my favorite colophons

I’ve been working on the book. (Imagine that!) And, not that it matters to anyone but me, I’m not going to worry about the colophon. A colophon implies a certain persnicketyness or even perfectionism, and I don’t want any would-be publishers to think I’ll be difficult to work with.

And besides, my favorite colophons are WAY TOO LONG, like one my mother sent to me with a note (“Your father thinks this is a bit much”). Some colophons not only identify of the typefaces used, but describe them, summarize their general uses, and of course reveal briefly their history. (If Nabakov were still around he could probably work a whole novel into a colophon, the way he did with footnotes in Pale Fire.)

So . . . in the interest of actually finishing the book, I’m dropping the damn colophon.

@

a quote book!

I’ve been working on my book, Color Quotes. I am working with InDesign, which I recommend to anyone who happens to be designing a book, and yesterday I put all 22 chapters together as one. The count is . . . drumroll, please, 425 pages!!!

All that’s left to create is a title page, a table of contents, some acknowledgements, and of course a colophon. (That’s the identification of the typefaces and some notes about the design and production of the book. It’s usually on a left-hand page at the bottom of the last page of the book, but I’ve seen them on a left-hand page near the beginning of the book too. I love colophons. My book’s got to have one.)

I haven’t even begun to think of a cover. In the industry, books and book covers are designed by competely different people, and now I know why. Each are completely different monumental design challenges. One is about reading, and one is about selling. I will not mind leaving the cover to someone else, but the idea here is to, basically, self-publish, as in print and bind, maybe with a hard cover and a bookmark ribbon, just a few copies of the book. When these fall on the desks of the publishers they will look so real that they won’t be able to resist. There’ll probably be a bidding war! Movie rights, for a quote book!

I Just Want To Be A Tugboat Captain

winged genies

“[In the ninth century BC] appear winged genies . . . with human heads or sometimes the heads of birds of prey, whose task was to attract positive forces. Indeed, they hold in one hand a situla and in the other an object like a pinecone, with which they seem to sprinkle anyone who comes near them. . . . [A]s on the panels behind Ashurnasirpal II’s throne at Nimrud, these figures also appear in composite scenes: twice behind the king, who is also depicted twice, once on each side of the Tree of Life, which itself is surmounted by a winged disc representing the great god Assur or the sun god Shamash.”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.

Hammurabi

“Among the objects [from the eighteenth century BC] it is perhaps the Code of Hammurabi that is the most important. . . . Properly speaking, rather than a code, the text of 3,500 lines is a collection of penalties to be taken as a model. At the top of the stele, a relief illustrates that the king’s decisions were just because they were inspired by Shamash [the sun god] himself, who was the god of justice since nothing escaped his attention. Hammurabi, wearing a long garment and a thick-brimmed cap on his head . . . stands with one hand raised in greeting or respect before the divinity on a throne above the Cosmic Mountain (with scales), who is identified by the rays coming out of his back. The god holds the insignia of his omnipotence, the circle and stick, which the king must be about to touch . . . in order to fulfill his role as unfailing, supreme judge.”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.

The ziggurat

“The ziggurat is the image of the Cosmic Mountain where all things begin and end, like the Egyptian pyramids, but whereas the latter are linked to death (although the pharaohs buried in them were destined for a kind of resurrection), the Mesopotamian buildings are linked to the source of life. In every case the ziggurat formed part of a vast cultic complex. At Ur this was associated with a raised courtyard, with direct access from outside through a monumental door. . . .”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.

Naram-Sin

“[T]he stele of Naram-Sin strikes us by its dynamism. Trampling dismembered enemies, the king leads his men in assaulting a mountain, with tremendous force. In scaling the mountain, Naram-Sin imitates on his stele the pose assumed by the triumphant sun god on many seals of the era. Firstly, therefore, the scene is a sort of epiphany, modeled on that of the god, and this parallel indicates that the royal victory has a metaphysical dimension. In fact, the mountain represents a reworking of the theme of the Cosmic Mountain. Placing the king at its summit, and thus at the center of the world, the image expresses here more forcefully than ever the decisive role of the king in the process of regeneraton.”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.

the Tree of Life

“[Derived] directly from the Neolithic heritage . . . the Tree of Life, a classic in the history of religions, [is] often represented from the end of the fourth millennium BC onward in Mesopotamian iconography and, therefore, often mentioned in texts. In fact, almost any plant may be an allusion to it, such as all kinds of trees, primarily whole ones, but also branches, flowers, or shoots. We have to wait until the second millennium BC for its representation to acquire the more or less canonical form of a stylized tree in a set style. First of all, the tree alludes to the blood tie that links human generations over time. From this viewpoint, it can be compared with our own genealogical trees, but, whereas the latter describe the relationships of particular individuals, the former is more abstract. It extends to the whole of humanity, past and present, uniting the living with their mythical parents, like a sort of umbilical cord.”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.

Has anyone seen the movie The Fountain? They might have called it The Tree for its tree of profound significance, which is somehow launched in a bubble of some sort from a mysterious Mayan temple toward a particular nebular cluster, the site of a soon-to-die star. But I don’t want to give too much away. . . .

the invention of writing

“For the whole of the fourth millennium BC, [Mesopotamian] society continued to become more hierarchical, which enabled the politico-administrative system to govern a developing society. The hereditary elites who held the reins of power were at the center of a vast, centripetal network that administered the region and fundamentally depended on their statutory capacity to mobilize the community’s workforce. This energy reserve, governed by the size of the population, enabled them to undertake public works (irrigation, for example), build sumptuous buildings, organize foreign expeditions, and obtain craft products and agricultural surpluses. This, in turn, enabled them to satisfy their own needs, maintain their dependents, meet their obligations, trade, and in general assume all the burdens of their public and private duties. . . . It was the need to control all these activities that led to the invention of writing during the Late Uruk Period.”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.