Meaningful Gift

She had had trouble choosing a major in college. 

She had thought about Biology because she’d liked the illustrations in the textbook when she was a sophomore. She had considered Nutrition because she had enjoyed the cooking classes part of her high school course called Life Skills. There had also been the possibility of majoring in Marine Science or Environmental Studies, because she loved nature. Other disciplines had caught her attention too, but in the end she chose to ‘double major’ as they call it. English and Art. Or Art and English, if listing the two areas alphabetically. A and E for short.

She did well in both and trusted in fate or the Goddess to help her make a living with majors in professions that were stereotyped as producing hungry people, as not creating a steady income. Everybody insisted that starving writers and artists were fairly frequent. This was not the case with those getting degrees in one of the Engineering fields or in Business. Nobody said discouraging words about those fields.

She didn’t care. She had always been stubborn that way. Her father had called her hard-headed for a reason. Fortunately, she was good at both and gradually developed her writing as well as her artistic style. She also had two good advisers, one in the English Department and the other in Art, who also happened to be good friends. 

These two professors, when she graduated, gave her a book. For academics, the fact that they would choose a book might sound normal, but this book was different. It had been designed and made by both of them, in collaboration. Two older women giving their creation to a student who had worked very hard to learn, but in the true Humanities fashion of not knowing what she would do with her degrees. 

No plan, only passion. No direction, only determination. That was all the guidance she had.

The book she received is worth describing to readers of this story, because it was - is, because it still exists - an artist’s book. That means a book, made by hand, that is first and foremost a work of art. It may or may not have text, and often does not. Artist’s books may resemble sculptures, 3-D assemblages with moveable parts, or something entirely un-booklike that the maker nevertheless declares is a book. That brings up the question of how we define reading.

Author’s Note (which could be inserted as a footnote):

Artist’s books, then, teach us a lot about how we read and learn, our personal ways of acquiring and retaining information. They also demand that their readers - who are simultaneously viewers - complete them by interacting with them. Ruffling, repeatedly turning pages, pointing to images on the left or right, unfolding items placed in hidden slots on an accordion fold structure… manipulating the parts in a variety of ways. However, there is no value in using words printed flatly, in black, on this page, to convey the story behind every artist’s book. These books need to be seen, maybe even played with as if they were toys.

The two professors designed a fan book - not a fanzine, but a real fan with pages, which qualified it as a book with readable items inside its covers. Professor E chose lines, mostly - but not only - from poetry. The selections were from writers who had always been her favorites. A fragment of each chosen work was to be inscribed on each section of the fan book, along with authors’ names, source of the text, publication date.

The model of the fan was the Victorian greeting card that is hard to find nowadays, except in flea markets, antique stores, and Etsy shops, although many have seen it. The leaves, elongated, vary in number and can have different shapes. They may be curved or have an ornate gilded petal shape. Note that the term for this part of a fan really is ‘leaf’. We know that book pages can also be termed leaves, in some contexts. The point where all the fan leaves are bound together is called the head.

Funny how the name for this part of a folding fan seems so significant in the case of the fan book she was given. As if a person’s head were also the source of ideas spreading or radiating outward.

Author’s Note:

A folding fan to be manipulated in the hand might not open into a complete circle, but many fan books do form that shape when placed on a table and their leaves and ribs are opened. The concept - and sight - of a round book can create interesting reactions in viewers. We are trained to see books as rectangular. Even square ones seem strange, unless it’s a child’s thick-paged block book.

Note also the uses of fans. Information could be, was, concealed in them. There is a lot that is not mentioned here, but this hybrid entity - art object in the form of a book, with ‘book’ something nearly undefinable - insists on occupying to worlds. It deserves to be studied carefully. The makers of artist’s books have a big responsibility. They need to create something that asks to be read differently than the standard book. 

Professor A designed the visual aspects for their gift. She had done so after reading the selections by her friend Professor E. The words were carefully lettered, using the minutest script and blue-black ink.

