The Outlaw, The Red Ghost, Half-Lives, a Photogram Exposed by the Dirt is composed of a stack of smooth surfaced, rough edged paper that’s been digitally printed on and bound down the middle by a single staple. This lands it in the ‘vessel’ category, as opposed to an ‘object’, and a humbe vessel at that. The paper is just small and sturdy enough to be secured by one stable. The rough edges also present a rural quality to the vessel, communicating the urban spirit of the material just by feeling it.
The cover consists of a digital print of a vague shape (which, to me, appears to be a horse’s skull seen from above) that provokes the reader to analyze it or read the material to decipher what it’s supposed to be.
The text is printed with an unusually small, standard Times New Roman font, and is all compacted to the top left, leaving ample space on each page. I suppose this spacing choice provides the atmosphere of reading a short letter or even an email from a distant friend or relative. It’s small, it’s humble, it lets the content speak for itself.
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EL 230: Small Press Publishing
A Saint Vincent College Course
EL 230: Small Press Publishing 
I think it’s very interesting how you describe the book and all the aspects of it….I really feel like I know this book and how it’s put together, without actually holding it. The cover, the text, the paper, the binding, the edges-it’s all just so descriptive and I think that’s even more important to the idea of calling it a “humble vessel”. It’s almost as if it’s an urn or a vase, and I were to ask you “can you describe what you’re looking at?”. It let’s the content speak for itself, that’s exactly what you said-and that’s so true. This is a vessel for holding information, not for looking pretty and being gaudy.
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I like how you describe the rough edges giving it a “rural quality.” While I may change my opinion if I were to see the “vessel” in person, I tend to connote rough-edged pages with old or ancient texts. I also find it interesting that overall, the book has minimal — for lack of a better term — flamboyancy to it and relies on the work to be the real judge of character; very true to “you can’t judge a book by its cover.”
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It’s cool how this stark minimalism is a kind of extreme in its own right! Especially with the small font and the single staple–we notice its form BECAUSE of its dire simplicity. Personally, encountering this book, I find myself ready to reflect on language’s starkness vs. excesses in a way that I would not if it were a typical 6 x 9 codex with a thick glossy cover and perfect binding. Very nice observations.
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