Descriptions of Literature by Gertrude Stein: Handwritten by Erica Van Horn

Hardcover | 15 x 14 cm | 144 pp

Coracle | 2019 | 978906630624

Gertrude Stein’s sentences Descriptions of Literature were originally written by hand, then later typeset for printing and publication. Here they are handwritten again by Erica Van Horn. 

Writing someone else’s list has been a joy. Handwriting these sentences by Stein has provided me with a glorious kind of escape. It is not my writing. It is her writing. I am not the author. I am the writer. But as I am writing her writing, it demands all of my attention not to change things to make them into my own. As I write one of her sentences in this list of descriptions, I decide that the sentence I am writing right then is my absolute favourite of these sentences and then when I am involved in another sentence and I have to write it again and again to get it written right, I decide that that sentence is my favourite in this list of sixty-six sentences. Having a favourite is just a small thing because I am immediately on to the next sentence and once again I must copy and consider and write as carefully as my poor stiffening hand will allow. This is an exercise in restraint but it is a freedom too. I love the physical and hypnotic movement of my pen on the page. I love writing by hand. ERICA VAN HORN

Artist, writer, editor, printer, and bookmaker Erica Van Horn (b. 1954, New Hampshire) has a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work now mostly issues through Coracle, a small publishing press based in Ireland, which she directs with Simon Cutts, writer, artist, and editor.