Proper off the bat, it’s clear that Imaginary Books: Misplaced, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Discovered Solely in Different Books was assembled by a bunch of absolute nerds — and that’s a praise of the best order. Curated by Reid Byers, who just lately wrote a 500-page tome concerning the personal library, and exhibited on the Grolier Membership, certainly one of North America’s oldest bibliographic societies — i.e., literary forms of essentially the most honest sort — it might be the one exhibition I’ve seen whereby I’ll tolerate descriptors like “sublunary,” “thaumaturgical,” and “arealia,” all of that are included within the present supplies.
“Sublunary,” as I came upon, means “relating to the world or life on earth, especially in contrast to the spiritual world.” Created by a group of artists, printers, bookbinders, and calligraphers, these books don’t belong to the true world, at the least not within the conventional sense. They are often “lost” or “unfinished,” each of which apply to Sylvia Plath’s Double Publicity (1964/2024?), a semi-autobiographical novel a couple of spouse with an terrible husband, the manuscript of which was presumably destroyed by her terrible real-life husband, Ted Hughes. The existence of this e-book right here, with its cowl of a doubled Plath beneath a serifed title and printed by the precise Heinemann firm, suggests an alternate and extra sort actuality through which Plath didn’t die by suicide, and her manuscript had not vanished.
Or they’re books that by no means existed in any respect, besides within the worlds conjured in different works of fiction, corresponding to “The Garden of Forking Paths,” talked about in a Jorge Luis Borges assortment fittingly entitled Fictions (1944). We critics typically speak concerning the “worldbuilding” potential of artworks. However this assortment of “books,” taken collectively as a murals (a “post-structuralist conceptual art installation,” because the exhibition calls it) would possibly carry this concept closest to actuality, because it attracts upon the literary labor of dozens of the best minds in historical past to construct — if just for a quick second on this area — an intricate mirage of potentialities.
A model of Sylvia Plath’s Double Publicity, which disappeared c. 1970, created for Imaginary Books: Misplaced, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Discovered Solely in Different Books ({photograph} by Reid Byers, courtesy the Grolier Membership)
A model of The Songs of the Jabberwock, first talked about in Lewis Carroll’s By the Wanting Glass, created for Imaginary Books: Misplaced, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Discovered Solely in Different Books
Abdul Al-Hazred, “Necronomicon,” referenced in In Vinegia: Appresso Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari et Fratelli (1541) and numerous different books, created for Imaginary Books: Misplaced, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Discovered Solely in Different Books
Imaginary Books: Misplaced, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Discovered Solely in Different Books continues on the Grolier Membership (47 East sixtieth Road, Midtown, Manhattan) by February 15. The exhibition was curated by Reid Byers.
