I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE VESTIBULES-“Boulbous Bouffant” (1995).

This is a fantastic comedy bit of euphonics.  It starts out a bit slow–without a clear point.  But once it picks up, it is outstanding.  And you’ll find yourself saying…oh all kinds of things for no reason.

[READ: May 15, 2014] Book from the Ground

Xu Bing is a Chinese artist.  He caused some stir several years ago with his exhibition Book from the Sky, a set of books, panels and scrolls on which were printed thousands of characters resembling real Chinese characters, but which were nonsense. Xu spent years hand carving the typesetting blocks used to make the prints according to traditional Chinese block printing methods. Each block was embossed with a unique but meaningless symbol and then used to make the prints for the exhibit.  It was controversial and he even lost favor with the Chinese government.

That project was conceived as a “book” that no one could read.  With Book from the Ground, he has attempted to create a book that literally everyone could read.

The entire story of this book is told with icons.  There are no words at all.

It is the story of a man as he lives his day from the time he wakes up until he falls asleep late that night.

The icons are mostly but not entirely universal–they depend upon the reader being familiar with contemporary technological life (icons for Amazon and GMail for instance might confuse some–or maybe they have saturated the market enough that they are universal by now).

The story opens with us zooming in on the man as he sleeps.  It is 7AM and he is awoken by a bird and by his alarm.  We see him wake up, use the bathroom, make (and ruin) breakfast and then head to work.

One of the funny things about the book (and there are many) is that his work day is spent mostly avoiding work.  I enjoyed this very much–he checks his email and makes dates with people.  He throws away an email to donate blood.  He goes out for coffee (for I think 45 minutes).  He buys a present for a potential girlfriend.  And then he goes to lunch.  The lunch was interesting because they try to decide on one of the icons of fast food.  And then they “discuss” the merits of the food they eat (and even that a veggie burger will cost more than a beef burger).

He finally gets back to work in time to give a presentation to his bosses.   With technical glitches and everything!

Then after work he goes out on a date (they even discuss their favorite movies, which was quite clever).  And then later goes out for drinks with a fiend who has just broken up with his girlfriend.  They get very very drunk (I’m not even really sure what happens in some of these scenes) and he takes his friend home.  He finally gets home and has some great dreams before being awoken in the middle of the night (humorously).

The book is quite funny and is quite successful in conveying its story.  I have to admit there are some icons that I simply didn’t get.  And there were times when I wasn’t exactly sure what was happening in a particular scene–you can really only do so much with icons.  But I never got so confused that I was lost by the story.  And there was a delightful amount of humor too.

The back of the book (the only place with writing) says that it took Xu Bing 7 years to collect the icons for this book.  I rather hope it wasn’t nonstop 7 years because the story doesn’t seem like it should have taken that long (although the more things I remember from the book,  the more impressed I am by it).  And yet he is branching into uncharted territory here.

I’m not sure that this was a very good “story,” but it was a lot of fun not only trying to figure it out but also just getting the puzzle/story to work so well.

This is absolutely worth tracking down for fun.

Oh and it is not meant for kids.  There are icons of people having sex–true they are just icons, but with the drinking and the sex, the desired reader is certainly older.