Category Archives: Picture novels

A photo-text is a phototext is a photo text. Or is it?

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

One of the funny things about “novels with pictures in them” is that, as I’ve said before, no one really agrees on what to call them, be it “illustrated novels”, or “iconotexts”, or “image-texts”, or “novels with photographs”, or “photography-embedded … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Simenon, Germaine Krull, Phototexts, Picture novels, Wright Morris | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Where are the women?

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

I see from AbeBooks.co.uk that among their top ten most expensive sales in September there is a copy of Dessins, thèmes et variations by Henri Matisse. First published by Fabiani in Paris in 1943, this volume features an introduction by Louis … Continue reading →

Posted in Carole Maso, Picture novels | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Japanese noir: David Peace’s Tokyo Year Zero

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

Published in 2007, David Peace’s Tokyo Year Zero, the first in a trilogy of novels, opens on 15 August 1945 with the discovery of a woman’s rotting corpse by one Detective Minami, minutes before Emperor Hirohito’s broadcast of Japan’s unconditional … Continue reading →

Posted in David Peace, Picture novels | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Three different editions of Georges Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-Morte

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

These three editions of Georges Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-Morte are in fact three very different books. The first edition, pictured left and dating from 1986, was published by Babel. The second edition, an English translation by Mike Mitchell, was published by Dedalus … Continue reading →

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The strange case of Simenon’s “phototext”

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

I have just read, with much pleasure, Simenon, Pierre Assouline’s remarkable 1992 biography of the creator of Inspector Maigret (Paris: Gallimard, 1996; at nearly 1,000 pages, the French edition is almost twice as long as either the US or UK … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Simenon, Germaine Krull, Photography, Picture novels | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Colum McCann’s feel-good fiction (and cheap use of photography)

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

I was surprised to discover a photograph reproduced in Colum McCann’s award-winning Let the Great World Spin (2009), which I recently picked up in this second-hand Random House edition dating from 2010. The novel takes places on and around 7 … Continue reading →

Posted in Colum McCann, Picture novels | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Letter to Mister H. (or Mister H. Learns To Drive)

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

Dear Mister H., I’ve just finished reading your short but dense novel Mercedes-Benz – in the English translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, of course, since I don’t know a word of Polish. Indeed, yours is one of the very few Polish … Continue reading →

Posted in Pawel Huelle, Picture novels | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Novels with pictures in them?

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

It’s hard to know what to call, well, novels with pictures in them. And yet, the first of these books was, it seems, published in 1892 by the Belgian writer Georges Rodenbach: his Bruges-la-Morte includes 35 pictures, mostly picture postcards … Continue reading →

Posted in Picture novels | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment