/lit/ - Literature

For pulp fiction books it was there to help draw in low-brow readers.
With literature, I've only seen it happen with premium editions from before the Great War. Those were supposed to enhance the value of the book.

>>14598209

how is it both low-brow and high-brow?

>>14598257
Tell me, is there really anything wrong with adding a tasteful illustration of Achilles mourning over Patroklos's death to your leatherbound copy of the Iliad?

>>14598197
>not realising the beauty of combining two great media
seriously though, i really like this and i think it should make a comeback

>>14598257

Ben Lerner put some pictures in 10:04, which is pretty acclaimed as a contemporary literary novel. I don’t thing there were any in his first novel.

Ben Lerner put some pictures in 10:04, which is pretty acclaimed as a contemporary literary novel. I don’t think there were any in his first novel.

>>14598303

The cost would be too great for modern publishers.

Books before offset printing were a completely different medium to the trash we have today. They would have used a letterpress, which involved painstakingly arranging the type of each page. The books would be printed in folios, which where then hand stitched together. Given the labor intensive nature of this, throwing in a couple lithographic illustrations or a wood-cut was relatively cost efficient. A book was already labor intensive, so it was not seen as such a pig deal to commission an elaborate set of artwork. What's more, printed books were following the tradition of illustrated manuscripts, which were an even higher standard of quality and craftsmanship. Since the invention of the printing press, literature has clearly trended in the direction of quantity over quality, without aberrations.

The switch to digital has made images in books low quality and pixelated. As well, books are made much more as disposable objects now, using cheap glue in place of folios and printing in runs of tens of thousands at a time. Sure you can run an image through the same printer you're using for text, but it's going to look grainy and low quality. If you commission a wood-cut or lithograph then you've also got to pay the guy running pages through it for days on end, as well as the guy taking those pages and inserting them at the right point in the manuscript. All of this adds expenses for a product that's made to fall apart after five years anyways.

Not that it matters anyways because the frame of reference for what constitutes a book has moved away from elaborately hand-illustrated manuscripts painstakingly written on vellum and hand bound with the intention of resting in an aristocratic household for generation, and now people judge books as a kind of inferior physical placeholder for wikipedia articles, or a catalog of products to be handed out in the thousands. It's a completely different medium from what it was even a hundred years ago.

t. work in a print shop and trained in traditional bookbinding.

>>14599474
How much to get you to bind a book in human skin?

I’ll supply

>>14598197
>why do people need pictures in the olden days?
Because often people who read also enjoy art, and before the internet you didn't have access to the great works?
Art and literature are complimentary. Imagine you are some school teacher in a backwoods village and one of your books has a copy of some incredible Renaissance paintings in it to compliment the text. Would that not bring you joy? Or are you too small brained to realize what you're saying?

>>14599548
Not more than 20 grand, if ethically sourced.

>>14599622
What country? Do you have a degree in library science or some shit, or was this like an apprenticeship type of deal?

>>14599474
Are there any books you would recommend on bookbinding or will any work?

>>14599641
I'm a dropout. It's just a hobby I got into that happens to provide a bit of income on the side. Sometimes I tell potential clients I was trained by my grandfather, but that's just a lie to add an air of "authenticity" to a fun past time.

Do you really have a skin of human leather lying around though? It's apparently well suited for bookbinding, but I imagine curing the hide would be unpleasant. The project is tempting, and honestly if you could provide some sort of guarantee that you won't kill and skin my in an ironical plot twist I'd do it for nothing but the glory of tying my name to such an undertaking.

>>14599676
I'm a different anon. I just really wish I could make a career out of loving books. Hope you do well man.

When words were images. When speech was idea.
>When nobody subvocalized.

>>14599655
Watch youtube videos or take a class and just start getting your hands dirty. Took me years of trial and error. Buy a couple used books and just rip them apart, see how they're constructed, and try to replicate them yourself. It's a matter of training your eyes and hands rather than learning any sort of theory.

Two books I can recommend are The Art of the Publisher and Renaissance Computer. The first being a meditation on the Publishing business in Europe, it's history, and it's future. The Second is a collection of essays on how the printing press changed the presentation of information. It's a niche subject, but fascinating once you start digging into it.

>>14599698
Thanks bro. Me too. It's never too late to follow your dreams, there's a surprisingly large market for book binding and repairs.

