The Hypothetical Library

Emily Barton

Introduction

I love all kinds of books, but I tend to gravitate towards those that have a speculative bent. This is the reason I like novels so much, the form is entirely speculative, in the sense that all novelists are creating their characters and worlds from whole cloth. But within this effort, the opportunity for imaginative exploration is unlimited. From Phillip K. Dick creating a world in which the Germans won WWII, to the more historically based Czech society under Communism of the late sixties in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Dick’s world is entirely speculative while Kundera’s is based on memory and experience, but both are the inventions of the author.

Emily Barton is a writer who masterfully splits the difference. Barton's second novel Brookland, while wildly speculative, doesn’t feel that way. Brookland is the tale of three sisters in the late 18th century who run a gin mill, the eldest of whom goes on to design and build a bridge that spans the east river from Brookland to Manhattan decades before the current edifice we all know and love. Through Barton’s use of archaic English and dazzling verisimilitude you find yourself utterly convinced that this historical event happened.

The story spans the years and tracks the sisters relationships, the progress of the Bridge, and citizens of Brookland in the language of the period. History breathes in this book, and you find yourself transported as you move through time. When you do step back from it, the immense effort in research of detail becomes apparent and adds another level of pleasure to the experience.

When I receive a submission for The Hypothetical Library, I'm always amazed at how much can be drawn from a brief description. Barton's hypothetical entry—Golems! A Musical—arrived as a simple one page premise about the ascent (or descent) of a young Jewish man from the lower east side of 1920's Manhattan to the bright lights of Broadway, containing within it a whole structure based on duality: a boy and girl, the Yiddish theater and Broadway, being good and living the good life, hetero and homosexuality, orthodoxy and worldliness. And that's just the novel part of it. Barton doubles up again with a story inside the story, a play is embedded within the novel. Naturally this play also features doubling—two men who create two Golems to win the hearts of two girls—and examines the pairings of effort versus ease, the mystical and the earthly.

In that spirit I decided to do two parts for this hypothetical book: a book cover featuring the slightly kitschy, and hilarious Broadway approach for the novel, and a more somber period-style Yiddish theater poster of the play inside the novel, Di Goylemim.

With each submission to The Hypothetical Library I ask the authors, if possible, to approach other authors to provide an actual cover blurb for their hypothetical book, and this time I am very happy to say we have author Michael Chabon. He penned one of my personal favorites, The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, so I am very excited that he provided the well-deserved praise for Ms. Barton’s hypothetical book.

So with out further ado I give you Golems! A Musical/Di Goylemim.

The Cover

 

Golems! A Musical—The hypothetical flap copy

Shlomi Berenfelt works as a bootblack on Second Avenue, spit-shining the wingtips of the big machers of Yiddish theater. While they smoke Cuban cigars and sip champagne, he lives in Mrs. Gold’s boarding house, eating her cabbage soup and pining after her theater-loving daughter, Raisl—a plain girl, but soulful, and highly skilled with a needle and thread.

But Shlomi dreams of more than just Raisl-darned socks and embroidered yarmulkes—he wants to be a player in that glittering Second Avenue world, not just a bootblack at its fringes. For years, he has climbed each night to his cramped room and worked on what he hopes will be his ticket out of the ghetto and into Raisl Gold’s heart: his great play, his masterpiece, Di Goylemim.

Di Goylemim tells the story of Mendele and Shimmel, two tailor’s apprentices who, bored with the mundanity of their day jobs, decide to make things more interesting—and with any luck lighten their workload—by fashioning a golem out of clay and old fabric scraps. Shlomi is ecstatic when his play captures the imagination of the urbane, up-and-coming producer Pinchas Meyer. But he despairs when, in Meyer’s hands, the script begins to change. Mendele and Shimmel become sassy, scarf-flipping Michael and Scott, the play becomes a musical—Golems!—and the show’s big numbers, “Saturday’s A Fine Day for Lighting A Fire” and “Boy Oh Boy That’s Bacon!,” have preview audiences all atwitter about how Golems! could easily make the leap from Second Avenue to Broadway.

Shlomi Berenfelt is on the verge of success, but at what cost? Do caviar and champagne lead inexorably to treyf, as Meyer’s script suggests? Will Pinchas lead him toward glowing reviews, financial rewards, and the love that dare not speak its name to its bubbe—but away from Torah and Raisl? Can he bear to have his name on the marquee of a play that features the dance number “A Friday Night, An Elevator, and You”?

In this gaslit spectacular of a novel, Emily Barton brings to life the Lower East Side in all its glory: pickle barrels stinking, kreplach frying, the theaters filled with raucus song, the boys more than a little feygele. Golems! A Musical is a humorous and tender look at how one man navigates the journey between his heritage and the sparkling new world in which he hopes to succeed. Above all, it is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

The promotional quote—Michael Chabon

"The world of Second Avenue in its raucous heyday—frying onions, violins, greasepaint and ganefs--has been waiting for the hand of an enchanter to come and wake it from its long slumber. Now comes Emily Barton to write her magic inscription and bring that world wildly to life."

Di Goylemim Poster

As soon as I read Emily Bartons’s proposal for Golems! A Musical I knew I wanted to do a Yiddish Theater poster along with the book cover. The Yiddish Theater is fascinating history—An entire rich world quickly fading from memory, but kept alive by a very few. Yiddish is almost dead, only spoken with regularity by the Orthodox Hasidic community, and only peppers speech in English (Oy vey!), but it once lived throughout the world as a vibrant and expressive language.