Professor E had compiled a more complete list of works for the authors included in the fan. This was inserted in the box with the gift, printed on translucent paper. 

There had been a second list, on ecru-colored mulberry paper, of book artists who were internationally known. There was also a pair of paragraphs about how the concept of the artist’s book came about. The edges of the mulberry paper had been slightly tinged with gold ink.

In the form of a fan, yes, but this was a book, a kind of child’s picture book but for adults. With moving pages, like many of the first books we encountered when very young. Flaps and levers that endeavored to entice toddler eyes and thus make them - us - into readers. 

On each page or fan segment, there was something readable. Lines from poems and poet/source in tiny print or cursive, a mystery as to how a human hand could achieve that. The paper used in the leaves of the book had been eco-dyed, meaning the paper with high fiber count had been simmered after being folded into ‘bundles’ with vegetation interspersed. 

Author’s Note:

Here we must note that this story has not been completely clear. It is about a gift, a book in the shape of a fan. But there are three parts. Three ‘fan books’, you might think and might try to correct the number. If you think three instead of one, you would be in error. It is not unusual for a three-dimensional art piece to have its parts in freestanding positions. Why then, can’t an artist’s book have ‘pages’ that are separated from the spine? 

This triple book we are talking about had three sections. It is a triptych in a sense, like the articles one sees in places of worship. The ability to rearrange the parts is part of its toylike or playful nature as well. 

The first fan book was based on favorite word memories, lines that refused to fade.

The second fan book had as its texts parts of ekphrastic poems from many moments in history. 

The last fan book was blank. The same hand-dyed paper used for the other two books had been used for the third one, but the pages or leaves were blank because she, the recipient of the gift, was going to have to decide whether to write first, then publish it in an attractive format; or, to use her eyes first, creating images on the page with ink, acrylic, gouache, and then responding with words that would try to mimic the imagery.

Author’s Note:

How can language do what art forms can do? Do you doubt it has color, shapes, temperatures, sounds, flavors? Of course it does. 

She had always sensed this.

Did the fan book have a title or if not a title, a note or card enclosed? She needed to check. Was there something like “When this you see, remember me” as in the Gertrude Stein film? 

That would have been either tacky or seen as a sexual advance on a student (always dangerous waters). It was just a gift to a highly-valued student of both A and E. Cleverly engineered and with the synergy that comes from collaboration, as they say. 

There is just a small card saying, ‘For …. From A and E’.

She (the student, the graduate) had placed the gift in safekeeping. 

She now has a position at her local university and teaches Gender Studies. It allows for ample lessons on women in art or in the publishing world. She has continued to allow her career to decide for her. She wasn’t the one who needed to choose a path. 

And so she chose two, divided and entwined. 

She has won the Pulitzer Prize or a near equivalent at least twice. There have beeen other awards as well. More books published. There were two volumes of poetry, one of short stories, and two novels, all in less than a dozen years. All the while she has continued to be a faculty member. Students were always the best audiences for discussions about gender construction as seen in the humanities. She is so glad she’d chosen both fields and not one over the other.

She is also the happiest when she is in the classroom, with the students fanned out around her to encourage conversation. It has always felt like home, that space, that group. It is where she has learned so much, feels like she belongs. The other parts of her life, particularly her writing, are more solitary journeys. Important, but solitary.

For a person who had never planned or consciously thought about what she wanted to be, her career, she has done all right. No, she has done a perfect job of following her heart, intuition, passion - whatever. She has felt like she never worked. Just spent her time having fun. Always scribbling and drawing. Perpetual first-grader. 

But no, not a first-grader now. That was long ago, but she does like feeling she is still a student. Just a little older. And with more experience. She has no doubt as to one of the biggest reasons for her success, which she attributes to good fortune. Her gaze turns to a drawer nearly, where she has always kept the graduation gift. Nearby. Like her widowed grandmother had kept her husband’s many war letters. Nearby. Safe.

