BOB DAVIS ART
by Philippe Soupault
Old Rosa
by Reinaldo Arenas
(coming soon?)
The Bob Davis Library, or How I learned to stop caring and get on with the business of making something
"After a few words touching his qualifications, I engaged Bartelby, glad to have among my corps of copyists, (since) there was now a great work for the scriveners,... a man so singularly sedate an aspect....
"At first, Bartelby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famished for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran day and night line, copying by sunlight and by candle light. I should have been delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically.
"It is, of course, an indespensible part of a scrivener's business to verify the accuracy of his copy, word by word. Where there are two or more scriveners in an office, they assist each other in the examination, one reading from the copy, the other holding the original. It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that, to some sanguine temperaments, it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the meddlesome poet, Byron, would have contentedly sat down with Bartelby to examine a law document of, say five-hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand....
"It was on the third day, I think, of his being with me, and before any necessity had arisen for having his own writing examined, that, being much hurried to complete a small affair I had in hand, I abruptly called to Bartelby.... I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him to do-- namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise, nay my consternation, when, without moving from his privacy, Bartelby, in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, 'I would prefer not to.'" Herman Melville, Bartelby the Scrivener
"For Watt's concern, deep as it appeared, was not after all with what the figure was, in reality, but with what the figure appeared to be, in reality. For since when were Watt's concerns with what things were, in reality?" Samuel Beckett, Watt
"The real is that to which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. And more, it is that which has already been reproduced." Jean Baudrillard, Simulations
"Don Quixote was very thoughtful as he waited for the Bachelor Carrasco, from whom he expected to hear how he had been put into a book, as Sancho had told him. He could not persuade himself that such a history existed, for the blood of the enemies he had slain was scarcely dry on his own swordblade. Yet they would have it that his noble deeds of chivalry were already about in print....
"So Sancho returned with Carrasco, who went down on his knees before Don Quixote, and said:
"'Blessed be Cide Hamete Benengeli, who has left us the history of your great deeds recorded, and thrice blessed the man of taste who took the pains to have it translated out of the Arabic into our vulgar Castilian... and there are more than twelve thousand copies of this history in print today.'" Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
"The power of a country road is different when one is walking along it from when one is flying over it by airplane. In the same way, the power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. The airplane passenger sees only how the road pushes through the landscape, how it unfolds according to the same laws as the terrain surrounding it. Only he who walks the road on foot learns of the power it commands, and of how, from the very scenery that for the flier is only the unfurled plain, it calls forth distances, belvederes, clearings, prospects at each of its turns like a commander deploying soldiers at a front. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of daydreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command. The chinese practice of copying books was thus an incomparable guarantee of literary culture, and the transcript a key to China's enigmas." Walter Benjamin, Reflections
"For in the distance that separates the original from its (copy),... lies that threshold where pure language may come into being." Richard Sieburth, Benjamin the Scrivener
"(It is a) torment for the scribe, the scholar to spend long winter hours at his desk, his fingers numb around the stylus, seized by the terrible monk's cramp. And this explains why we often find in the margins of a manuscript phrases left by the scribe as testimony to his suffering, such as 'Oh, if I had a good glass of wine.' As an ancient proverb says, three fingers hold the pen, but the whole body works. And aches." Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
"I too wondered if I couldn't sell something and succeed in life." Marcel Broodthaers, quoted in Broodthaers
"A monstrous abberation makes people believe that language was born to facilitate their mutal relations." Andre Breton, in The Dada Painters and Poets
"He did not want to compose another Don Quixote-- which would be easy-- but the Don Quixote. It is unnecessary to add that his aim was never to produce a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable ambition was to produce pages which would coincide word for word and line for line-- with those of Miguel de Cervantes." Jorge Luis Borges, Pierre Menard, collected in Ficciones
"Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in everyway conceivable." Thomas Mann, Magic Mountain
"The affected piety of modern times that surrounds (literature) and often prevents u sfrom (reading) it is nothing other than idolatry for the object, adoration of a magic object which we can touch and which like other objects, can be bought and sold. It is the elevation of the object in a civilization dedicated to producing and consuming objects." Marcel Duchamp
"Everything is permitted" exclaims Ivan Karamazov
"We should burn all the libraries and allow to remain only that which everyone knows by heart. A beautiful age of the legend would then begin." Hugo Ball, in The Dada painters and Poets
"Rats appear suddenly in houses where there were never any before, no one knows where they come from, but there they are, they eat up everything, kind blessed rats, and they leave nothing behind for hungry women but a pile of newspapers; there they lie, nothing else. They don't care for newspaper. Rats hate cellulose. They manoeuvre in the darkness all right, but they are not termites. Termites eat wood and books. The love riot among the termites. FIRE IN THE LIBRARY..." Elias Canetti, Auto-da-Fe
"The entire city might have burned..." Phillipe Souppault, Last Nights of Paris
The Bob Davis Library is a project of the Bob Davis Center for Reading and Comprehension. All donations are acceptable.