The Yiddish Theater straddled worlds—on the one hand it lived in America as a way of reassuring recent jewish immigrants that their culture could remain in tact, but on the other, helped them to modernize and integrate. It was an art form that contained within itself, its own destruction. The posters of the time reflect that transition—starting early on completely in Yiddish, then a combination of English, and Yiddish, and then almost entirely in English. You can trace the life and death of the Yiddish theater through the posters over time.

Although Barton’s story takes place in the mid 1920’s, I’ve emulated what is probably a later style—more mid 1930’s, but I thought it would best reflect on the transitional nature of Shlomi Berenfelt’s dilema, just as his story reflects the transitional nature of Jewish culture of that time.

Since most, if not all of you, can’t read Yiddish (myself included) I’ve created an annotated pdf with the english translation of each of the Yiddish phrases—just click on the yellow word balloons and a text box will pop up with the english version.  Download Di Goylemim_poster_final_5

 

About the translation

As I mentioned above I can’t read Yiddish, or Hebrew for that matter (I’m a shaygetz from central Ohio. What do I know from Yiddish—nu?). As a result I needed a lot of help for the poster, so I’m sending a very public thank you for the Mitzvah from my friends, and friends of friends: Michael Schreiber, David Yankelewitz, Masha Rudina, Julian Ribinik, and Rivka Lichtenstein (all the way from Israel, no less!). A very big Toda to one and all!

 

Biography
Emily Barton is the author of two novels, The Testament of Yves Gundron, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Month, and received the Bard Fiction Prize, and Brookland which was also a New York Times Notable Book, and was chosen as one one of the twenty-five best 2006 works of fiction and poetry by the Los Angeles Times. She currently teaches at Yale, and soon at Columbia’s MFA program. She also writes essays, and  book reviews, the most recent of which (yesterday) appeared in the Los Angeles Times, and can be seen here.

Emily recently was interviewed on WAMC’s outstanding show “The Roundtable” and she gave The Hypothetical Library a mention which made me blush, and leave the room when I listened.

You can visit her site for more information here.

Next: China Miéville

Jennifer L. Knox

Introduction

There is a scene in the film Caddyshack in which a young girl casually tosses a Baby Ruth candy bar into a swimming pool full of frolicking caddys. The theme from Jaws begins, and the camera tracks the unfortunately shaped candy bar as it floats ominously through the pool. The reaction is what you'd expect—one of the swimmers spots the offending sight and screams "Doody! Doody!" Panic drives everyone in the pool away screaming.

And that's the problem with being a funny poet like Jennifer L. Knox. When you put humor into art some people are just going to see a floating turd.

Consider Frank Zappa. In the late sixties he put humor into the rock music just at the time it was reaching the peak of its bloated self importance. Everyone assumed his lyrics must have been some kind of drug induced, coded language—they weren't, Zappa was just being funny, and besides, he never touched drugs. When everyone figured out that he was being serious about joking, they pegged him as “that funny outsider guy". Decades of some of the most amazing and aurally sophisticated music and compositions the rock world would ever hear, did little to dissuade the casual listener that he was anything but a novelty act.

I don't think Knox suffers as much from the same kind of knee jerk categorizations from the poetry world. Poetry has always been more forgiving of its experimenters than rock will ever be—and Knox is just so good with language and timing that even if the humor might shock the reader, the pitch perfect quality of the writing always shines through.

Her poetry isn't always funny, and even when it is, the humor is of a tragic nature. Consider what Knox said about musician Randy Newman, another dropper of Baby Ruth’s into pools.

"Randy Newman showed me that the voices I love hearing most are the dark ones—the losers, the liars, the silver-tongued devils who aren’t fooling anyone, even themselves."

Most people confuse humor with joy. Happy people don't need comedy, because they don't need to laugh. There's a reason the Greeks iconically reduced all of theater into two masks—comedy and drama. Ever the fatalists and dualists, the Greeks knew that the important parts of life boils down to laughing and crying—and although there are two separate masks, they are both intended for only one face—yours.

That's what Knox’s work does, blends the comedy and drama, line by line, poem after poem.

Just as every kingdom needs its court jester to openly mock the king, art needs its Frank Zappa’s, Randy Newman’s, and Jennifer L. Knox's to drop the turd-shaped candy bar in the pool. Those who don't get it, (and never will) can run off screaming, while the rest of us sit back and laugh our asses off.

The Cover

 

Junior Detective Adventures #19:  Perplexed by a Porpoise

—The hypothetical flap copy

"On a visit to Oceanland with Uncle Langley, Jimmy and Sue dive into a new mystery. The key to the auditorium has disappeared. Where could it be? Can they find it in time for the afternoon show? And what is that funny sound coming from behind the blue door? Use your own Super Sleuth Skills™ to help the Junior Detectives save the day."

Don’t miss these other books in the Junior Detective series: 

Junior Detective Adventures #1: Meet the Junior Detectives

Junior Detective Adventures #2: A Ghost in the Attic

Junior Detective Adventures #3: The Missing Spelling Book

Junior Detective Adventures #4: Root Beer Floats

Junior Detective Adventures #5: Here Kitty Kitty!

Junior Detective Adventures #6: Follow That Dog!

Junior Detective Adventures #7: The Code Breakers Club

Junior Detective Adventures #8: Welcome Home, Uncle Langley

Junior Detective Adventures #9: The Secret Handshake

Junior Detective Adventures #10: Song of the Snake Charmer

Junior Detective Adventures #11: Let’s Set Sail

Junior Detective Adventures #12: The Beaver’s House

Junior Detective Adventures #13: Tick Tock Clock

Junior Detective Adventures #14: The Talking Bird

Junior Detective Adventures #15: Shadows in the Woods

Junior Detective Adventures #16: The Abominable Snowman

Junior Detective Adventures #17: Big Foot’s Footprints

Junior Detective Adventures #18: A Bicycle Bamboozle

About the Cover

Part of the fun of this blog, is that while I am familiar with work of the authors that I contact, I can never be sure what they will come up with. In my request email I always say that the proposal can be anything—A food writer can hypothetically write a book of poetry, or a fiction writer can do a non-fiction book about ecology.

