ARCHIVE FEVER - woodcuts

Der Bär bereicht das Mädchen.

I am learning German right now: Iche lerne die Deutsch. I have some books, and all of them are quite boring, except one: Elementary German Series by Peter Hagboldt.

I'm aware of how thrilling this sounds.
This book is only of note (to you, at least - to me, es hilft mich mit die Wörtern!) because of it's drawings. You know, children -- feeble minds -- must be kept entertained, and I am much like them in this respect.
It was illustrated by W.T. Mars and Susan Perl. Susan Perl also illustrated "The Sex Life of the American Female". What I have here is aimed down a little, as far as age goes. Roughly, this age:



Just some of the best illustrations today (I might post more later- these are not the only good bits PROMISE). All of these appear to be woodcuts, but I'm no expert (you won't hear me say that very often) Come on; I know something about everything, not everything about everything.

Speaking of, let me here justify the posts tagged "Archive Fever".
Blogs should be a particular form of narcissism. They do it well: displaying bits of whatever catches someone's attention about themselves. But if a blog is up there so you can discuss yourself, I mean your 'self', then that is generally in very poor taste. (I'll tell you why later: it's my anti-humanism at work.)
It reminds me of this song



It has choice lines like
"Hey all you Renaissance Geniuses
you know we wanna see it all
your vaginas and your penises
your feces-es
masterpieces
oh".

I am not a Renaissance Genius myself. I am a Renaissance Dilettante: hence knowing something about it all. So I am archiving my GREAT stuff, not because it is mine, but because it is GREAT. It's interesting stuff (Vinyl records, woodcuts, tins, Italian anti-drug pamphlets, skateshop vinyl figurines, etc.) It's all AWESOME first, and mine only secondarily. That they are mine just makes it easier for me to present them to you (I'm not lazy: I'm just efficient).
Plus, some of it's three-dimensional, so I am bringing analog and three dimensions to the digital and 2-D internet. EVERYTHING SOUNDS BETTER/BEST WITH ME.

'On to the pictures, please', right?








I particularly like this one. The lion has its right paw raised, giving a balance to its raised tail. Even better, the roots of the trees snake around its feet, so that you know that the lion is in the forest. If the roots didn't come into the foreground, the tree would seem to be in the background. But the story clearly says that the lion is in the forest; I know this because I read the story BECAUSE I AM SMART AND I AM LEARNING GERMAN.








And to bring it back to the text, here is one with a little Deutsch thrown in. It says that the wolf ate a little lamb, "but was still hungry: a wolf is always hungry!" So it went back, but the farmers caught it and beat it with their sticks until they had "beaten the wolf as soft as butter".

Funny people, these Germans.




(FYI I bit the title of Archive Fever from Derrida- the only thing you'll ever get of him from me.

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