Forthcoming Posts

I'll shortly begin a series of posts on works I've been reading recently. I aim to post one or two such entries a week over the coming months.

Video from Azoth Books

Here's a video from the Taiwanese publisher of Five Wounds, Azoth Books:

I have no idea whatsoever what the interviewee is saying, but I'm sure it's very intelligent!

Re: previous Five Wounds videos in English, here's an interview I did for The Wheeler Centre.

And here's some other introductory videos and a trailer.

Chinese Edition of Five Wounds

A Chinese edition of Five Wounds was recently released in Taiwan by Azoth Books. It looks amazing (there are several interior views of page layouts at this local book site). 

 

 

There are more pix at Dan's Blog.

Five Wounds: Review at 'Spike Magazine'

A belated mention for a review of Five Wounds by Declan Tan for Spike Magazine, for whom I also wrote a short piece on the design of the book a while ago. Here's an extract from the review:

Not every book looks and feels like an artefact when you pick it up. Oftentimes it is just words printed across cheap paper, the literal form of it separated from its content, cased in a merely functional cover with some gluey binding. But with Five Wounds, an “illuminated novel”, the very object itself is part of its mythology and there is a sense of something big, something heavy within it, if you have the time.

One false move, and I shoot you

None more existential clip from Jean-Pierre Melville's great film about the French Resistance, Army of Shadows:

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween from Dan Hallett (via Dan's blog)

Inspirations: Eyes Without a Face by Georges Franju

Below is an edited version of the infamous scene from Georges Franju's poetic horror film Eyes Without a Face (1960), in which plastic surgeon Doctor Genessier removes a woman's face to replace that of his disfigured daughter. You don't actually see that much, and the special effects are not convincing today, but nonetheless not recommended for the squeamish. 

The cover of the Criterion DVD release of this film (left) is a typical example of the inspired approach to design used by this company, who always pay careful attention to the packaging and presentation of their releases. The film is an obvious reference for the character of Cuckoo in Five Wounds, although in fact I did not see it until after I had conceived of the character. My favourite scene in Eyes Without a Face is not the one excerpted in the clip above, but rather the subsequent montage that shows the transplanted face rotting as the recipient rejects the skin graft (which is also apropos to the themes of Five Wounds, but to the character of Crow rather than that of Cuckoo). Unfortunately I couldn't find that clip online. Bonus inspiration points for the fact that a character is eaten by dogs in the film's finale.

Interview with Zoe Sadokierski

A nice interview with Zoe (the designer of Five Wounds) about her work on two recent short-story anthologies has been posted at Allen & Unwin's Tumblr. Here's an excerpt:

The initial direction was clear in terms of what kind of mood needed to be communicated, but initially we were going to use another illustrator whose work was much more linear in style. It was a collaborative process to get to the rich, layered illustrations these covers ended up with. Designers call this the ‘rebriefing’ process; over the course of a project, you need to keep re-looking at the brief and reassessing how to keep all parties (publishing, marketing, sales, the authors) happy. Sometimes this means stopping, reflecting, and changing tack.

Venice, 2001; Cambridge, 2001; Sydney, 2009

Terry Gilliam explains his animation techniques

Fantastic archival footage of Gilliam.

Interview with Art Spiegelman

Style is a capitalist invention. It’s a trademark. It’s very useful in the world of commerce to have a good trademark, but it wasn’t my first concern. I got restless…

[Found at Austin Kleon's Tumblr.]

Sydney, 2009; Sydney, 2009

Sydney, 2008; Sydney, 2008

Five Wounds: Review at 'The Spectator Book Blog'

There is a nice review of Five Wounds over at The Spectator Book Blog, by Isabel Sutton, which describes the book as an 'engrossing and original fantasy'. Here's an extract:

To my amazement, I began to lose my scepticism and turn the pages with a genuine care for the characters’ fates. I squirmed at the gruesome deaths and held my breath as the hero and heroine made their getaway; by the end I was greedy to know what happens, fully absorbed in the throes of the story. My progress was checked, however, when the ending arrived. There wasn’t one pat conclusion, but two. In a final act of literary guile, the book pushes you back to consider how – as well as what – you are reading.

Dan's Blog

Meanwhile, over at Dan's blog, he has been discussing the influences on his illustrations for Five Wounds, thus: Piranesi, Blake, Hogarth M. C. Escher, Chris Ware Francisco Goya, Umberto Eco

Inspirations: The Holy Bible by Manic Street Preachers

I hate purity
I hate goodness
I don't want virtue to exist anywhere
I want everyone corrupt.

Guest Post at Spike Magazine

Spike Magazine in the UK have now published a guest post I wrote for them on the design of Five Wounds. Below is an extract:

Imagine that the appearance of a book is part of the story it tells, as if it was an artefact created by the imaginary civilisation it describes. Book design becomes an aspect of what the science-fiction community calls ‘world-building’, and as such it applies the principle of ‘Show, don’t tell’ to the surface of the page itself. My fantasy novel Five Wounds uses design in exactly this way.