Knowing Jennifer as the loosest of cannons, I had no idea what to expect—I thought it might be bird related (she loves birds). I definitely did not expect a Young Adult mystery series. Her Junior Detective Adventures series follows the crime solving siblings Jimmy and Sue, through a series of harrowing adventures. For this hypothetical series we focused on adventure #19—Perplexed by a Porpoise.

In my imagination I think the Junior Detective Adventures would read something like Nancy Drew as realized by, Hubert Selby Jr. in collaboration with Andy Kaufman, and edited by David Lynch. In other words, like all good YA books, they would teach the kids of today the values and skills they will need to navigate the 21st century.

For the cover art, I tapped the considerable talents of painter Elizabeth Zechel. Elizabeth has done art for several book covers in the past, as well as her own amazing paintings. Elizabeth's work is gorgeous, and can be seen here. She has this wonderful ability to combine dichotomous imagery in a way that makes sense of things, that shouldn't make any sense at all. It works the same way good poetry works, so the combination of Jennifer and Elizabeth was perfect.

It should be noted that the cover art was rendered in color pencil rather than paint, because at the time she was 8 months pregnant. Oil paint is bad for anyone to be around, but when you're pregnant, doubly so. I am very happy to announce that since we started this project Elizabeth's baby Charlie has since entered the world, and is an adorable little peanut.

What Elizabeth may not realize is that in receiving the name Charlie, he is entitled to a whole world of benefits that you non-Charlies will never know about (Elizabeth, be sure to ask "The Counsel of Charlies" about the rent free villa in Tuscany). Even my dad—a "Chuck"—has no idea what he's missing out on. Congratulations Elizabeth!

Jennifer's website, "Take Off Your Pants and Relax" can be viewed here. You can buy her amazingly hilarious Drunk By Noon here , and A Gringo Like Me here, and coming this Fall her new collection of poems The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway. I was going to put the cover image in this posting but the lazy designer (me) hasn't finished it yet. All of these tomes can be found at Bloof Books.

Chuck Orr

Update:

As it turns out the photo I selected for the cover art of The Polaris Redaction was a little more perfect than I thought. I chose this picture, because it worked well for the composition I had in mind, but as it turns out the building of the launch tower to the left of the missile was a project that may dad was in charge of overseeing.

Introduction

There is an age old playground tradition for boys that basically goes like this.

 

"My dad can beat up your dad!"

There are many variations on the "My dad can..." premise, he can be; richer, smarter, stronger, etc. Well I happen to have the trump card on all boys, past and present on all of the playgrounds out there—My dad's name is engraved on a gold plaque on a space capsule on the moon.

Beat that!

The truth is that it might be there, and it might not, he never got conformation, but the story goes something like this. In the early days of the space program—before it was called NASA—my dad worked down the hall for the Navy on the Polaris missile project. This was 1958 Cape Canaveral Florida—the epicenter of America’s New Frontier.

My dad was one of the many young military men—Naval engineers—working on Americas expanding technological defense program as Sputnik ominously beeped in orbit above. The cold war was under way, and my dad had his role in it. As a young civil engineer he helped oversee and develop the program for missiles that would inevitably be launched from submarines, should the need arise. 

The Navy shared offices, and launch pads with what eventually would become NASA, and my dad would frequently chat and hang out with his fellow engineers down the hall. One day one of them asked "Hey Chuck, do you want your name on the moon?" 

The people who worked on the Agena project (the capsule part of the moon launch) were sending several crafts to smash into the moon to work out the science of how to eventually land a ship there. One aspect of these missions involved figuring out how to stabilize the craft as it went into zero gravity space. The solution involved small rectangles of solid gold that would be placed around the craft. My dad described it as “being the size of those little plaques on trophies”. The engineers, applying engineer humor, decided to engrave their names on those plaques and ensure themselves a kind of immortality. 

So after being asked, my dad said "yes". Whether or not they got around to doing it—my dad never saw the engraving in question—we don't know for sure, but I choose to believe that the name Charles R. Orr is on piece of gold sitting in the wreckage of an early spaceship with moon dust slightly obscuring it. 

So in that sense my dad can beat up your dad.

Dad 1957

My dad loves spy novels, and has read just about every one out there, from authors like Helen MacInnes to Vince Flynn and everyone in between. So for Father’s day I thought I would honor him with his very own espionage thriller, with a character based on him and his time at Cape Canaveral. So if you see my dad be sure and thank him for hypothetically saving America, and the space program from an insidious Nazi plot. Thanks dad!

The Cover

The Polaris Redaction: A Chuck Orr Novel—The hypothetical flap copy

"Cape Canaveral Florida, 1958: as the cold war heats up, the need for new defensive technology grows and for Lieutenant junior grade, Charles "Chuck" Orr of the U.S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps, that means the Polaris missile project. Chuck’s job is to pore over thousands of blueprints at the naval offices of Launch Complex 29A—the crucible of America's future Naval Defense Strategy.

When a yellowed Nazi war document accidentally crosses his desk, it changes Chuck’s life and the course of the Cold War forever. What is "The Polaris Redaction" and how is it that the codename of the project he is working on appears on a Nazi document from 13 years ago? What was “Der Polarisverein” (The Polaris club), and why does it’s official seal keep showing up on corpses all around the Cape?

