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DAILY 03-11-10 MD SU C3 BLACK
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2010
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EXHIBITS
Dressing up the word with paste and pencil
of that king — sometimes strip- lection include a 1868 two-vol- working in Mom’s musty base- round holes where someone has adventures around the world.
Before scrapbooking:
ping other books to do so — and ume biography of the English ac- ment. Grangerizing was a rela- extracted illustrations for an- “Part of their charm,” she wrote
carefully insert it into the text, tor David Garrick, which was ex- tively common practice among other volume. of a famous collection of travel
Enhancing the text which was often professionally panded in 1903 (by a book collectors and men of let- If there is a common thread be- accounts, is that they were “not
re-bound. particularly diligent if not obses- ters in the 19th century. It was tween the exhibitions, it is the so much a book as a great bundle
The care and precision of the sive grangerizer) to 17 volumes somewhere between a hobby and relative scarcity of visual materi- of commodities loosely tied to-
by Philip Kennicott process was painstaking. Images through the addition of engrav- a respectable intellectual pas- al in the two societies represent- gether, an emporium, a lumber
would be carefully sized, then ings, hand-colored prints, re- time and it differed from modern ed. Both shows invite one to room strewn with ancient sacks,
It’s no surprise that scrapbook- beveled along the edges so they ceipts and other documents. The scrapbooking in its ultimate de- imagine a world in which there is obsolete nautical instruments,
ing is enjoying a resurgence in would lie flat when inserted into result, which also included a 44- votion to someone else’s text. It no inundation of visual data, in huge bales of wool, and little
the age of digital cameras, MP3 new pages. The result was a new page travelogue of France which was also a subject of some contro- which even modest images have bags of rubies and emeralds.”
players and the e-Book. As the book, stocked with foreign and itself was extra-illustrated (gran- versy, not least because it fre- extraordinary power because of Prose, she argued, was swamped
stuff of memory and culture be- often very tangential images, but gerizing within grangerizing), quently required pillaging one scarcity. One could read the name by these litanies of stuff, whereas
comes more ephemeral, small carefully stitched together and was so overstuffed that the bind- book to decorate another. The ex- of a king and then search for poetry flourished because it
acts of rebellion proliferate. Peo- detectable mainly for the heter- ings have broken. hibition includes a 16th-century years to find some dubious en- forced form and discipline on
ple cling to the tangible object, ophony of the material. These weren’t the isolated ef- Venetian book about ancient graving that purported to show the writer: “Rhyme and metre
material matter that can be held Examples in the Folger’s col- forts of cranks or outsider artists medals that is full of ghostly his likeness. But once found, helped the poets to keep the tu-
in the hand, labored over and what power it must have had. mult of their perceptions in or-
preserved. Both worlds, the impover- der.”
The origins of the form predate ished, scattered and war-torn Doing something by hand is
contemporary resistance to the AN AFGHAN’S landscape of Afghanistan and our another form of discipline, an-
world of uploaded, socially net- ADORNMENT: own not-so-ancient chapter in other way of keeping the tumult
worked, infinitely replicated This Western culture in which the of the world in order. It limits
memories, and its appeal is far hand-decorated whole of history, literature and what can be said, how much can
deeper than mere resistance to letter is one of science might be reasonably en- be said and how long it takes to
the immateriality of modern many sent by compassed in a few rooms stuffed say it. The Folger exhibition,
communication. As two exhibi- listeners to Radio with leather-bound volumes, feel which makes mention of one
tions now open at the Library of Azadi, the Afghan naive to us. And charming. It’s woman who supposedly extra-
Congress and the Folger Shake- branch of Radio hard not to condescend to the illustrated a half-dozen verses of
speare Library demonstrate, peo- Free hand-decorated scroll sent to Ra- Genesis with 700 images, shows
ple have been dressing up the Europe/Radio dio Azadi by two young men in Elizabethan society manually
word, decorating the text and in- Liberty. The style Afghanistan, filled with hand- connecting the data in the lum-
serting indelible reminders of recalls the colored floral motifs, stuffed with ber room.
