Disappearing book

Author Doug Rice (Blood of Mugwump: A Tiresian Tale of Incest) collaborated with designer-publisher Stephanie Sauer to create a curious book that coaxes meaning from memory through experiences of fractured self, gender and mirrors. Rice shifts comfortably (and uncomfortably) from first person to third, male to female, while Sauer encourages tactile communication between audience and idea with a book that—literally—comes apart in the reader’s hands. We must search for words to extract meaning. Some sentences—hidden, backwards, too light for the page—ask the reader, “How badly do you want it?” But unique construction is not a gimmick; it’s a precise method to document a complicated existence. Text is only a part of the picture; it’s not coyness when Rice writes, “My father’s voice told me of a story that disappears from the page before you can read.” Dream Memoirs of a Fabulist can be purchased at The Book Collector, 1008 24th Street, or online at www.copilotpress.com.