Under the sweltering 1950s Florida sun the search for answers becomes a breakneck race against time as Chuck Orr uncovers the unsettling truth behind "The Polaris Redaction". With each question he asks, the size of the conspiracy he’s stumbled upon reveals more of itself: it’s a threat that will bring Chuck Orr face to face with swaggering test pilots, former Nazis, leggy brunettes, and a secret that threatens to shake the very foundations of America's fledgling space program.

Robert Charles brings to life the American “New Frontier” at its height with an unerring historical precision and a superb eye for detail. The Polaris Redaction is a gripping page-turner, a thrill ride from first page to last!"

More about my dad
Of course my dad had a life beyond Cape Canaveral in the 50’s. He met my mom there, and my brother was born in Florida in the mid 60‘s. Soon after they moved back to Ohio, where I was born. They eventually settled in my home town, in a housing development that he had coincidentally surveyed as a civil engineering student in college. He worked at DuPont for 31 years, never taking a single sick day. Not once. He also designed a golf course along the way.

My dad is an even-tempered, and conservative man—a personality trait that I challenged as frequently as possible when I was growing up (and still do today, to some extent). Once when I was sixteen, I brought home a copy of Das Capital by Karl Marx to illustrate to my intention of becoming a Communist. When I showed my dad the copy, he just said “You enjoying reading that, are you?” My bullshit exposed (I found it completely impenetrable), dad had ended my career as a budding Commie with one question.

One of the reasons I became so in love with books was because my dad took me to the library a lot, either to get his own books while I hunted down my own favorites, or to just drop me off for a couple of hours. His ability to identify and gently encourage his children’s interest is one of his greatest skills. He would certainly emphasize the things he thought my brother and I should do, but more importantly never discouraged anything we actually wanted to do. And for that I will be grateful all my life. 

Thank you Dad, I love you.

Some parting words of wisdom from Chuck Orr:

• Whenever faced with a daunting task remember this: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
• The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
• No good deed goes unpunished.
• When swinging a golf club, always keep your head down, and eyes on the ball.

Next week: Jennifer L. Knox

Mark Bittman's hypothetical payback

Introduction

One of the more popular postings on The Hypothetical Library was Jennifer L. Knox's "adaptation" of Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything. She took his monumental cookbook, scratched out his name, replaced it with her own, and then added a new introduction. 

Here is the adjusted cover, and you can see the post that led to this one, here.
 

 

Mr. Bittman was a good sport about the whole thing, and even mentioned it on Twitter. Because of his gracious reaction and good humor about the whole thing, I thought it only fair to let him have a crack at Ms. Knox's work.

As I mentioned in my previous post Ms. Knox had a poem in last week's issue of The New Yorker. It struck me that this would be the perfect opportunity for Mr. Bittman to extract his revenge.

I contacted Mr. Bittman to offer him the chance to level things out, and he was game. After some back and forth, we decide the best approach would be for me to physically alter the attribution, and he would send an approval e-mail—a sort of hypothetical power of attorney. His direction for the signature was "Just make a big sloppy 'M.'"

Here is Mr. Bittman's "reattributed" New Yorker poem Pimp My Ride.


 

And here is the accompanying e-mail.


 
Ms. Knox has been given a copy of both the adjusted poem and e-mail—she was delighted by both. Balance has been restored.

Miscellaneous hypothetica

This past week was big one for The Hypothetical Library. The Neil Gaiman posts received a great deal of attention from readers as well as other blogs. It was also the week of Book Expo America here in New York. During BEA, I had a chance to meet a lot of very nice people, in and around the publishing industry: small press folks, librarians, Tweeters, and big house publishers. I tried to go to as many events as possible and hand out my new promotional card which you can see below. I even met some people who already knew about the blog, which is always gratifying. There was a group of librarians at the NYC bar Tom and Jerry's who asked if I had an MLS. It took me a few moments to realize they meant a Masters of Library Science. The answer is "no" by the way, not even a hypothetical one. 

The Card

 

I'm taking a little time off from posting new covers, but thought I would mention what some of some of the previous Hypothetical Library contributors have been up to...

Jennifer L. Knox has a poem in this weeks’ The New Yorker called Pimp My Ride.

Colum McCann's National Book Award winning novel Let The Great World Spin, is being brought to the big screen by Producer JJ Abrams, of Star Trek and Lost fame. You can read about it here. 

David Lehman is in San Francisco reading from his books Yeshiva Boys, and A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs. if you live in the Bay area, try and catch his reading at Moe's Books 2476 Telegraph Avenue Berkeley, on June 2, 7:30

Gabrielle Bell continues with her wonderful comics blog Lucky and has a new travelogue in progress. 

About submissions

Over the past 3 months I've received several inquires about contributing ideas to this blog, and while I appreciate the offers (some of them very cool) I do have a rationale about who I select for these entries. I choose writers who have at least two but preferably three published works. This is mainly to help me. Since I am designing a book cover based on nothing more than a paragraph or two, I feel it's crucial that I have an informed sense of what the writers work is like. So while, I’m designing a specific cover for a specific premise I am guided by the tone and voice of the authors previous work. It just seems like the right way to do it. So while I appreciate all of the inquiries and ideas, I do have an established method that I feel I need to follow.

Next week: My break continues...

Neil Gaiman Part III

Announcement

I am happy to announce that 1 very real, non-hypothetical copy of If You Read This Book The World Will End is being donated to The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and will be auctioned to raise funds for this very crucial organization. It will be 1 of the only 4 existing copies. 

Sadly it will not have the "Raven" padlock, but I promise it will have it's own unique antique security device, and no key will be provided with the book. The actual date of the auction has not yet been determined, but should be in the next couple of months. It will come with a Hypothetical Library card signed by Neil Gaiman, and date stamped, like all good library cards. 

