JF Ptak Science Books
(This is an expanded version of an earlier post from 2008, more than 4000 posts ago. I’m reposting it here on the top of the heap today because no doubt the only person who would see the revised version left under the burden of a million other words would be me, so here it is, new-ish and fresh.)
I’ve made several posts about Blank and Missing People which seem to me—having had long exposure to images over the last 30 years—to be quite unusual in the history of popular-published prints. This may actually be a simple corollary to a wider category of Blank Things, or Missing Things. Like Dark Matter. Or white, open, blank spaces on early, honest, maps. (And this may be part of another larger story on The Spaces in Between, (a concept in German known as Zwischenraum), but that’s another story, identifying where the missing stuff might actually “be”.
Right now though I’d like to address blank spaces in literature. It is surprising to me that in Google searches that “blank books” and “blank literature” and “books without words” (once you remove all of the hits for new diaries and new artists’ notepads and such) direct you to graphic novels. This category hardly strikes me as being “blank” as the art and action more than accommodate the absence of written words. (And by the way the graphic novel seems to be a fairly new invention—perhaps the work of Frans Masereel and Rockwell Kent in producing sequential, worldess books were among the first of their genre when they were published in the mid-1920’s?)
Blank literature doesn’t mean hollow literature. In one skinny example James Fenimore Cooper’s writings may be a little translucent and a little empty, but they aren’t blank. (Twain ripped Cooper on this point, cursing Cooper for using a bagful of woodsy woodsmen tricks to drive his story when he should’ve been writing, and not waiting for them to fill up the spaces of his missing narrative: “in his little box of stage properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with, and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go…(another) favorite stage property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was his broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of hi effects, and worked it hardest…”
An excruciatingly direct example of the worldess book is a remarkable, hoaxing or perhaps just simply demented set (!) of books by Timothy Dexter (Newburyport, Massachusetts). Dexter wrote a semi-incompressible work called A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, which followed his own logic, sentence structure, vocabulary and spelling. It was also printed and published without punctuation. In one sentence. (A sample is found below in the continued reading section.) I think that it is interesting in that someone did it and that it exists and that it was printed in 1802, but aside from that I find little comfort or twisty inspiration from it. His second edition of that work though is much more interesting, not so much in that it continued ((?), I use that word loosely) the shredded intellectual threads laid out in the first edition; it also contains one page of what I think of as a blank book: the missing punctuation marks from the first edition.
Well, not ALL of the missing punctuation, but enough, in the mind of Dexter, to silence some of the complaints of the more faint-hearted readers of his one-sentence, non-punctuated, made-up vocabulary of the first edition. He at least provides the punctuation–separately–in case a weak reader needed some:
[Image from a good treatment of Dexter at http://northofboston.org/north-of-boston-historical-figures-a-pickle-for-your-thoughts/]
He writes “Fourder mister printer the Nowing ones complane of my book the fust edition had no stops I put A nuf here and that may peper and solt as they please.”
That’s much in the spirit of Spongebob Squarepants and Patrick Star when they “discovered” the use of swear words and curses, which they figured had no meaning except as a sort of comfrot food to be sprinkled in conversation for flavoring–“sentence enhancers” they called them, without knowing (of course!) that their sounds were more than simple garnishes and intellectual punctuation.
As follows (please consult http://www.lordtimothydexter.com/the_holl_pickle.htm for a full transcription of the Dexter work–the author of the site also transcribes the Dexterian-speak into plain English, which was no doubt a labor of love):
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
……………. ……………. …………….. ………………. ……………..
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
…………………………! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !………………………..
…………………………….. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! …………………………..
…………………………………. ! ! ! ! ! ! ……………………………….
………………………………………!……………………………………..
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
……………????????????????????????……………
And on page 32 more of the “missing” punctuation is provided:
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ?????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????!??????????????? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ””””””””””””””””””” ””””””””””””””””””” ””””””””””””””””””” ””””””””””””””””””” ……………………………….. ……………………………….. ……………………………….. ……………………………….. ————————————– ————————————– ————————————–
It is a brilliantly empty book, all of the characterization present and waiting for the last bit that would make this a book: the words.
The depths or shallownesses of Dexter’s private insight is a mystery to me, if that mystery extended beyond an elaborate and peculiar (and deep) sense of humor. The man was a successful if not very odd businessman, after all, so he did have some sort of regulating principle in his life–its just that this sort of dark, removed humor is so incredibly pre-modern that I’ve gotten stuck thinking about Dexter being a little deranged rather than be prescient.