>>14599700
holy based

>>14599700
Hieroglyphics are phonetic though. Every symbol represents a consonant, with Ancient Egyptian being not entirely different from other Afro-Semitic languages such as Arabic or Ge'ez.

You should look into formline though. An alphabet of geometry used to carve a variety of symbols with specific ESOTERIC meaning. Phonetically evocative alphabets are essentially EXOTERIC in form. Sub-vocalization is a myth.

>>14598197
>olden days

>>14599798
>anonymous poster

>>14599700
Good post, has entered my /lit/ folder

I have self-published four times now, and each time I have tired to get an Internet artist to illustrate for me, but to no avail. The desire to be seen in a book is not there among modern artists.

>>14598303
high IQ post. Gustave Dore's illustrations for Dante and Vergil in hell made a huge impression on me as a little kid and to this day, and started my interest in literature

>>14600568
Gross

>>14598197
but there are pictures in Infinite Jest

>>14598197
I don’t mind it in small doses. Alan Lee’s art in the lord of the rings prints I read for the first time was absolutely stellar and really help cement the vision of middle earth.

>>14600500
It is there, but artists are skilled workers and they don't work for food. Next time you find a freelance artist try to offer him a couple of hundred of bucks instead of a bowl of rice.

>>14600500
>The desire to be seen in a book is not there among modern artists
Not in your book at least

>>14600733
why?

>>14598197
Why wouldn't you? Adds a visual element not just textual.

>>14600857
God, Alan Lee is so fucking based. Rip to Christopher btw.

>>14600500
As an illustrator myself I'm curious about what kind of images you requested to be rejected by those 'artists'.

>>14599622
>During the French Revolution, there were rumours that a tannery for human skin had been established at Meudon outside Paris.[10] The Carnavalet Museum owns a volume containing the French Constitution of 1793 and Declaration of the Rights of Man described as 'passing for being made in human skin imitating calf'.[10]

>"...There seemed to be nothing remarkable about it, and you couldn't understand why it was here until you read in the front that it was bound in human leather. This unusual binding, the like of which I had never before seen, seemed especially well adapted to this book, dedicated to more meditation about death. You would take it for pig skin." --Religatum de Pelle Humana

>>14599548
>What Lawrence Thompson called "the most famous of all anthropodermic bindings" is exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum, titled The Highwayman: Narrative of the Life of James Allen alias George Walton. It is by James Allen, who made his deathbed confession in prison in 1837 and asked for a copy bound in his own skin to be presented to a man he once tried to rob and admired for his bravery.

>During the French Revolution, there were rumours that a tannery for human skin had been established at Meudon outside Paris.[10] The Carnavalet Museum owns a volume containing the French Constitution of 1793 and Declaration of the Rights of Man described as 'passing for being made in human skin imitating calf'.[10]

>>14598197
maybe some pictures would make that pile of garbage readable

>>14600568
Virgil is fucking huge.

>>14602029

I heard he has a six pack

>>14601905

Shame it never worked out.

>>14601899
>>14601894
Jesus, shouldn’t such books be destroyed or something?

>>14598302
umm it's for kids, what are you a manchild

>>14605026
This but unironically

>>14601899
He died as he lived: based as hell.

>>14605014
Why? Because it makes you queasy?

Reading was once an aesthetic experience. The fact that you don't recognize the absence of illustrations now as a kind of debasement is damning.

>>14605014
fuck you

>>14605611
Awww, poor babby needs picy wicy to read his bed time stories?

>>14601899
based

>>14599474
>Books before offset printing were a completely different medium to the trash we have today.
okay boomer

>>14598197

I think some of the pictures in old books were there to cover up any mistakes that the copyist made when handwriting a new copy of a book or manuscript.

>>14599586
>Imagine you are some school teacher in a backwoods village and one of your books has a copy of some incredible Renaissance paintings in it to compliment the text.

If you’re a backwoods teacher you probably wouldn’t be able to afford such books anyways

>>14598197
illustrated novels are the pinnacle of taste

Even on /lit/ is it encouraged to post with a picture. Books should be just the same.

Books can be art objects. There’s something splendid about having a beautiful edition with illustrations and nice bindings.

>>14608130
What about novelized paintings?