STEVE KOGAN writes:

Some research into book bundles led me to this mother of all book bundles at an exhibit at a gallery called the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh in 2006. In the long range shot, it appears in a corner of a large, loft-like space, standing floor to ceiling in the form of cross section of books, like the base of a felled tree. A closeup suggests that this slice must have been formed out of thousands of books, mutilated almost beyond recognition and tortured by compression into writhing shapes. In the desensitizing language of postmodernese, the gallery guide states that artist Jonathan Callan “addresses books as objects rather than sacred cultural relics,” and in the process he demonstrates that “The book, rethought, can have other applications, artfully drilled.” His “artist statement” says that he views his work as an inquiry into “the relationship between disembodied knowledge to [sic] embodied experience and materiality.” 

This destructive and semi-literate hokum finds its way into high-end examples of industrial strength book bundles in the form of office furniture, turning metaphorical bricks into actual building blocks. The library at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, or TU Delft, [photo below] houses a front desks entirely built with unused books.

The venerable Strand Bookstore in Manhattan, by the way, does a brisk “book-by-the-foot” business. Even when not “repurposed” into book bundles, “books-by-the-foot” can be translated into fashion statements through the creation of strictly ornamental libraries.

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