Thanks to Jason Weaver of Spike for arranging this.

Some Further Comments at 'Shelf Abuse'

I somehow missed some further remarks on Five Wounds by Carl Doherty of the 'Shelf Abuse' site, who concludes:

I couldn’t recommend Five Wounds: An Illuminated Novel more. An accomplished, multifaceted work that follows the twisted fates of five sympathetic freaks in what is essentially an alternate-history Venice, its synthesis of words and images is effective enough to change anyone’s preconceptions about them thar picture books.

See here for a more detailed review by Carl. I also wrote a guest post for 'Shelf Abuse' on the influence of comic books on Five Wounds.

Inspirations: Zabriskie Point by Michelangelo Antonioni

The rest of the film is very badly dated (and is therefore not worth explaining here), but this final sequence, seen in isolation, is perhaps the best music video of all time, even though Pink Floyd's 'Come in Number 51, Your Time is Up' doesn't actually start until about two minutes in. That's okay, because the preceding section is taken up by multiple camera views of an actual exploding house (you would make the most of that footage too, if you had blown up an actual house).

The title chapter of Pistols! Treason! Murder! could be seen as a homage to this sequence.

Inspirations: The Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton (1955)

Charles Laughton's film The Night of the Hunter (1955) has thematic concerns in common with another of my inspirations: Ray Bradbury's novel Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962).





To fully appreciate the second clip above, you have to know from the outset that Mitchum is the villain, from whom Lillian Gish is protecting the orphaned children sheltering in her house by means of the shotgun cradled across her lap. Laughton represents the conflict between these two characters (or rather, archetypes, who are defined in part by their opposed notions of God) by having them harmonise with each other while singing the same hymn, which they obviously understand in radically different ways. It is a brilliantly counter-intuitive dramatic strategy.

Simon Callow's book on The Night of the Hunter is an excellent introduction to this unique film, the only one directed by Laughton. On the film's tone and aesthetic, Callow explains (pp. 43-44):

From the beginning, Laughton had been insistent on conveying to all his collaborators the essential fairytale-like quality of the story. Everything, he told [art director Hilyard] Brown, should be seen from the boy's point of view. He accordingly designed the sets 'from the position that only children see certain things.' .... There was little pretence that a real world was being filmed, the shapely lines and symbolic details creating a highly stylised environment in which expressive power was achieved by painterly or sculptural means ....

On Mitchum as the villainous Preacher, Callow has this to say (pp. 65-66):

The performance is almost two-dimensional; both the actor and the character seem to be giving conscious performances, which lends a highly original dimension. At the risk of introducing an over-used and devalued tag, this is a Brechtian performance in the technical sense of the word - it is a demonstration of a certain kind of behaviour which promotes an analytical and critical attitude from the audience. .... Character becomes a kind of conjuring trick: the fascination comes from watching the way in which Preacher works his effects. The more naked the contradictions, the more chilling the effect.

Truffaut's initial review described the film as being like 'a horrifying news item retold by small children.' All of this recalls to me the following comment by Will Self on the worlds created in the fiction of Roald Dahl (quotation from The Guardian, 17 October 2009):

[T]here are big white spaces in Dahl-world where any realistic detailing might well be shaded in by a lesser writer; and again, in common with [Quentin] Blake’s vision, Dahl-world is at once lurid and curiously ill-defined. The passions are strong and clear – fear, hatred, avarice, love, greed (especially for sugar) – but they are played out against a backdrop that is only wonkily apprehended.

Dahl mimicked to perfection a believable child’s-eye view, that, looking up from below, sees the adult realm as foreshortened, and adult foibles as grossly elongated.

IT'S A HARD WORLD FOR LITTLE THINGS.

Inspirations: Townes Van Zandt

YOU FEEL LIKE MUDD, YOU'LL END UP GOLD.

Bernard Caleo on Montage in Comics

Check out the video above from Readings Bookshop in Melbourne, hosted by Oz comics impresario Bernard Caleo, who is talking about montage in film and comics (some - maybe all - of the featured art is by Michael Camilleri, who also appears). The first of a series of events on comics run by Bernard for Readings.

Inspirations: Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders

NIEN.

Guest Post at The Spectator Book Blog

I have a guest post up at The Spectator book blog, which is about the influence of the King James Bible (published 400 years ago this month) on the design of Five Wounds. 

Here's an extract: 

 The modern paperback is not a natural object. The advent of e-books has made this painfully obvious. In the current state of confusion as to what a book is or should be, it might be an opportune moment to review the sacred prehistory of the novel. Five Wounds reaffirms the relevance of the King James Bible to modern storytelling, but it also draws on medieval traditions that were erased in 1611, just as the novel erased its own sacred origins.

Five Wounds: Discussion at 'Caustic Cover Critic'

James Morrison of the book design blog Caustic Cover Critic (he is also the publisher of Whisky Priest Books) has posted a short discussion of Five Wounds, including some photos of page layouts. Have a look!