Terry Pitts, the author of the Vertigo blog on Max Sebald, collects fiction and poetry books embedded with photographs. He records a bibliography of these books in LibraryThing site (this link).
It's a surprising catalog for me since I see some of the books in stores but didn't realize they have photographs in them.
But is this trend of attaching photographs to a text yet another example of dumbing-down to stark literalism and the inability of the reader to visualise from the text provided and/or author unable to accurately delineate and describe with words, or does it really add something new to literary works ?
ReplyDeleteIn the books I've read (those by W. G. Sebald & Javier Marías) I think the photographs are an integral part of the storytelling. They add something to the text and sometimes raise the question of authenticity of fiction.
ReplyDeleteI think with Sebald, especially in Unrecounted the lithographs act as a dialogue with the poetry.
ReplyDeleteThat's a wonderful way of putting it, Gary.
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