Who needs books when…

A used paperback copy of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World sitting on the cutting board at Butterflies & Aliens North, along with my trusty pen, ruler, and X-ACTO knife. And so it begins…

Content Warning: The following post includes images of a book being physically altered, by which I mean getting cut up. Also #spoilers about the book in question.

So this weekend my latest altered book project came together, the third in a series based on dystopic novels with themes relating to reading, censorship, and language. The first in the series, Spark Unnecessary, was based on Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The second, as yet still untitled, work was based on George Orwell’s 1984.

This time the subject of my experimentation is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, one of my favourite science fiction novels of all time, and the most subversive and subtle, but perhaps also most shocking, of the three books in this altered book series so far.

Where the dominant theme of Fahrenheit 451 was the burning of books and for 1984 it was the dangers of the surveillance society, Brave New World contains a more complex web of themes, including social stratification, science and ethics, consumerism and enforced recreation, and the humanity of Shakespeare, to name just a few. But two themes stood out for me in particular. The first involves the state taking over the “decanting” and “conditioning” of new humans at government “hatcheries” – conveyor belts of literal test tube babies destined for follow up “moral education” before release. The second involves the free distribution and consumption of a drug called soma to keep the population happy within their government-predestined lot in life, thereby helping maintain the stability of the society.

And part of that conditioning and stability focusses on creating an aversion to books, at least in certain levels of society:

‘They’ll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an “instinctive” hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives.’

I remember discussing all three of these books back in uni in a comparative lit course on science fiction, and at the time part of the discussion centered around how 1984 was so much better known as a novel, and often held up to say “whew, at least we avoided that!” Meanwhile, we were already living a lot of Brave New World and no one seemed to have noticed.

So with those ideas bouncing around in my head, drugs and test tubes became my quest for this project… that is to say, “drugs” and test tubes.

As was the case with the first two projects, once I put out the general call, to the Universe and to my social circles, the right pieces just appeared.

From my friend Shannon came a package of 100 empty clear gelatin capsules, and suddenly a bag of cake decorations and candy sprinkles that had been sitting untouched in my kitchen cabinets for years took on a beautiful new purpose.

And voilà – I had my “drugs.”

[Image Description: What follows is a series of five images depicting the assembly of fake pill capsules, using empty clear gelatin capsules and red sugar crystal cake sprinkles.]

Then my neighbour April came up with two test tubes, including cork stoppers, that had previously been holding decorative soap. They couldn’t have been more ideal.

And I already had my used copy of Brave New World, chosen for its black, white, and red cover to fit in visually with the covers of the first two books in my series. I should perhaps also note at this point that I am also the steward of three other editions of Brave New World, so where one hand taketh away, the other actively preserveth.

But now things were about to get real.

[Image Description: The components for this project are depicted against a green cutting mat, including two clear glass test tubes with pale cork stoppers, approximately 6” long and 1” in diameter, a paperback copy of the HarperPerennial ModernClassics edition of Brave New World, measuring 5.25” x 8” and 6/8” thick, a clear plastic ziploc bag containing 100 red sugar-crystal-filled gel caps 7/8” long, and a white 2x4 Lego brick for scale. And yeah, I’m using Imperial measurements.]

Again, I’ve always thought of Brave New World as a more subtle novel, containing more insidious ideas. As such, I felt like that meant I should leave the cover intact for this project, my message also more hidden, less obvious than with my two earlier projects. So my alterations would begin on the inside.

[Image Description: A series of three images depicting me holding the test tube against the first page of the book to roughly fit for size, measuring the test tube with a ruler, and beginning to mark cutting guides onto the page with a pen and ruler.]

Having measured thrice, marked twice, we were once again at the point of no return. Time to pull out the X-ACTO.

[Image Description: A series of three images showing my ruler and X-ACTO knife at the ready, lying on the book, then the first cuts made to the pages, the partially-attached cutouts lying in place and then being pulled back to reveal the growing empty space in the middle of the book block.]

As I began to cut, I left the bottom of the strips attached to the book. At this point I wasn’t clear how I wanted to cut, or possibly shape, the bottom edge… curved to follow the shape of the test tube perhaps?

Two other moments of happenstance worth noting from the cutting process: 1) I discovered that the previous owner of the book had a left an index card between the pages, presumably as a bookmark, when part of it popped out after I cut through it unawares. And 2) my process of using one set of cuts to guide the next ended up creating thin slivers of the pages that kept falling out from between the pages. I decided to put them in one of the test tubes instead of throwing them out, which would prove useful later.

[Image Description: A series of three images, the first showing a white index card sliced in half on a page, in line with the intended cuts, followed by two images of the accidental paper slivers being collected and placed inside a test tube.]

The 3/4 side cutting resulted in an interesting visual effect when I pushed the segments out, intending to test the fit of the test tube. I ended up spending a bit of time pondering whether I could and/or wanted to incorporate that effect into the final work.

I also accidentally cut through part of the back cover, which then also became an unanticipated factor to consider.

With all that in mind, the next step was to fill the remaining empty test tube with my “drugs” and start playing around.

[Image Description: A series of six images showing: 1) the 200+ layers of cutouts, pulled out from the middle of the book and splayed out and to the right looking like a really weird half-open fan, 2) an unstoppered test tube, mostly filled with red “pills” and being held up in front of the book and cutting board, 3) close-up of the back cover, showing partial cuts through the material, 4 and 5) pictures of the test tube being test-fit into the cutout in the book block, and 6) a picture of the open book lying on the cutting board with the cutouts pushed up slightly out of the book block, next to the two stoppered test tubes, one filled with red pills and the other with paper slivers, and the X-ACTO knife temporarily at rest.]

After a bunch of experimentation and thought, I finally made the decision to remove the strips completely, including from the back cover. The idea that, once you open the front cover and turn past the one remaining intact page, you see straight through what’s left – that the remaining book block has basically been reduced to a frame for something else – struck me as being on message.

[Image Description: A series of four images showing: 1) the closed book next to the red test tube (it looks like the book is perfectly fine), 2) the book open to the unaltered half title page (still looking fine), 3) the book open to the next page – what was/is the full title page – where there is now a clearly visible 1” by 6.5” rectangular opening cut through the entire book block, through which the green cutting mat below can be seen, and 4) a close-up of the pile of page cutouts lying next to the book on the cutting mat.]

And then all that remained was to place the test tube in its new home.

There are some tweaks still to be made, perhaps. Possibly some clear archival tape to keep the test tube from falling out when handled. A better way to integrate the second test tube filled with the “DNA strands” of paper… just tucked under the front cover for now. And not sure what to do with the leftover cutout strips. But those are questions for another day.

My favourite thing about how it did turn out came as a surprise: seeing it backlit by my computer screen when I held it up. I’ve now added an illuminated display stand to my list of future projects.

But for now, here it is, my latest altered book project.

Happy (Not) Reading!

– Winston

[Image Description: A final series of three images showing the “completed” work. The first shows the book open to the full title page, where ‘aldous huxley’ is visible along the top of the page, but the title of Brave New World as well as publisher information are interrupted by the opening containing the test tube filled with red pills. The title now reads as BE N WLD. The second image shows the book open to page 27, the red test tube embedded in the book block and the white test tube sitting on top of the text. Both of these images have the green cutting mat as a background, with a metal ruler lying just in frame at the top right. The third image shows the book being held open to the title page, and held up in front of a blue computer screen as background, the glow of the blue shining around the book and also through the opening and through the red of the pills in the test tube.]