By the book
Subtitle: stories and pictures
By: Diane Schoemperlen
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 218
ISBN-13: 9781927428818
Subjects: Short stories
Description: Once touted as compendiums of human knowledge, the encyclopedias and handbooks of bygone eras now read quaintly, if not comically-yet within their musty pages are often found phrases of uncanny evocative power. Scrupulously stitching such fragments together, in a sequel to the Governor General's Award-winning Forms of Devotion, By The Book is a collection of verbal and visual collages whose alchemies transform long-dead texts into tales of enduring vitality. With her visually witty full-colour artwork and stories like "What Is A Hat? Where Is Constantinople? Who Was Sir Walter Raleigh? And Many Other Common Questions, Some With Answers, Some Without," and "Consumptives Should Not Kiss Other People: A Handy Guide to the Care and Maintenance of Your Family's Good Health," Schoemperlen's irreverent and ironic brand of nostalgia combines vintage kitsch with comic, creepy, unexpectedly moving yarns.
Table of contents: title: By the book or: Alessandro in the new world: an unlikely tale of translation, time travel, and tragic love --; title: A nervous race: 222 brief notes on the study of nature, human and otherwise --; title: What is a hat? where is Constantinope? who was Sir Walter Raleigh? and many other common questions, some with answers, some without --; title: A body like a little nut: in which the botanist looks for love in the wild, appropriates the alphabet, waxes poetic, succumbs to despair --; title: History becomes authentic or: the question of things happening --; title: Consumptives should not kiss other people: a handy guide to the care and maintenance of your family's good health --; title: Around the world in 100 postcards: in which the geographer makes a survey of the world, finds it wanting, comes to the conculusion that there's no place like home.