I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing
frightened them. But they answered: Frighten? Why should any one be
frightened by a hat? My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture
of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not
able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of a boa
constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to
have things explained.
-- from The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupry, 1943.
While you cant really tell it to look at one of our modern artpacks, the
Mistigris computer art collective has, of course, something of a history with
lit. Back in the 90s, our supporting and championing of literary
creations was possibly the defining characteristic that set us apart from
nearly all other underground artgroups. Interminable infofiles aside,
doesnt appear in our artpacks very much anymore -- oddly, most of the
writers in our community who were composing creative literary works as
teenagers are no longer doing so in middle age, even though in an epoch of
rapidly changing technology the fundamentals of putting pencil to notebook or
keypress to screen have not much changed over the past three decades. But
explicitly in the vein of Dosdoc, who designs infofile art for authors
collected works before printing them on stickers and representing them on
the lampposts of Russia, we have opted to make literature the theme of this
artpack collection: iconic book covers, interior illustrations, artists
conceptions of narrative events, typographical setting of selected quotes,
and even some author portraits! While numerous artpacks have been curated
celebrating music album covers and visually iconic moments from movies, as
best as we can tell this is the first time one has ever been collected in
celebration of books! Once this pack drops online, maybe we will even
follow Dosdocs lead and give this collection another release as street art
on stickers... who knows, maybe we can even take it full circle and collect
all our books-themed art in a Misprint Manuscripts volume, celebrating books
in a book!
Speaking of Misprint Manuscripts volumes you can see AtonalOspreys teletext
adaptation of his dope ASCII art MM logo in this collection!, Nouscentrics
Inktober 2016 comic, illustrating Edd Macdonalds 2012 story Adventurer
Wanted, Hat Provided -- previously shared as a PDF in MIST1116 nearly ten
years ago -- is finally being published under that imprint next month. On
May 16th, the artist will host a small book launch in Vancouver: tea
provided, hats encouraged. Friends of Mistigris are welcome to reach out for
an invitation.
Two further historical Mist contributors, Queen of Crows and Jenn Ashton, are
having books published imminently by established publishing houses -- Dead
Bees Still Sting: Tales of Life at the Edge of Nature Greystone Books and
Growing My Way Home Talonbooks, respectively. And though these have been
out for some time, while putting this artpack together we just learned that
Stuart The Elk Johns has a trio of Aerworuld ebooks available for free via
overlooking-the-sea.com ... Joseph Onyx Picard in the meantime has been
selling his speculative fiction ebooks for ages at ozero.ca. Even Etana is
back at work on her Adwin novel you got very early sneak peaks of back in the
Mist Classic era!
... and can I pass up the chance to note that Cenobite founder Schtroumpf
released Who Ate all the Squid?: Football Adventures in South Korea through
Pitch Publishing back in 2020? Apparently I cannot.
Though Dosdocs circuitous art practice was the starting point for this
collection, he is entirely absent from its pages himself due to recently
becoming a new parent. Upon learning this, we tried to pivot and shine a
brighter spotlight on favorite distantly-remembered works of childrens
literature, a sub-current among the other beloved and notable books enshrined
with tributes here.
The most popular author celebrated in this collection is, perhaps
unsurprisingly, the fantasy GOAT J.R.R. Tolkien, whose works inspired three
different tributes one of which you will note has been waiting a long time
to be collected in an artpack! from three different artists in three
different mediums! Weighing in with two tributes each are postmodern
novelist Thomas Pynchon and Beat writer William S. Burroughs speaking of
which, the sacred Beat trifecta is observed here with Ginsbergs Howl and
Kerouacs On the Road also representing. Casting a wide literary net, in
addition to novelists, childrens authors, essayists and writers of
non-fiction there is also some poetry celebrated here as well as one
playwright! Our vintage computing roots are acknowledged with the cover to
one volume of type-in BASIC programs adapted to ANSI art as well as Cthulus
first piece of programming released this century, a bona fide literary
shitpost long in the making, and a still-earlier text art illustration from
an experimental 1967 book MODELLED, SIGNIFICANTLY, ON THE AP REPORT FOR THE
THREE DAYS FOLLOWING PRESIDENT KENNEDYS ASSASSINATION presented in the style
of teletype wire services of the late 60s.
Hats off to AtonalOsprey for weighing in with the second-most contributions
to this months theme, and thanks to the War on Christmas for gracing us with
a lovely FILEID! And a special thanks to Warpus for his guest appearance...