James Franco - Woman's World

These self-portraits were taken from the catalogue of James Franco's current exhibition, New Film Stills, at The Pace Gallery in New York. Of particular interest is one where he is seen lying next to a copy of Woman's World. Mr Franco made an offer for the film rights to the book, but no agreement was reached. These pictures put me very much in mind of Norma, the protagonist in my story.

Falmouth Talk this Thursday

click image to enlarge

More found cards

A lot of thin, papery cards found by one of our MA students, Mark Daniels, outside the school where he teaches, from which he chose the Five of Clubs.

The Ace of Diamonds, found by another of our students, Pip Carter, on a cycle path on her way to work. Only two weeks previously she found the Ten of Spades. I need to scan and add that one.

And this Seven of Spades was selected from a discarded pack by.... er... Mark Daniels, I think. Let me check on that.

Cards Found update

Lots of card finds have been sent to me since the last 'found card' posting. There is this Jack of Spades found by Tom Wishart, son of Lou Wishart, a student on our course, who found this in Reigate on his way home from school.

A few weeks later, he found the ten of diamonds, photographed here in situ. Tom has decided, like me, that if he finds several discarded cards, he can pick up any one of them. 

The eight of diamonds was found by Luise W at the foot of U Bein's bridge in Burma (Myanmar).

A couple of days later she found a ripped Jack of Hearts at Hsinbyume Pagoda, Mingun.

This Ten of Hearts was found by Jim O'Brian, on wet tarmac outside the recycling centre in Exeter.

 The Queen of Diamonds was found by Reece Wykes following a talk I gave to BA Illustration students at Kingston University.

Warren Lehrer's Book List

How flattering to see Woman's World listed in Warren Lehrer's favourite design book list at Designers& Books, New York. This is what he says about it.

This is one of the most surprising, enjoyable, couldn’t-put-it-down books I have read in years. It’s surprising in a number of ways. First, it’s important to know that this book was assembled (written/composed, pick your verb here) from 40,000 fragments of text snipped from 1960s British women’s magazines. (Rawle apparently wrote a draft of this pulp-noir, gender-bending story, then rewrote it like a mosaic using all these found snidbits.) So, the first thing that is surprising is how unfragmented the writing is. The second surprise is how fabulously scrumptious the sentences are, particularly Rawle’s descriptions, in large part because of his peculiar, painstaking process that produces wildly unexpected (and often funny) phrasings that wouldn’t otherwise come to a writer’s mind. The lion’s share of good Dada poems have numerous bizarrely fantastic lines in them, but the poems remain absurd, for the most part. In Woman’s World, every sentence has meaning and helps move the story forward. The third and perhaps most revelatory surprise is how downright breezy a read this book is, considering that nearly every word or phrase-chunk is a different size and typeface, aligned by hand with glue and exacto knife along wobbly baselines—which flies in the face of (probably) every study ever made about legibility. Ph.D. candidates, this is the basis of a doctorate in waiting.

Warren has a new book out that looks beautiful and sounds really interesting. I've just ordered it for myself. You can 'look inside' on Amazon. Here.