‘Jonathan Safran Foer, deftly deploys sculptural means to craft a truly compelling story. In our world of screens, he welds narrative, materiality, and our reading experience into a book that remembers that it actually has a body.’ – Olafur Eliasson
Image courtesy of Visual Editions
Image courtesy of Visual Editions
I love Jonathan Safran Foer. To be accurate in my assertion, I should rather say that I love his words: The words he pulls together into sentences that strike my heart with their sincerity. (There are too many to reproduce here without infringing Foer’s copyright so you can read some here or here, and then, of course, you can buy his books.)
Now, it isn’t Foer’s words that astound me. Now, it’s the way he’s used someone else’s words to construct his own story. Foer has taken his favourite book The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, and literally carved it into a new book –Tree of Codes.
The strap line of Visual Editions, the publisher of Tree of Codes, is ‘Great looking stories’. And when Vanity Fair asked Foer what inspired the design for Tree of Codes, he responded with: ‘What if you pushed it to the extreme, and created something not old-fashioned or nostalgic but just beautiful? It helps you remember that life can surprise you.’ The result of this collaboration is an artefact that reminds us of the delight we can obtain from the physicality of books.
I have yet to hold a copy of the book, but it is quite evident from online pictures and videos that Visual Editions had their work cut out for them:
I don’t think I need to rattle off reasons for including it in my birthday list. In short, I think Tree of Codes looks magnificent and if it made it into my gift pile (I can only hope for a pile), I would be overjoyed.
