(#85) A CONSTRUCTED ROMAN ALPHABET:

Edition of 1873 of which 300 copies are signed 1-300, 26 copies are signed A-Z as artist's proofs, and five sets are signed as progressives.

December 1, 1979

Two colors

18" x 24"

Influence: Albrect Dürer, Wolfgang Fugger, Geofroy Tory

Client: Self Promotion

1-300: Saint Hieronymus Press, Inc.

A-Z: Artist's own use

Progressives: Saint Hieronymus Press, Inc.

(Letters from the book A Constructed Roman Alphabet, were issued in 1989 by Mohawk Superfine Letterpress Paper as a broadside.)

Reprinted at 90% of the original size, in two colors, by letterpress on October 13, 2013 in an edition of 230 as a keepsake for a meeting and talk given by David Lance Goines for the Roxburgh Club, San Francisco.

A popular toy, when I was young, was a device called a "Magic Slate." It consisted of a tough transparent sheet attached on one edge over a waxy black substrate. You wrote on the clear cover with a wooden stylus, and an image appeared because the cover was forced against the black. When you pulled the cover up, it separated from the black wax, and the writing magically was erased.

As Plato pointed out, in his discussion of Thoth and the invention of writing, once you have an aid to memory, you no longer have memory itself. But, memory remains in the wax tablet, the carved stone, the baked clay, the printed page, the magnetic disc. Writing replaces individual memory with collective memory.

Though the clear cover will one day be lifted off my life and my personal memory will be erased, the impression will nonetheless remain. You who live after me will still be able to hear my words as though I had spoken them directly to you; to see the images I drew as though I had drawn them yesterday. My life will become part of everyone's life, gradually fading into history, gradually adding to the richness of humanity's heritage, gradually dissolving into that rich, amorphous stew that makes us what we are. However jumbled and unintelligible, all the memories will still be there. Nothing is wasted; nothing is lost forever.