Book with typographical gimmicks

[jd]

The graphics in EL&IC seemed arbitrarily placed in my opinion, and
felt as though there were no reason for them.  And as I point out in
my other post on the book, the end of the book is a bit from Vonnegut
followed by the mark of ultimate integrity: a flip book illustrating
this rip-off.  Round of applause.

On 9/14/06, bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> At 6:16 PM -0700 9/13/06, Henry Winkler wrote:
> >Re. books featuring typographical gimmicks, did anyone like Jonathan
> >Safran Foer novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? I thought it
> >was pretty good.
>
>
> I listened to it on my iPod.   :-)   Didn't catch the visuals but I
> heard about them later.   I think they would have helped in the first
> half of the book - at least added some interest because truthfully,
> I was bored and  Oskar was irritating.   I did see some of the
> graphics he used on a web-site somewhere.  ???  and they looked
> mildly interesting.  (If I had known there were visuals I would have
> bought the book!)
>
> I like graphics in novels (although not graphic novels)   *if they're
> well done.*   Seabold's Austerlitz was wonderful and the graphics
> were an integral part of the reading experience.  They brought home
> to me the fact that even if Austerlitz was a work of fiction,  it was
> based on very a real and historical event,  the Holocaust.   The
> graphics in that book were not in any way gimmicky.   There have been
> other books,  some from Victorian times (did someone mention Tristram
> Shandy?)  some from today,  where graphics add a kind of tone or
> texture,  another dimension to the realism,  maybe?   But there are
> other books where graphics can annoyingly distract the reader from
> the text.     I think if a reader is so focused on the text and
> regards the graphics like the wood-cuts of old,  extraneous,  cute,
> interesting , but not a part of the reading experience,  he can miss
> a part of what the author is attempting to do with them.   Otoh,  the
> author may have just tried a gimmick so  I have to look at the
> individual books and graphics and let them play on me  a minute.
> They may work,  they may not.     Eco's Queen Leona used graphics and
> the effect was fun more than anything.  They were nostalgia images
> and the fact they were really visual (as opposed to visualizing) made
> me realize that Eco was trying to give me the sense of what the old
> man was doing,  remembering "only" a fleeting image and having to dig
> for the associations.  The reader in this case probably has no
> associations to Italian pop art of the 1940s so it works -  kind of.
> You have to look at the graphics and try to figure why the author is
> using them and then let that be for a few minutes,  a few pages,  and
> see if it works.   You can't really "skim" the graphics like you'd
> think (unless that's what the author intended).
>
> Back to Foer,  I think he used graphics to intensify the realism;
> 9/11 was a very real event,  Oskar is an imaginary boy.  Foer is
> pointing to 9/11 with the graphics.    In that way he used them like
> Seabold although Foer's graphics were apparently more varied in
> nature than just photos.  (This is probably as clear as mud. - maybe
> I need a graphic.) (g)
>
> Perhaps graphics always add to realism because they make an invented
> world tangible.  Sometimes the invented world is a reflection of the
> real world (use photos) but other times the invented world is a
> product of the author's mind (use drawings).
>
> Graphics used to always distract me from my own visualizations of the
> text.   But lately,  since Seabold,  I've been allowing the author to
> guide me with graphics as well as with words.
>
> Sorry for the windy reply,
> Bekah
>
>
>