their corporeal existence into tradition of poems and proverbs, measuring
documents for centuries. illuminated over 200 feet long. Where do they
The images explode
At the Library of Congress’s books and find the time? The horizons in life But the world was about to ex-
“Voices From Afghanistan” ex- documents. must be very small to undertake plode, a visual big bang was
hibit, we see this history in let- Examples of each this kind of project. coming, and soon even 700 im-
ters written by Afghans to Radio can be seen in ages would be insufficient to
Azadi, the Afghan outpost of the “Voices From
Traces of humanity
connect every thread and idea
U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/ Afghanistan” at Or maybe not. There’s a pas- and intimation in a few Bible
Radio Liberty. They come from the Library of sion to communicate in this verses. One of the most recent
ordinary listeners for whom ra- Congress. scroll that can’t be duplicated in objects in the Folger exhibition
dio is often the only window on e-mail and it bears human traces is a scrapbook made in the
the larger world. They are filled in a way text messages or tweets 1920s, stuffed with cheap maga-
with requests, for songs by be- never can. There may also be a zine prints. The lumberyard was
loved artists, for assistance with depth to it — what’s in it matters no longer a small emporium, but
local problems, and sometimes, to these young men — that has a vast industrial complex.
they are filled simply with grat- leached out of our rapid-fire elec- But the world didn’t expand
itude and enthusiasm for Radio tronic chatter. If you asked a everywhere at the same rate. The
Azadi. young adult today to write an im- letters seen at the Library of
They are remarkably elaborate Congress are fascinating for the
— filled with drawings, decora- simple, basic humanity of their
tions, floral motifs, stickers, any- requests, complaints and greet-
thing that can gussy up a piece of ings. Congratulation on the holi-
paper — for letters directed to day of Eid, and please play a
something as remote and bu- song by Naghma. Or, as five girls
reaucratic as a radio station, but wrote together from Parwan
they give a powerful sense of the province, “We have a complaint
immediacy of radio’s role in Af- to make regarding your pro-
ghan daily life. They also borrow grams, why, why, why, why do
and elaborate on older tradition- you always repeat the same
al Afghan illuminated texts. songs?”
The appeal of the Library of The computer is already lurk-
Congress exhibition is its pairing ing on the horizons. Radio Azadi
of letters written yesterday with also receives numerous e-mails,
historic scrolls, “accordion” and letters decorated by Photo-
books that fold out into sumptu- shop, not by hand. Even the
ously decorated panels, as well as same old songs are growing dull.
elaborate calligraphy and iconog- Bring on something new.
raphy from the library’s Afghan But the older world still exists.
holdings. It’s ridiculous to romanticize it.
“We are seeing the continuity The isolation is appalling. But as
of tradition,” says Mary-Jane you emerge from the exhibition
Deeb, chief of the library’s Afri- with your BlackBerry buzzing in
can and Middle Eastern Division. your pocket, it’s hard not to want
to live in a world that might rea-
‘Grangerizing’
sonably be limned by hand.
Separated only by a continent, kennicottp@washpost.com
several centuries and a vast cul-
tural difference, the Folger’s “Ex-
FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY
tending the Book” exhibition
deals with a direct precursor to AT THE passioned letter and put into it
scrapbooking. Also known as the FOLGER: everything he thought worth Extending the Book: The
art of “extra-illustration,” or “Grangerized” sharing with the world, the re- Art of Extra-Illustration
grangerizing — after the author works, such as quest would seem absurd. In the is open Monday through Saturday, 10
James Granger whose 1769 “Bio- this version of time it took to find paper and col- a.m. to 5 p.m., at the Folger
graphical History of England” in- “Love’s Labor’s ored pencils, the world would Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol
spired a craze for personally il- Lost,” are on have continued to expand be- St. SE. Admission is free. For more
lustrated texts — it has been car- view in the yond the limits of even a 200-foot information visit www.folger.edu.
ried on at a high level, and to an show. scroll. But how much of that new
often ludicrous extent, for centu- data would mean anything? Voices From Afghanistan
ries. Virginia Woolf wrote an essay is open Monday through Saturday,
Not content with books that of- called “The Elizabethan Lumber 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at the Library
fered merely text, or text with Room” in which she suggested of Congress Thomas Jefferson
minimal illustration, “grangeriz- that English prose, at the time of Building, 10 First St. SE. Admission is
ers” undertook the expansion of Elizabeth I, was swelling with free. For more information visit www.
printed books with often volumi- raw data, gathered from English loc.gov.
nous amounts of new material. If
a king was mentioned in passing,
even in a footnote, the ardent
grangerizer would find an image Get
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
for
your
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