Why anyone would want the responsibility of possessing this book is beyond me, but I am certain that the more money that is bid, the safer the world will remain.

Introduction

This is the third and final entry of the Neil Gaiman series, and it's a special one. Such a unique project deserves a unique finale. When I told my friend Nick Abadzis (the voice for audio reading) about what I had planned for these Neil Gaiman posts he told me "He's given you a gift, mate" and I have to agree. So let me take a moment to thank Neil for such a fertile idea—this was exactly as much fun to do as it looked. Thank you.

As I worked on the 3 parts of this project I spent some time reacquainting myself with Mr. Gaiman's body of work in all of its many incarnations. Rereading the Sandman series in comic book form, and his collection of short works, Fragile Things in hardcover book, listening to the audio of The Graveyard Book, and reading American Gods on my iPad. The thing I already suspected became apparent—format is irrelevant. His stories, like all good stories, stay good no matter what form they’re told in. 

There is a great deal of hand-wringing going on right now about the state of publishing and the future of books and reading. This is mainly due to the impact of e-books. But the one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that people need and want stories, and always will. 

All of us—readers, writers, publishers, and even the lowly book cover designer—are in a unique time and place to guide the future of books. My particular concern lies with the effect e-books have on the state of book cover. Which as it stands now means near extinction.

Before I started The Hypothetical Library I had been working on an idea for e-book covers—or as I’ve been calling them, digital book covers—for over a year. The premise is that if a cover can work in a digital space, why should it remain a static image? It could be a short film, or animation with sound and music or as you will see, even an interactive puzzle.

While working on the ideas for If You Read This Book the World Will End, it struck me that Mr. Gaiman's strange proposal was the perfect way to show what could be possible for a strange and new kind of cover. A hypothetical cover for a still-hypothetical format.

Some technical notes, disclaimers, and caveats:

This cover was built in HTML 5—which is a very new way to do things— by the very talented programmer and designer Jeff Gray. Both he and I would have preferred to build this in Flash, but since I wanted it to run on smart phones and the new iPad, this was simply not an option. As a result, this cover is best experienced on a web browser, on your pc. It will run on your other devices, just a bit slower, and those of you using Internet Explorer 6 or below, won't have much luck at all, sorry. This is both the thrill and frustration of dealing with new technologies. Figuring out the best paths and workarounds takes time, and I gave Mr. Gray about 2 very short weeks.

If you like what you see please share it with others, and after you’ve tried it you can see some other digital book covers I’ve done here.

So go ahead and click on the image below, if you dare. Don’t be frustrated if it takes a few tries to get to the end, after all you shouldn’t open this book anyway.

If You Read This Book The World Will End—the digital book cover

 

Credit

Jeff Gray is an artist, musician, and developer based in Brooklyn, NY. Some of his work can be found here. He's also found rambling about tech, art, culture, and gaming here. Mr. Gray’s computer suffered a slight drawback after finishing this project. At the shop where they attempted to restore his hard drive, and two backups they asked with ashen faces, and barely hidden disgust “why is there dried blood in your machine?!”

Neil Gaiman: Bibliography

Neil Gaiman has an astonishingly large body of work including novels, comic books, audio recordings, plays, and movies You can see a comprehensive listing of his work on his website. 

Of special note is his upcoming anthology Stories: All New Tales which Mr. Gaiman co-edited with Al Sarrantonio. It includes an amazing scope of writers including: Joyce Carol Oates, Jodi Picoult, Roddy Doyle, Stewart O'Nan, Walter Mosley, Chuck Palahniuk, Peter Straub, and many more. It will be released on June 15th. 

Available now is Instructions, a wonderful story book with beautiful illustrations by Charles Vess. It's a book you can read to a child, and then read again for yourself, which is probably the best kind of book there is.

Mr. Gaiman remains unscathed by the process of bringing this idea into the world, but then again he must shoulder the weight of having this book sitting in his personal library, waiting for the bolts to finally rust through, and the lock to finally give. Sleep well Neil.

 

Next week: Rest. Sweet, sweet, rest.

Neil Gaiman Part II

Introduction

One of the keys to understanding the loyalty of Neil Gaiman’s readers is his willingness to engage them on a personal level. With his daily Twitter comments and frequent blog postings, Gaiman’s fans are privy to his weekly activities on a level that most writers wouldn’t dare encourage. But above and beyond the Tweeting, and blogging, his live readings and audio recordings constitute a tangible connection with his audience that Gaiman has nurtured over the years. These efforts bring an added level of drama and nuance to his own work, and have the effect of personalizing the writing for his fans.

While not all writers are suited to reading their own work, Gaiman is a natural. He reads with a gentle authority that allows the listener to sink into the story. Never forced or overly dramatic, his tone has a rhythm and flow that pull you in, just as reading a good book will do.

It was this aspect of Gaiman’s career that I had in mind when I decided to do an audio treatment of If You Read This Book The World Will End. As I developed this notion I thought I should approach it as a sort of radio play, not unlike Orson Welles's infamous War of the Worlds broadcast. Welles brilliantly did a radio play about a radio play, and it was something I wanted to emulate for this piece.

The script for this book is purely speculative, and are not the words contained in Mr. Gaiman’s "cursed book"—how could they be, the world would end after all. What you will hear is an approximation of what I imagined the book contains, and are not the words or voice of Mr. Gaiman. As you will hear, even an approximation of this hellish text is a precarious endeavor. With the help of audio wizard Mike Degen and the impressive dramatic reading of Mr. Nick Abadzis we hope that you will enjoy this bit of audio speculation. And while it would be sheer madness for you to listen to this (do you really want the world to end?), I imagine curiosity will win over common sense in the end. You have been warned. 

