Authors who have been published by major publishing houses know that
the lifespan of their book is almost always short and tragic. "For
larger publishers, some books will come out on a Monday, and by Friday,
they'll be out of print and dead," said Brent Cunningham, operations
director of Small Press Distribution, the only distributor in the
country dedicated exclusively to independently published literature.
At small presses like the ones Cunningham works with, the profit
motive is smaller and the books live longer. But that doesn't
necessarily mean anyone is going to buy them. In many cases, the books
become furniture, or potentially collapsing safety hazards. "Our books
could take up a few football fields," Cunningham said. That's what
happens when you love books too much: You can't get rid of them.
This became a serious problem for Berkeley's Kelsey Street Press.
Ramsay Bell Breslin, one of Kelsey Street's editors, knew the press had
to either throw away the overstocked books or pay $60 a month to store
them. The latter option was complicated by the fact that funding sources
had dried up after the publisher lost its nonprofit status.
editors, said the press with faced with destroying the overstock of books or paying $60 a month to store them.
Then, while going through a pile of books one day, Breslin couldn't
help but admire the texture of the hardcovers, the smell of the pages,
and the inclusive nature of the book spine. Kelsey Street Press may be
releasing its first e-book later this year, but Breslin, like many
bibliophiles, still has a thing for the physical presence of books.
"Books have always felt like art to me," Breslin said. "I've always
thought of them as objects. It always made sense to me that they should
be displayed in a museum."
So last fall Breslin started working with Lawrence Rinder, the
director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, to create
an art exhibit out of her overstock. The idea was to solve a financial
problem by highlighting the physical appeal of books from local presses
in the East Bay.
Rinder loved the idea. "Museums are asking the same questions
bookstores are," he said. "I mean, why go to a museum if you can just
look at pictures online in high resolution? It's about the experience."
Dubbed "The Reading Room" and curated by Breslin, the exhibit opened
in mid-January and runs through June 17. It resides in the museum's
lobby and features poetry and experimental fiction from local publishers
like Kelsey Street Press, Atelos Books, and Tuumba Press. On the
surface, it looks like an old-fashioned bookstore: there are several
bookcases, two giant cozy chairs, a blanket for snuggling, and reading
lamps that hang from the shelves.
Actually, said Breslin, The Reading Room is a book in and of itself.
"You can read it from left to right," she explained, walking through the
exhibit one recent day. "On the first shelf, the books face forward,"
she said. "On the next shelf, the same books are facing backwards." Then
we came across books that were not yet born — their covers were laid
out flat. "These are book flats, with no spines, before they've been
printed," she said. Some books appear multiple times, creating a
syncopating rhythm. Other books are organized by size or by color,
forming a rainbow. Overhead, through speakers, the quiet voices of poets
reading play. Breslin said her goal was to create a sense of quietude,
"as opposed to that enforced library silence."
The temptation to grab the blanket and read a book for the rest of
the day was powerful. But the books themselves are not so easy to
tackle. Many are experimental, or genre-bending.
Poetical Dictionary
by Lohren Green, for example, is written as though it were a dictionary
and fiction, all at once. Perhaps that's the point of The Reading Room:
to force people to be brave and discover new books they might otherwise
overlook.
To further encourage discovery, the museum instituted a "take a book,
leave a book" policy. Initially, this element concerned some authors,
who worried that giving away their books for free would give readers the
impression that they're not of value. But Cunningham, who contributed
some books from Small Press Distribution to the exhibit, believed this
would be offset by the potential to engage new readers. "We're hoping
that it'll be like a gateway drug for small presses," he said. "People
will get one experimental book they wouldn't normally read, and become
addicted."
The sharing aspect also adds a dynamic angle to the exhibit.
Museum-goers have left everything from children's books to homemade
'zines on the shelves. "The Reading Room is about experiencing books,"
said Rinder. "It's a shared conversation. If someone takes a book, the
exhibit changes completely."
Naturally, a reading series seemed an appropriate accompaniment to
The Reading Room exhibit. RE@DS, hosted by poet/author David Brazil and
poet/publisher/SFMOMA community producer Suzanne Stein, invites young
poets to give a reading that incorporates multimedia elements, just as
The Reading Room incorporates both the museum landscape and poetry. "The
readers have complete creative freedom," said Stein, "except with some
limitations presented by budgets and safety."
In one performance, San Francisco poet Christian Nagler invited the
audience to do calisthenics while he gave a lecture on the economics of
equity. In another, poet Tom Comitta led the audience in a "guerrilla
opera," which entailed singing from a book of poetry for forty minutes.
"Everyone participates," said Comitta. "Even if you aren't doing
anything, people will notice that, too. You can play with a person
you've never met before, or you can sit alone in a corner."
At Brian Ang's reading on March 23, the scene was as serious,
intellectual, and literary as can be. When Brazil introduced Ang as the
night's reader, Ang did not stand up and rise to the front of the room
as expected. Instead, a composition by multi-instrumentalist Anthony
Braxton played for a few minutes. Some members of the audience closed
their eyes; others fidgeted, texted, or read from
Occupation Treatment, the free book by Taylor Brady that had been left on everyone's chairs. After describing his collection of poetry,
Pre-symbolic, as the "most encyclopedic collection of poetry ever written," Ang read some poems: "
Onset
of mechanical reproduction transformation/Haphazard administrative
visible imagined/incorporated morphology aesthetics/Metaphysical
greasepaint/Generations of science theory."
The Reading Room isn't the only East Bay exhibit melding books with
art. Pictures + Words, a new artist series at the Bay Area Free Book
Exchange that runs through July, invites artists Philip King, Michelle
Wilson, and Timothy Buckwalter to use pages from books to create
narratives in ways typically associated with literature. "I love books,
don't get me wrong," said Wilson. "But sometimes text locks the story
in. I'm interested in creating a story without doing that." The pages,
which Wilson made, will not be displayed in order, forcing readers to
make up their own stories.
Inspired by The Reading Room, Small Press Distribution is also
hosting a reading series and book giveaway on April 30, the last day of
National Poetry Month. While reading series usually entail people
reading out loud, in this series poets will read silently, in their
heads, which you can watch, if you'd like. Or you can just grab a book
and run. The old rules of what can and cannot be done with books have,
it seems, vanished.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/the-reading-room-displays-books-as-artifacts/Content?oid=3172672
