-sized reproduction of the Mona Lisa,upon which Duchamp drew a mustache and a goatee. The "readymade" done in 1919, is one of the most well known act of degrading a famous work of art. The title when pronounced in French, puns the frase 'Elle a chaud au cul', translating colloquially in 'She has a hot ass'." Here.


"Made by Duchamp while on a homeward bound train to Rouen in the half-darkness of dusk, this Readymade is essentially a cheap reproduction of a winter landscape with two drops of color added to it. Inscribed in the lower right corner with the words, "Pharmacie. Marcel Duchamp/ 1914," Pharmacy illustrates the imposition of authorship upon a piece by merely signing it." At toutfait.com.

Shall we compare Vanessa Place's tweeting of the entirety of Gone with the Wind with Elevator Repair Service's play Gatz, "not a retelling of the Gatsby story but an enactment of the novel itself. Over the course of 6 1/2 hours, Fitzgerald’s American masterpiece is delivered word for word, startlingly brought to life by a low-rent office staff in the midst of their inscrutable business operations" and/or Getting Inside Jack Kerouac's Head, a backwards-blogging (by Simon Morris) of on On the Road ?

(Vanessa Place talks conceptual writing here. )

Maybe. But I like books better.

From Travis MacDonald's The O Mission Repo (Fact-Simile, 2008), available here. (I understand there is also white-out involved.) More here. His article "A Brief History of Erasure Poetics" in Jacket, here. An interview with MacDonald here, and reviews of the book here and here.

Annotation as appropriation: W. D. Macray's heavily annotated copy of Some Account of the Life and Writings of John Milton by H. J. Todd (London, 1826). Here.

p. 22 from Jen Bervin's Nets (2004)


and from Bervin's The Desert (2008). This blue thread is pretty wonderful--I like just about everything about it. But I'm somehow more interested in a digital image of an original handsewn page than in a limited-edition machine-sewn artist book. Hmm. The latter was once available here.