It is a small thin volume. The synthetic silver cover stock repels the ink applied by letterpress, faint black excretions pool at the edges of the impression of the title. The binding glue is equally viscous, emerging suggestively from the slim space at the back of the book where spine and signatures meet. With its intimate dimensions, this book could slip easily into your breast pocket – or through the iron grate of a sewer.
The structure is simple. 42 pages propose aphorisms and imagistic statements, interpolated by two pauses. The reader carries these pictures in their imagination over into the remaining short narrative, a meditation on holes and the perils of unquenchable thirst. The climactic fulcrum is provided as “an experience that is humbling, or perhaps completely revolting, or possibly even both, given that being humbled and being revolted, are not, in essence mutually exclusive states.” In their conflation we may briefly experience elation. The oracular Simon Brown, through the precision of his language, ignites a flight of fancy as alleviation of distress. Published by paperpushers.ca and distributed by Anteism, the modest means of the books’ production are part of its contradictory beauty (“many objects have far more protuberances than is necessary or desireable”). If Brown’s successful reception at the recent Traffic conference on Conceptual Art in Canada is any indication, he is a storyteller in the best New Brunswickian tradition. He has relocated to the city, but one suspects he knows where there are “700 cans of condensed milk hidden in the woods.”
- Felicity Tayler, MLIS
ISBN 978-0-9865678-1-0
4″ x 6″, 64 pp, letterpress / B&W xerox, perfect-bound, 2010
Edition of 250
$10 CAD
Available from Paper Pusher Print Works.
http://paperpusher.ca/
See also: http://simonbrownwriting.blogspot.com/
Simon Brown grew up in the rural community of Old Ridge, New Brunswick and now resides in Montreal, Quebec, where is he is finishing an MFA at Concordia University. He spends most of his “free” time writing unreadable texts and making unlistenable sound recordings.
Paper Pusher is an innovative print thing. Our focus is on experimental approaches to print with a healthy dose of site-specificity and good ol’ hand held books. (from website)