If You Read This Book The World Will End—the audio book

(just click on the image to listen)

 

If You Read This Book The World Will End—the audio book CD's

 

The Hypothetical Library's new logo for audio books 

 
There will be future audio books so stay tuned...
 

Credits
 

Nick Abadzis is a cartoonist, and author of the award winning graphic novel Laika. He was featured in The Hypothetical Library two weeks ago for his series The Korolev Trilogy. As it turns out he is also something of a thespian with two years of theater arts under his belt, and it shows. What you just heard was essentially done in two takes. If you've ever witnessed the recording session of someone reading, you will know how improbable that is. He also co-wrote the script with me. You can check out Nick's non-recording efforts at his website. It is with a great degree of sadness that I report that Mr. Abadzis and his family, after completing this project, has mysteriously vanished. The last thing he was heard to utter was, "I should've bloody moved to France..."

Mike Degen is the audio wizard who twisted and distorted the voice and effects for this recording. He is a composer, producer, and musician who also does commercial recordings for film, television, and video games. You can hear samples of his work here, and  here. He can be contacted here. Mike has not returned my messages since he completed the final version of this recording, although I received a strange and desperate call late one night from a woman (his wife?) telling me to "leave us alone, haven't you done enough to this family already?"

Neil Gaiman has recorded several audio books and pieces over the years, many of which you can find on his website. Although they are too numerous to list, here are some highlights. Warning: Contains Language is a great collection of readings by Mr.Gaiman, with some amazing music and audio effects. Also of note is Two Plays For Voices: Snow Glass Apples & Murder Mysteries. This recording has outstanding cast members, and is evocative of the great days of radio dramas. I have a distinct memory of laying in bed late one night listening to Murder Mysteries on an NPR station...KCRW? I may have heard it over the Internet, but I choose to remember hearing it on the radio. The Graveyard Book, is a well loved classic (after only 2 years), and the audio book is wonderful. Some of the covers you've seen on this blog were designed while I listened to it. One last mention is Mr. Gaiman's return to his journalistic roots, an NPR piece he did about audio books, which features David Sedaris—Neil Gaiman Asks—Heard Any Good Books Lately?. 

Mr Gaiman, unlike the other participants, seems unaffected by the release of this hypothetical book and it's incarnations. One more entry to go, however.

Monday May 24th: If You Read This Book The World Will End—digital book cover

Neil Gaiman

Introduction

Author Neil Gaiman isn't just liked by his readers—he's adored by them. With a Twitter audience of more than 1,480,000, he has a daily following that hangs on his every word. But his writing strikes a chord that extends beyond fannish obsession. Its appeal has everything to do with Gaiman's uncanny grasp not simply of the mechanics of storytelling, but the spirit and joy of it. 

Gaiman has a Jungian grasp of archetypes and an encyclopedic understanding of both mythology and the modern novel, from fairy tales to Wodehouse. He draws on that knowledge to write compelling stories that cross the divide between what are often blinkered categorizations of genre and age group.

Gaiman has a style that is hard to pin down. As a long time reader of his, I have what I consider a certain "Neil Gaiman voice" in my head.  I was amazed to see that assumption undone as I revisited his body work—the comics, short stories, poetry and novels. Each effort, while obviously by Gaiman, is uniquely its own thing. He is a writer in a constant state of growth, experimentation, and restlessness.

Gaiman was one of the first names on my very long list of authors who I had hoped would contribute to this blog. As I’ve said before The Hypothetical Library was born from many of sources: Jorge Luis Borges, Stanislas Lem, cartoonist Dylan Horrocks, and many others, but most directly Neil Gaiman. 

In Gaiman’s comic book series The Sandman, his main character has an entire library of books that were dreamed into existence by their authors, and which only exist in that library. I have a very specific memory from the late 90’s of reading an issue of  The Sandman where the Dream Library is mentioned, and I thought that someone should design the covers of those books. The idea stuck with me for years, a blog waiting to happen. 

Which brings us to this week's entry into the Hypothetical Library. It is going to be a little different from the previous ones, because author Mr. Gaiman provided a very different kind of proposal. Here it is as I received it.

"The trouble with imagining a book I would never write is that when I think of it, I think 'but I could WRITE that...'

So it would have to be a book of books I would never write. A book of ideas I would never have. A book of things I would never do in prose or in fiction. A book of things that should have remained unwritten, fragments and dreams and moments. Secrets too terrible to be learned. Things that would destroy me if I knew them, or hurt my friends. It would contain the secret name of God, and tell you how to pronounce that name.

It would be called IF YOU READ THIS BOOK THE WORLD WILL END."

At first I thought this email was a cleverly worded rejection note, but after the second reading I took it to be what it was—a challenge. How do you design a cover for a book that should never be read? The idea you will see below hit me right away, but knowing that the first idea is not always the best one, I kept sketching. Rather than get different cover ideas, my train of thought expanded into other places—what about an audio book (for which Mr. Gaiman’s dramatic readings are famous), or what would an eBook that you should never be able to open, be like?

So I decided to do a 3 part, 2 week long entry for If You Read This Book The World Will End. Todays entry is the book cover. On Thursday I will post the audio book, and on Monday the 23rd I will post a very special kind of e-book cover.

If You Read This Book The World Will End—the cover

  
How do you design a cover for a book that should never be read? You drive bolts through it, wrap it in steel, and put a padlock on it so it can never be opened, that's how. With the help of sculptor Kevin Johnson we did just that. The image above is a still life, taken by photographer Seth Kushner of the actual book that was fabricated for this post. The bolts are real, as is the metal band. The padlock is an antique from 1906, and has the perfect logo for this purpose—Raven. 

