Wednesday, June 18, 2008

It's Layout Day

Here is the initial design of the book. The one thing that might change is the spine. We all know how important the spine is, and we want to get it right. We may pull some of the brown into the spine, or use the fading technique that was employed on the Orange Pulp CD cover. This layout was designed by Chris Szostek, and he will also be helping with the layout and typesetting of the text.

We also have put together a quote page that will go inside the book. Here are a few of the quotes.

Ben Tanzer is a wizard. No doubt. A force. The power of the writing lies in the cracks between the big moments, Tanzer a sorcerer of subtlety and subtext. Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine is simple, pared back, up front, and beautiful, and Tanzer elevates the prose through rich scene and dialogue. Wizard Tanzer's magic book of spells is deep, and Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine is his most powerful and resonant potion.
-Nick Ostdick, editor of RAGAD and author of Sunbeams and Cigarettes.

After reading many passages from his book, I connected with it from the very beginning. I love the dialogue between the characters. Sometimes all you need is a few distinct lines or sentences to get your imagination rolling. And the title: "Most likely you go your way and I'll go mine" is compelling to me. It has a kind of "punch" to it that most titles do not. I think it's a feeling or mood we can all relate to on a personal or emotional level. It stays with you.
- Michael Paige Glover, Artist

In the way a forgotten song can bring to mind an afternoon twenty years ago with bittersweet detail, Tanzer's world is hauntingly comforting, with his trademark ability to capture days in the details for which we remember them, and remind us of all the ways the songs we loved, and the language and popular culture we shunned or embraced shaped us, perhaps even on levels we'd yet to realize only moments before. In this follow up to "Lucky Man", Tanzer further demonstrates his remarkable skill in capturing the zeitgeist of micro-eras in recent decades, seemingly drawing on a combination of observation, memory and an intuitive understanding of situational layers in his storytelling. Utilizing sharp, personal and, at times, no-frills dialogue to create achingly familiar places and wonderfully relatable moments, Tanzer so cleverly utilizes otherwise surface pop-culture references to hypothesize beginnings of social and cultural movements through decidedly recognizable characters and moments, again demonstrating his innate understanding of the inseparable if not ethereal qualities of sounds, emotions, symbols, words and other simple, sacred life details.
- Amy Guth, author of Three Fallen Women

1 comment:

H. said...

Very cool to watch a project unfolding man--best of luck with it & keep the progress reports coming!