This A Book
Snacks
no declared author.
Pas de Chance Press
Pas de Chance has been publishing limited edition books and book-art since 1985. New releases This A Book and Snacks are both unusual texts. This A Book is assembled from found notes from the streets of Toronto, and Snacks is a collection of mail-art missing pet posters. Both challenge the idea of what text is, and both are created in fine handcrafted editions.
Snacks consists entirely of colour reproductions of lost pet posters in a variety of languages and styles. Posters bemoan the loss of everything from cats and ferrets to dolphins and the just plain weird ("You finding Ling-Ling's head? / Someone come into yard, kill dog, / cut off head of dog. / Ling-Ling very good dog. / Very much want head return.") This is a mail-art project assembled from international contributors, and as pieces come in to Pas de Chance, the pages are rotated out to make room for new posters, making every copy different. Since 1994, Snacks has continued to evolve, with more than 1,491 different 48-page copies printed to date. Each copy also has a dog tag and doggie-snack (hence the name of the book) attached to the cover, to lure your lost pet home. You can participate in the project by snail-mailing Pas de Chance a Lost or Found pet poster from your neighbourhood – each time you do you receive a complimentary copy of Snacks documenting its ongoing evolution.
Consisting of documents found on the streets of Toronto over a 10-year period, This A Book reprints material left on trains and sidewalks – mostly from those outside the mainstream. Wrapped in a letter-pressed, raffia cover, all the material is printed as is, with individual handwriting and unique syntactical quirks intact. A high number of these excerpts are printed on Canadian Schizophrenia Foundation note paper, including song lyrics about Lou Grant, a series by the self-proclaimed "St. David" and pieces such as: "You were seen / STEALING from my / APT.#10 By the all / Seeing Eye. / You left this behind / hope you sleep / well thief / For you do not / know what may / come your way / to-morrow."
A great deal of work is also completely illegible or has a very tenuous narrative: "to do, to do saves to don’t / lets Wrong, Wrong's, Wrongly / Wrong Wrongly Wrongly / is Orient Orient's Orients / and Oriental Oriental's / Orientals and We three / Kings of Orient Are / Bringing Gifts From / Heavens Afars / Wont Farnsworths / differents then Afars / Worths Secrets Secrets/ Secrets Secrets Secrets / Secrets Secrets Secrets / Secrets Secrets"
The printing of this material brings up some issues of authorial intent – it can be argued that it propagates the marginalization of people with mental disorders in favour of sensationalizing the text itself. I see This A Book, however, as working in conjunction with Snacks to impassively collect and document an environment of non-commercial text. While we continuously encounter text, it’s rare that we encounter handwritten or non-commercial text – text that operates outside of an economic exchange.
Economically, by publishing This A Book and Snacks, Pas de Chance brings both books into the capital/economic form – these are no longer non-authorial, non-commercial works. This is not a fault of Pas de Chance, but it does commodify an intended non-commodity. The point is that Pas de Chance has published texts that normally are not gathered or anthologized, read critically or even read. Like the "found & insane" page at UBU, This A Book and Snacks bring "fringe" or "outside" writing to a wider audience without an editorial filter.
(Pas de Chance can be contacted by mail at P.O. Box 6704, Station "A", Toronto ON, M5W 1X5, or ordering information is online at: www.interlog.com/~ian/) |
