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i l l u s t r a t i o n s 1. Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase. An iconic moment of modernist painting when the ‘‘still’’ of portraiture opens up to incorporate sequential movement and through it, time. 61 2. Ben Katchor, Julius Knipl Real Estate Photographer: Stories (Boston: Little Brown, 1996), cover. 64 3. Ben Katchor, Julius Knipl Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District (New York: Pantheon, 2003), endpapers, front, with storefronts, including ‘‘Sensum’s Symmetry Shop’’ and ‘‘Synthetic Apriori Corp.’’ 66 4. Ben Katchor, The Beauty Supply District, endpapers, rear, with collage, including theater seating plan and ‘‘De Vowel’s Puddle Map.’’ 68 5. Louis Aragon, Le paysan de Paris (Paris: Gallimard, 1953), 122. Here and elsewhere, Aragon incorporates signage from the boutiques of the Parisian arcades into his text. 70 6. Aragon, Le paysan de Paris, 196. In this passage, Aragon reproduces official municipal inscriptions from the city hall of the nineteenth arrondisement into his text. 71 7. Luc and François Schuiten, Carapaces (Geneva: Humanos, 1980), 6. A couple, wearing prophylactic body armor against insect swarms, prepares for sexual intercourse. 72 8. Schuiten brothers, Carapaces, 10. One of the sexual partners realizes the consequences of having removed protective garb. 73 ix x Illustrations 9. Luc & François Schuiten and Benoı̂t Peeters, L’archiviste (Casterman, 2000), jacket. A figure almost from the pages of Melville’s ‘‘Bartleby the Scrivener’’ assumes the burden of cultural memory, with all its archiving tasks. 74 10. Schuiten brothers and Peeters, L’archiviste, cover. Here the archivist hides in a compartment reminiscent of the madly symmetrical architecture prevalent in Borges’s ‘‘The Library of Babel.’’ 75 11. Schuiten brothers and Peeters, La fièvre d’Vrbicande (Casterman, 1992), 38. The virus of proliferating cubes begins to expand around its architect, Eugène Robick. 76 12. Schuiten brothers and Peeters, La tour (Casterman, 1987), 6. Giovanni Battista, master of the tower, enters an Escher-like perspective, in which he gazes at the internal gothic trappings of the structure simultaneously head on, from above, and from below. 77 13. Schuiten brothers and Peeters, Nogegon (Casterman, 1990), rear cover, indicating the multiple-image trail left by the model Olive in the futuristic sculptural artform ‘‘artrace.’’ 78 14. Leo Leonhard and Otto Jägersberg, Rüssel in Komikland (Darmstadt: Melzer, 1972), detail, 44–45. Fountain, graphic caricature of Bosch’s ‘‘The Garden of Earthly Delights.’’ 80 15. Leonhard and Jägersberg, Rüssel in Komikland, 31. Contemporary Flabby Jack finds distorted playmates from the graphic universe of Bosch’s imaginary creatures. 82 16. Leonhard and Jägersberg, Rüssel in Komikland, 35. Al Bosso, mob godfather, at home in the seat of his power. 83 ...

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