It is the sincere hope of this blog—and Mr Gaiman—that this book never be opened. After the photography session, the book was moved to a secure and undisclosed location. Mr. Kushner is recovering nicely from what the good doctors at Bellevue referred to as an acute bout of "the nerves".

Credits

I couldn't have pulled this project off without the help of many talented people, so I will be giving credit where credit is due for each entry.  

After I designed the cover art, the physical dust jacket was printed by Alex Rader and Kevin Mutch at POD Gallery (they also publish the comics anthology Blurred Vision). The book was then delivered to Brooklyn based metal artist and sculptor Kevin Johnson, who drove the bolts through and wrapped the metal around it. 

Photographer Seth Kushner then captured the whole thing on film (actually, digital pixels), and we shared retouching duties. On a related note, the current author image of Mr. Gaiman now running in The Sandman books was shot by Seth, a fact that I was unaware of when I asked him to help out. You can see his work work at his official site, blog, and at Graphic NYC.

Finally, Ellen Lindner edited the text for these three blog entries. Ellen is a London, England based cartoonist and you can see her work here. Ellen is one of three editors that help keep me from sounding illerterate illiterate. Hypothetical Library pals Susanne Reece and Shanna Compton have also helped me in the past few months. Shanna is a poet and the publisher of Bloof Books.

Thursday May 20: If You Read This Book The World Will End—audio book

Marilyn Orr

Introduction

Welcome to a very special Mother's Day edition of the Hypothetical Library. This week I am featuring Marilyn Orr—my Mom. The book, Hair to Bones: The Evolution of an American Woman is her first (hypothetical) book. 

(Dad, guess what you’re getting for Father’s Day.)

It's safe to say that without my mother, I wouldn’t be here today, so I thought I'd take this opportunity, and public forum to pay her the proper respect. 

As you move onward into adulthood you begin to appreciate your parents with what starts as a begrudging acknowledgment and turns into amazement, coming to understand the things they have navigated in life. That’s followed by embarrassment, as you realize how you missed that effort while it was happening. Finally, with gratitude you understand good parents simply accept their lack of acknowledgment for guiding their children into adulthood.

It took awhile, but at some point in my late 20s I began to consider what my mother had actually accomplished in her life. A child of the 1950s, not quite a baby-boomer, and missing the summer of love—my mom was more Elvis than Hendrix— she evolved in her own way and on her own schedule. 

She started college at the age of 40 after raising two children, and a lifetime of working, even when she didn’t always need to. Her working life happened at a time when many—if not most—women stayed at home. The incongruities of the workplace for women in the 60s and 70s were a defining force in my mother’s life and are what I think made her finally demand equity in her own way—by changing her own life. It wasn’t easy with one son in college already, and one heading there soon, and the impact on the family finances was considerable, but with her own war chest and a supportive husband, she made it happen.

And that is what Hair to Bones would be about if this hypothetical book were ever to be written. There is nothing hypothetical about my mother’s drive and ambition however, and I hope to capture that with this entry. To paraphrase a fellow New Jerseyan—she did it her way.

The one thing my mother’s life has taught me is that there is always time to realize who you are, and what you want to be, regardless of how busy you are.

I started at the beginning of this post with a dumb joke about “how I wouldn’t be here without my mom,” but what I meant was that I wouldn’t be here, now, at this time and place without her love and support. I wouldn’t be pursuing my dreams in New York City without her patient influence. I wouldn’t have my sense of humor, I would have never had a grasp that there is a larger world outside of south central Ohio. I would have never pursued art, or felt loved and safe enough to risk comfort or security, without her quiet strength or example. I wouldn’t be me without her. 

Thank you, Mom. I love you.

Charlie

The Cover

  
Hair to Bones: The Evolution of an American Woman—The hypothetical flap copy 

“From the dime stores and beauty parlors of 1950s Tenafly New Jersey to contemporary archeological sites spanning ancient midwestern earthworks, to 7th century B.C. digs in Cypryss and Greece, Marilyn Orr’s life has been a journey of experience and growth. Never settling, and always patiently moving forward, Ms. Orr bares witness to and describes her path through America’s most defining period in its history. A dizzying jumble of jobs, careers and motherhood Ms. Orr recounts her triumphs—becoming an anthropologist in her early 40s—and travails—attending college while managing a household, and a troubled teenager*—with concise and often hilarious prose. Hair to Bones: The Evolution of An American Woman, is a book for all those who have followed their hearts, to become the people they always knew they were."

*The troubled teen mentioned is me, and I wasn’t really a “troubled teen” but it sounds more dramatic than “argumentative little jerk”. I'd like to take this opportunity to formally and publicly apologize to my mom for the years 1983-1989 when I was between the ages of 16 to 22. Sorry mom, I'm much better now (depending on who you ask).

Biography

Marylyn Orr is the co author of the paper Stature Variation Among Civil War Soldiers. which was published in the Smithsonian Newsletter of the African American Archaeological Network titled African American Archaeology, Spring 1991. She has worked as a physical Anthropologist for the Ohio Historical Society, and The Ohio Department of Transportation. She has also worked on two excavation projects overseas for the Ohio State University: Atheniou Archaeological Project (Mallora), Cyprus, 1992 field season, and Excavations at Isthmia—Sanctuary of Poseidon Project, Greece 1993 field season, doing field work and artifact analysis. She is currently a Fellow of the Explorers Club.