She is thinking now about the fan - or book - and its three parts. Its brief excerpts from writers chosen to fit the moment. The background, images, type of paper used to make the fan components. A work of art not destined for any museum but her own personal one.

The years that had passed since that day… Not all that many - fewer than thirty - had nevertheless been enough to have her wondering how so many had flown by. 

Then she turns back to the screen and her email. She opens one sent by her alumni association. One part of the message has the subject line

Professors retiring. 

That headline was in the online monthly bulletin from her alma mater. When she looked at the list of names, she found those of her two advisers, as she thought she might. She immediately knew she owed them a gift. Perhaps not ‘owed’ as much as ‘felt the need to let them know she remembered. That the blank sections of the third part - her part - had been completed. They might like to see what she had created when following their instructions. She hoped they would. She hoped what she was going to give them would be a surprise.

Author’s Note:

The gift is not a complete surprise to persons - all of you - reading this story. It is an anthology that includes the complete poems from both of the completed fan books, plus the writing she had chosen for the third fan book, the blank one. She wanted her professors to see that she had done her homework. All the selections were accompanied with a short personal commentary and a sketch in watercolor or acrylic ink, then they were bound into two identical volumes. There was a copy for each. 

In addition: There was a bookmark - of handmade and textured paper - that provided a link to access the recordings of the poems being read, some by her, the original recipient, and the rest by her students. Some of the students had their own fan books on the table before them as they read. This means the readings had both an audio and a visual component.

Title: We still don’t have a title. The original gift didn’t have one either.

She knew both would know who had sent the books, of course, but she wasn’t going to drop it there. 

She would like to ask - challenge? - both of them to create another fan book, or a fourth part to add to the original trio. This time, book four would be a bit different. It was to be done in collaboration. Meaning: each of the three would make another page - or leaf - and these three leaves would be the start of number four. There would need to be a second collaboration, after which they would decide if fan book part four needed to have more than six leaves. 

The challenge was handwritten, in cursive and with a fountain pen. Because she got a kick out of it, not because somebody might use the tired adjectives of ‘retro’ and ‘vintage’. She loved writing with ink from a real jar of it, just like she enjoyed painting on a wooden panel or a canvas more than manipulating digital images.

Also in each box she enclosed a catalogue of the things she had studied as a result of her professors’ gift.

Author’s Note:

Some people will not be entertained by her list, but it is relevant to the gift she received. Just consider that it is a list she made after going through many things. All in one way or another influenced by the original fan book. The collaboration.

Catalogue of things learned, studied, enjoyed, etc.:

Calligraphy.

The aesthetics of Victorian culture.

The history of sending Valentines.

Pop-up books and their inventor.

The fan in Europe, after having been introduced from China and Japan by Portuguese traders.

Medieval literature and its illustrations; also, the presence of Medieval culture in contemporary literature.

The Language Poets and their ideas about language. 1960s and 1970s until today.

The Pillow Book in literature (c.1000) and film (1996).

How to make paper from plants.

William Blake’s visual interpretation of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories from Real Life (1791), which has been called subversive. Blake is considered by some to be the originator of the artist’s book. So is William Morris, who was born later. 

Gustav Doré’s horrendous illustrations of literary women, the bas bleus or Bluestockings. 

Using art to teach poetry. In other languages, if possible.

Impressionist painters and Impressionist poets. (Is that possible?)

Cubist poetry. (Is that possible?)

The woad trade. Uses of woad today.

Synesthesia in creative writing and the five senses in the classroom.

Author’s Final Note:

This story does not end here, for a few reasons. First, you might have noticed that we have been talking a bit in circles. That was deliberate. Circles, as we know, have no end. So… a book in the shape of a fan that can be shaped into a circle might also be, as they say, a never-ending story. One lovely to watch.

This one’s for you.

Pass it on…