Several years ago a writer with whom I have been linked, Henry Mescaline, published a piece in The Iowa Review (37.3) titled “First paragraph of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, (Translated from the French by C. K. Scott Moncrieff), Alphabetized,” which begins like this:
a a a a a a a a a actually after all an And and and and and and and and appeared as asleep astonished at awake awaken away be be become bed been been begin between blow book book book burning but but candle candle cause channel Charles V […]
Thus, I was delighted to discover Andy Devine’s new book from Publishing Genius, Words, a short text that take these experiments to new places.
Big Other tracked down the elusive Devine, for this all-too-brief exclusive interview:
Davis Schneiderman: Why Words? What about Numbers?
Andy Devine: The simple answer is that words come before numbers, but I think you’re asking this question because you’ve been talking to my publisher, Adam Robinson. My next book is a novel called Numbers, which is built out of alphabetized phrases, each of which contains a number. Awesome MachinePress will publish Numbers sometime in 2011.
Schneiderman: What do your parents think about the book?
Devine: My parents are dead, but the possibilities that are implicit in the book would have been too much for them. I had been holding onto the manuscript for Words for years. I never would have published the book while they were alive.
Schneiderman: Talk about the process for the novel portion of Words, Apartment City from into Our Please We Went?
Devine: The first draft was written alphabetically, as with all my fiction. I never move on to a new word until I have enough of the previous word. I do this by feel and by sound. When I finished the first draft of the novel, each instance of each word was listed. Each of the 2676 instances of her were listed, the 252 instances of if, the 59 instances of radio, the one instance of wrinkles, etc. There were quite a few pages that listed one word over and over again. As I was revising the novel, I realized that I could use numbers to indicate the number of instances of each word and that by doing so I could condense the 90K-word novel to about twenty pages.
Schneiderman: What makes Adam Robinson a “genius” per se?
Devine: Adam Robinson would tell you that he is not a genius, that the “genius” in Publishing Genius refers not to him but to the work he publishes. Of course, both usages are correct.
Appetite whetted? Check out Words here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here