Art inspired by Stephen King’s latest book, 11/22/63.
Hey there hi there ho there! I’m going to share my first attempt at something I’ve been thinking about for a while.
First, I have to apologise for the quality of the background photo: I used the iPad. The iPad camera, as we know, is terrible. The color is all wrong, and the page is curved at the top from holding the book open to take the picture. This is, without a doubt, an experiment in progress. But the hubby loves it, so I think I can eventually get where I want to go with this…
Now, I’ll tell you just what the hell this is! It is the first page of Stephen King’s latest book, ’11/22/63′, with John F Kennedy’s head (from the US fifty-cent coin) drawn between the text.
I got the idea from how occasionally on a typed page I will see a pattern in the white space between words. My desire and intent is to do a drawing relevant to the book (say, a whale on page one of Moby Dick) but in one continuous line, not broken like this one.
’11/22/63′ is about someone getting the chance to go back in time and stop the Kennedy assassination so I found a good, and easy, picture of Kennedy. I really wanted to use a horribly gory one of his autopsy – it seemed to fit with King so much better! However, the pics I found could be of anyone’s black and white brains and hair on an autopsy table. Anyway, with this picture from the coin as a first attempt the subject is indeed recognisable but still not what I wanted. As always, a learning process!
Ps: I’ve not finished the novel yet, so no spoilers please!
heretherebespiders 
hahahahaha–you are certainly straightforward about brains and an autopsy table! hahahhahahaha
Oh, and interesting art! A subliminal reminder of the subject of the book….
Well, I would hate to hurt any of Kennedy’s family – but it’s not as if the photos aren’t out there for anyone with a search engine and two minutes of time. I do have an interest in the macabre. A pretty big one, in fact! If my book ever gets written, I’ll shock the pants off a few people 🙂 I thought the gore would be a much, much better reminder of why anyone would even consider going back in time to save a person, especially one that a lot of people think could have saved us from a lot of the pain the world has gone through since – just starting with Vietnam!
Macabre is fun isn’t it? I keep wondering what skull I’ll have a double of to send you. Or rather a double I can bring myself to part with. Will it be a rabbit? Maybe a fox?? A mink? Who knows?!
I think this is an interesting idea. I know I’ve been tempted to take a pencil/pen/brush to floors or ceilings that I see something hidden in. I’m glad you used a scan of the page, not the page. 🙂
I like it. 🙂
I think that’s a very interesting idea. It combines several things in one, so a book you love can be with you in a text and in a visual form. Sounds really cool!
What books would you work with this way?
Good question! I looooove King, so doing his books would be a true labor of love for me. And maybe I could meet him too 🙂 That would be a dream come true!
I am not at all sure how much Kennedy’s survival could have tipped the balance for peace vs. war — not saying I won’t admit it as a possibility, but somehow, Vietnam seemed like a juggernaut. It was a mess before Kennedy was sworn in (the French warned us, Mountbatten warned us) and it stayed a mess years after Johnson, having defeated Goldwater partly as an alternative to AuH2O’s shrill Red-baiting, escalated year after year.
It would have been nice to know what would have happened though. Or even what did happen, considering all the lingering questions.
Do you know the Illuminatus novels in which one of the shots that hit Kennedy was fired by John Dillinger? Yes, that Dillinger.
More seriously, there is a credible ballistic argument that one of the Secret Service men’s weapon misfired and that was the soft lead slug that went right into the brain. The steel jacketed shell Oswald fired through his second thoracic vertebra would have been fatal anyway, though.
My gentleman friend’s mother works with collage and line over printed pages and she is on faculty at a state university and considered a Seeriyus Ahtist. See where this takes you.
I’m so curious to find out what King does with the idea. I respect his advertised politics, so I hope he doesn’t let me down. I have a feeling that it won’t make a difference, though – as a writer, I can’t imagine any good alternate history especially when our reality is so much more warped than even I would have expected.
I did read a book called The Illumaniti! and it bored me. It got wet and I didn’t even gift it onward, I binned it. Not as bad as I would-and did-treat Dan Brown (nice firelighter). My hubby likes that sort of thing, and might actually read fiction in that case. It was all 8 years before I was born, so I never gave it a lot of thought, to be honest.
I like the idea of being a Seeriyus Arteest. Especially in a country where artists pay no extra taxes (above our 24% sales tax, credit card owner tax, tv tax, etc etc etc)