In-octavo
By: John McDowall
Contributors: Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 1922-2008
Publisher: John McDowall
Published: 2013
Place of publication: [Bradford?]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 16
Subjects: Artists' books
Notes: Cover title.

Consists of a 16 page section of Alain Robbe-Grillet's Dans le labyrinthe.

Artist's statement. "In France until the late 1960s new books were often sold uncut, with the publishers Les Editions de Minuit continuing to issue their literature titles untrimmed until the 1980s. It was for the reader to separate the pages joined regularly by the folds at the head and fore-edge. A variety of methods were used, from carefully cutting with a sharp blade to running a finger through, resulting in a neat edge or ragged with shreds of curling paper. This evidence of, conceivably, the owner's personality or location of reading and of, in some cases, abandoned reading. I have one such untrimmed book, Dans le labyrinthe by Alain Robbe-Grillet, first published by Les Editions de Minuit in 1959. Its title and exhaustive descriptions of objects, speech, events to present a strictly material reality, which in turn is the reality of the moment of reading, makes it a particularly apposite example. In-octavo reproduces parts of the text from the first 16 pages of Robbe-Grillet's novel. Only the words glimpsed, as if the pages of the uncut signature are teased open, are printed - with the rest of the page left blank. The shapes of visible print vary, from a wedge at lower outside corners to a small arc at tail edge."