I wonder if this will be published or partly so anytime. I would very much enjoy the challenge of reading fifteen thousand pages. Not to mention it sounds quite interesting =P I would definitely pay to read this. If anyone has any info, let me know!!
shareJennifer FU said (in the interview on the DVD) that it's at the Folk Museum in somewhererather. Probably Chicago. It's under the copyright protection and care of Kyoko, the landlord, so any publishing of the book would be up to her. I can't see this being widely published. 15,000 pages is a daunting task, I'd say. Only a few hundred people who would read it all. (Me being one of them, ahem.)
shareThese days, there are a lot of "print on demand" places. You can buy an ISBN number and get as many copies as you want. Then if you want any more, you just order them and they print them up as needed. A lot of independant writers are doing it now because it skips past dealing with agents and publishers. It's good for old out of print stuff that's not likely to ever get a major reprinting.
If they were going to publish this book, that'd probably be the way to go. And publishing it in at least 15 volumes would be a good idea.
I hope it is published some day. I am very, very interested in reading this book, in all of it's fifteen thousand page glory.
-Bad waves of paranoia. Madness. Fear and loathing.-
I am curious to look at it myself. However, more likely than not, it is unreadable. To add to the list of Hank's problems, it seems he took most of his aggression out through graphomania.
See the other posts re: his pedophilia and/or love of she-males.
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by the looks of things I'm betting five dollars that my children... he-he you know that's over stating a bit maybe my nephews will one day come bitching to me that they're forced to read this for Lit. or Art history in college.
Personally I'd like it to published in some form someday. I'll most likely start and never finish it but the opportunity would be there just the same.
Yea i would def pay to read this
shareWhy not make it an ebook instead. 15,143 pages is a bit much to print and make it affordable to the masses. Even in 15 vol. at a 1000+ pages each it would still add up rather fast. one could easily put 15,000 pages on a CD. Just a thought.
sharei love large books, i would read it.
-Leah
******
"I"ve got a jar of dirt! I"ve got a jar of dirt! And guess what's inside?!"
Michael Bonesteel reprints selections from it in his book on Darger. The story is apparently quite coherent, just lengthy and has a lot of subplots; it is partly documentary (like Stephen King creating newsclippings and newswire bulletins for "Carrie") and he also includes rants and digressions, like the one where he talks about how girls are capable of achieving as much as boys.
Originally, the objection to publishing it was that it had all this depiction of child abuse. Obviously the answer is to have profits go to an anti-child-abuse charity. Darger stated that he did mean the book for eventual publication, and he also said he knew it would be analyzed, interpreted, and misinterpreted.
I don't see why they can't publish a 200 page section of it. Like a first volume. Or a Henry Darger reader.
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The Reader's Digest Condensed Version! Of course! No, seriously, I bet that's what they'll do.
shareMichael Bonesteel, Henry's first biographer (before John MacGregor) is right now editing a sort of Readers Digest condensed version of the Vivian Girls book.
Let's just say that God doesn't believe in me.
A "Henry Darger Reader" is the most reasonable idea that's been suggested here. The probability of a fifteen thousand page text going into mass publication, despite who's written it, is exactly zero. This seems rather obvious.
Plus, you would have to be as crazy as Darger himself to commit to reading the whole thing. It is also doubtful that his writings are of much literary value.
15 thousand isn't really that many pages. Yes, it is a lot for one book, but i'm sure i've read that much already. I don't understand why people are so mean about this. It wasn't obvious, thats why it was asked. There are tons of really awful books out there...doesn't mean no one wants to read them.
shareAccording to Wikipedia, his artwork was meant to accompany the written text, therefore this would be an illustrated novel. With all the extra space his massive murals would take up, by my estimation, even twenty separate volumes would each be the size of the Los Angeles yellow pages ...and that's using extremely small fonts!
Which raises a whole new question...Other than the bits that were used in the documentary, has anybody ever attempted the herculean task of sorting through all of his artwork and writings for the purpose of matching them up with one another? One can only speculate on whether he would type out hundreds of pages at a time and then go through lengthy periods of painting hundreds of collages to illustrate the text, or just type out one or two pages at a time in the morning, and then work on the supplemental illustration after church.
Anyhow, it doesn't appear to be any more or less coherent than the old testament, with it's wild tales of talking snakes, talking burning bushes, a giant boat carrying two of every species of animal, and people turning into pillars of salt.
I'm inclined to agree with you ladym00s... I'd love to read the whole thing.
shareMe too! My friend and I figured that if you read 200 pages a day, it would take you about 78 days to read the whole thing.
"Good morning Baltimore! Every day's like an open door!"
"You can't stop the beat!"
It's important, of course, to remember that fifteen thousand plus pages of typewriter paper does not equate fifteen thousand plus pages of published text. If published, the book might be much shorter in page length, as publishers always go by word count, never page count.
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