Book Art:

Artists’ Books Online is a collection by the University of Virginia of artists’ books. Artists’ books are works of art that take the form of books and are often both text and visual art. Either way, they’re awful interesting to look at. Here are some artbooks to get you started: How to Humiliate Your Peeping Tom by Susan Baker, The Word Made Flesh by Johanna Drucker, Life in a Book by Francois Deschamps, A.A.A.R.P. by Clifton Kirkpatrick Meador, opuntia is just another name for a prickly pear by Todd Walker and Black Dog White Bark by Erica Van Horn

Vladimir Nabokov

“…so now he did his best to look up all the roadside items that retained her exclamation mark…”

-Nabokov – The Return of Chorb –

Sometimes a single line in a story can make your day. This to me is one of the most beautiful lines of fiction I’ve ever had the privaledge of coming across. Russian Literature truly is astounding.

yat

I was just reading a short story from my Vintage Ford, collection of short stories and excerpts from Richard Ford and there was a word that he used that was not part of my vocabulary. Maybe some of you have heard of the following word, but I have not.

Yat:

Yat refers to a unique collection of dialects of English spoken in New Orleans, Louisiana. The term also refers to those people who speak with a Yat accent. The name comes from the common use amongst said people of the greeting, “Where y’at?” (Where you at?), which is a way of asking, “How are you?” The Yat dialect sounds similar to that of Brooklyn, New York, natives, with influences from Louisiana Creole French and Southern American English, particularly Older Southern American English. While the term Yat is usually reserved specifically for the strongest varieties of the New Orleans dialect within the city, the term often refers specifically to speakers of Yat, outside of the city proper, and around the rest of Louisiana.

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Well there you go, some random information for everyone to enjoy. Incidentallyt, the context of my coming across this word is in a short story by Richard Ford, titled “Calling”, in which a young man goes duck hunting in the New Orleans bayou with his father and along with them is a servant whom they refer to as a “yat”.

There There Square

The desire to own and name land and the pleasures of seeing from a distance color this personal survey of the history of mapmaking in the New World. There There Square takes a close look at the gestures of travelers, mapmakers, and saboteurs that determine how we read – and live within – the lines that define the United States. Jacqueline Goss is a videomaker and new media artist whose work explores muted personal and historical narratives and negotiates the slides and snags one encounters while moving between written and spoken communication. She currently teaches in the Film and Electronic Arts Department at Bard College. Winner of the 2007 Alpert Award for Film/Video from the Herb Alpert Foundation.

Check this out. Some really interesting art/media.