She has worked as a beautician, a secretary (when she types it sounds like machine gun fire), and a paralegal. She has painted, acted, and advocated for historical preservation of buildings in Ohio. She is the mother of two boys, Keith and Charlie Orr; and grandmother of three unbelievably beautiful grandchildren, Kaleb, Carlie, and Kelsey Orr.

Next week: Neil Gaiman... week

Nick Abadzis

Introduction

If you’ve visited this blog before, you know that the covers displayed here are usually based on hypothetical flap copy provided by the writer. And if you saw last weeks entry, you know that I’m prone to break my own rules. It’s in this spirit that I present this week’s entry—The Korolev Trilogy by Nick Abadzis. Rather than provide flap copy, Abadzis wrote a peek behind the curtain of the creative process of developing his award winning 2007 graphic novel Laika. 

 

The Korolev Trilogy are the books that could have been if one of its main characters, Laika, hadn’t taken over the narrative.

A mainstay in England’s comics scene, Abadzis established himself in the late 1980’s with his well-loved story, Hugo Tate, which ran serialized in the magazine Deadline. With Laika, Abadzis had something of a breakthrough. It has been translated into 9 languages and garnered 3 international awards. It’s a book that showcases his talents as a visual storyteller. Abadzis strikes the perfect balance between text and image and reminds the viewer how and why comics work differently than prose or film.

 

Laika is the story of the first earthling to escape Earth’s gravity—a little dog. In the book we follow Laika as she moves through 1950’s Soviet life until fate brings her to the fledgling Russian space program. Its subject is epic, and Abadzis’ precise, and skillful telling of it makes Laika and her journey come to life for the reader.

Laika is available at many fine book stores, and comic shops, and also  here. I recommend you pick up a copy and immerse yourself in this wonderful, and ultimately heartbreaking story.
 

This marks the first bilingual Hypothetical Library post. Friend of the Library and former Russian (now American) Masha Rudina has graciously translated Nick’s writing and the text on my covers into Russian. 

Here's Masha (the redhead) in an unattributed cameo in Laika...

 
Take it away comrade Abadzis...

The Korolev Trilogy—The back story, and covers

Laika was originally conceived as a book about Russian cosmonauts. For years I thought it’d be interesting to do something about the Soviet Union’s space program, the two biggest emblems of which were Laika and Yuri Gagarin, respectively the first earthling and man in space. The story of Laika had always caught my imagination as a child: why hadn’t they managed to get her back down? I had no idea why, and began researching the facts behind the mission. I thought it might be good material upon which to base a short strip.

That was when I became fascinated by Korolev, the Russian Chief Designer behind the Soviet Space Program. He almost single-handedly marshaled the combined abilities of a few small Russian engineering agencies against the might of the USA’s aerospace industry and made it appear that the USSR had far more resources than they actually did.

I began thinking of a graphic narrative that would tell Korolev’s story. If I had gone ahead with my original plan, I’d have created three books. The idea was that scenes from the first book – Laika – would be reiterated from a different point of view, in the second and third books. Yuri Gagarin would be the main focus of the second book, which would tell his life story as the poster boy for the Soviet space effort and his tragic end.

 

 

The third book would tell the life story of the mastermind behind it all, Sergei Korolev, uniting scenes and themes from the first two books. It would cover his early life and inspirations, his incarceration in a gulag during the Stalin purges, his friendships with the various cosmonauts, to his failed attempt to put a Russian on the moon before the Americans did.

Then new information about the circumstances of Laika’s death came to light in 2002 and I focused upon her again. I decided to concentrate on her mission, to do a kind of biography of her, as so many of the themes I’m interested in beyond the Russian Space Program were echoed in her story. I condensed a lot of the ideas I had down and made them into one book. But Charlie Orr has here provided an intriguing glimpse into what might have been had I followed that original idea.

Королев: Трилогия – история создания и обложка

Лайка была первоначально задумана как книга о российских космонавтах. Много лет я думал о том, что было бы интересно создать что–то об истории Советской Космической программы и её символах – Лайке и Юрии Гагарине, первом живом существе и первом человеке в космосе. Меня с детства увлекла история Лайки: почему же они не смогли вернуть её обратно на землю? Я понятия не имел почему,  и начал исследовать историю этого проекта. Мне показалось, что из этой истории может получиться хороший корткий комикс.

Именно тогда я увлекся фигурой Королева, Генерального Конструктора Советской Космической Программы. Он смог собственноручно объединить способности нескольких небольших конструкторских агенств и противостоять всей космической промышленности США,  создав иллюзию того что у СССР было гораздо больше ресурсов чем на самом деле.

Я начал думать о том как передать историю Королева через графический рассказ. Первоначально, я планировал сделать три отдельные книги. Идея состояла в том что сцены из первой книги – Лайка  будут рассказаны с разной точки зрения во второй и третьих книгах. Юрий Гагарин был бы главным героем второй книги, которая поведал бы о нем как о символе успехов Советской Космической программы и о его трагическом конце.

 

 

Третья книга описала бы историю жизни человека благодоря которому увидели свет все упомянутые ранее события, Сергея Королева, используя сцены и темы из первых двух книг. Она рассказала бы о его молодости, о годах проведенных в Сталинских лагерях, о его дружбе с космонавтами, и о неудачной попытке первым послать человека на луну.

В 2002 году были расскрыты новые детали смерти Лайки, и я снова сосредоточился на ней.  Я решил сконцентрироваться на её миссии, сделать что–то типа ее биографии, так как в этой истории переплелось так много того, что интересует меня за гранью Советской Космической Программы. Я уплотнил много идей и превратил их в одну книгу. Но Чарли Орр дал возможность заглянуть в то, что могло бы произойти, если бы я последовал своей первоночальной идее.