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Author's Introduction
- Fordham University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
The first version of these pages was written in 2004 at the suggestion of the Quai des Brumes bookstore in Strasbourg. For the store’s twentieth anniversary, the management wanted to make a gift of a book to its regular clients. At that point my text was entitled “Of Books and Bookstores,” and it was published by the bookstore and Éditions La Fosse aux ours. For this new version, Jean Le Gac has included sketches done at the time of a book-signing at the bookstore Le Passage in Alençon, among other drawings produced by him in the spirit of the illustrated book—in the sense that the illustration is neither a commentary on nor a visualization of the text, but something added to its savor, its scent, and its grain. [These illustrations from the Éditions Galilée publication have not been included in the English-language edition.] This essay, therefore, in its desire to honor the commerce of books, is dedicated in the first place—thanks to chance— as much to the friendship of the Quai des brumes as to the welcome received from Le Passage. For this new version it is indebted to Éditions Galilée, which wishes to salute all those—booksellers, editors, printers, graphic designers, copyeditors —who make possible the commerce of books, that is to say, the sharing of an amorous and uninterrupted rewriting of the enigma. ...