Creating a Chapbook: Initial Ideas

 Introduction to the project 

The second project in Creative Media Production this term is the creative writing project this will be created in the format / form of a chapbook and will be no more than 40 pages long and can include both text and images.  It can take any form of creative writing but must have an overarching theme. 

Chapbooks (the format we will be using) were circulated from the 17th to 19th centuries, bought cheaply and shared, and were popular with middle-class children. 'Chapbooks were normally printed on one single sheet of paper and then folded into 8, 12, 16 or 24 pages. They would usually have been sold unbound and held together by a simple sewing.'(Ray, 2021).  When I was at university I learned book making and used different sewing techniques to create a handmade book.  Today people online are still similarly making little books and also they can be printed cheaply and easily digitally in the spirit of the original chapbook. 

Chapbooks and Chapmen

Form and theme 

In my photographic project was working on my disappearance, I would like to use the same theme for my chapbook as an overarching theme.  I would like to explore absence and presence in writing and technically I would like to explore further literary methods for creating the story of disappearance.  

One of my favourite stories of disappearance was Joris-Karl Huysmans A Rebours (Against Nature, which was about 'Des Esseintes, a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where he indulges his taste for luxury and excess' (Good Reads n.d).  His departure from society leads him to explore all the excessses he can think of from exotic plants, exotic women, excessive demands, and jewels however this isolation and excess do not lead to the experience he is hoping for, and in his next book La Bas, he has renounced God and fully explores the limits of evil. Huysman's disappearance from society though is what is interesting here.

I looked at a couple of reviews on this and both reviews found the text quite hard work and did not like the literary reviews and references and needing to look these up in the notes (this is the part I enjoy most as often it does link to texts I know or gives a historical or literary context) Menon states: 'These critiques are punctuated with des Esseintes’ memories (often quite disturbing) as well as his ennui and ailments which seem inherently linked with his enforced literary lifestyle and symptomatic of everything he is trying to escape. Against Nature is often humorous and self-reflective, which compensates for the lengthy book reviews within the novel which can alienate the reader.' (Menon L: 12/09/2016)

In my own work on the disappearance in the text I intend to write, I may well include a withdrawal from working life and I have some ideas on how I affect that disappearance for the character I intend to create.  I may not experience every sensual desire that I can imagine like Des Essientes however I will explore all manner of new enjoyments that come with the freedom of the disappearance. 

References

Ray, A. (2021) Chapbooks: Fleet Street Time Travellers, Kings Collections. Available at: https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/kingscollections/2016/07/20/chapbooks-a-fleet-street-time-traveller/ (Accessed: 05 February 2024). 

2. Chapbooks and chapmen (no date) University of Aberdeen. Available at: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/stories/chapbooks-chapmen/index.html (Accessed: 05 February 2024). 

Against nature (no date) Goodreads. Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/210255 (Accessed: 05 February 2024). 

Lucy Menon (2016). AGAINST NATURE | BOOK REVIEW. [online] Buzz Magazine. Available at: https://www.buzzmag.co.uk/nature-book-review/ [Accessed 6 Feb. 2024].