Book fetish:
The New York Art Book Fair in Chelsea

This weekend I hit up the second annual NY Art Book Fair in Chelsea. It was wonderful but unsatisfying. On the one hand, it’s exciting to connect with independent publishers whose author lists aren’t dictated by potential sales on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. It’s great to see books bound in unconventional ways.

Like Casein by David Stairs (English Language Press) a book I found on AA Baron’s Printed Matter table that was die cut with openings all the way through like a slice of Swiss cheese. Or like the book on Jack Henley’s table with the words The Whole Wide World wrapped around the cover — a book of mostly blank pages that weighed a about 5 lbs complete with a $500 price tag. I guess one wouldn’t expect to pay any less for the whole wide world.

It was refreshing to gaze at the handsome boys manning the Taschen table with their smart, thin ties, heavy eye wear, and indifferent expressions. Having Adam with me, I mentioned to the Taschen boys that my friend was not only a BUTT contributor but also had his photo in Taschen’s successful 2006 anthology of BUTT’s best of. They didn’t care.

I enjoyed the mom-and-pop feel of books published by editors who surely take leisurely lunches, who probably spend too much money on paper stock, and who most likely set up offices in cafe-clad neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Berlin—neighborhoods with literary pedigrees older than the authors who reside in them. And still, I’m not convinced that books deserve to be fetishized in this way — because reading, after all, is as banal an entertainment as listening to the radio or watching TV.

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