From the series entitled “Punctuation Studies“:

Old Man and Sea (2012)

Cover of a book titled 'Old Man and Sea' by Joy Drury Cox, featuring a minimalist design with a gray background and a simple geometric shape.

Old Man and Sea (2012)
Joy Drury Cox
Casebound, cloth over boards, doublures. H206 x W150 mm. 128 pages. Edition of 100. Acquired from Scott Hazard, 18 June 2017.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Open book pages featuring abstract line art related to 'The Old Man and the Sea', with a wooden hand holding the pages.

Open book pages featuring minimalist line illustrations related to 'The Old Man and the Sea,' with a wooden hand positioned on the left page.

The technique of erasure, excision, redaction, extraction, etc., serves the mastery of negative space. It has attracted a large number of book artists intent on altering an extant work of text. Even webpages can be subjected to it, courtesy of “The Deletionist“, a javascript devised by book artists of course. Negative space provides the background to the marks in the foreground. Likewise, the removed text of The Old Man and the Sea is the background to the marks in Old Man and Sea as foreground, as the running head continually reminds us.

By eliminating all of the text in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea except for the periods (full stops) and then connecting them with straight lines, Joy Drury Cox offers a visual reading of Hemingway’s narrative style and pace that would have made Paul Klee smile. More than a line being “a dot that went for a walk”, we have lines taken for a walk between the dots at the end of lines. And presumably OuLiPian Georges Perec would nod along in agreement with Cox’s pan-lipogrammatic approach.

A two-page spread featuring abstract line drawings with sharp angles and dots, accompanied by the title 'The Old Man and the Sea' at the top of each page.

Illustration from 'The Old Man and the Sea' showing two pages with abstract zigzagging lines and dots.

Or, Some of the Whale (2013)

A closed book with a brown cover featuring the title 'OR, SOME OF THE WHALE' and the author's name 'Joy Drury Cox' embossed in gold lettering. The book is tied with a light blue string.

Or, Some of the Whale (2013)
Joy Drury Cox
Softcover sewn booklet. H184 x W136 mm. [36] pages. Edition of 100. Acquired from Southern California Vintage & Collectible Resale, 13 July 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

As long as we know the full title of Herman Melville’s novel — Moby-Dick; or, the Whale — the title on the cover of this entry in Joy Drury Cox’s “Punctuation Studies” (and its size) tells the story plain. Almost all of “Moby-Dick;” is gone, “Or, Some of the Whale” remains. A cover like sail-cloth, pamphlet stitched over 4 chapters of a 135-chapter novel reduced to only the commas in their positions in the original text, all swimming in the blank pages like sperm or breaching from it like microscopic sperm whales.

An open book showing two empty pages with small dots printed on them, featuring the titles 'MOBY-DICK CHAPTER 16' and 'THE SHIP' at the top.

Chapter 16, The Ship, pp. 76-89.

Open pages of a book displaying the titles "Moby-Dick - Chapter 44" and "The Chart" on blank pages with numerous small dots scattered throughout.

Chapter 44, The Chart, pp. 215-20.

An open book displaying the title 'Moby-Dick - Chapter 60' alongside a few scattered dot patterns on blank pages.

Chapter 60, The Line, pp. 303-06.

An open book showing two blank pages with scattered punctuation marks, including the title 'The Hat' on the left page and 'Moby-Dick Chapter 130' on the right page.

Chapter 130, The Hat, pp. 582-86

Cox’s “Punctuation Studies” are examples of inverse ekphrasis, turning a text into visual or conceptual art. Other works in the collection that use the technique of erasure, excision, etc., for that purpose are listed below. That technique is only one means of inverse ekphrasis; examples using other techniques can be found in “Notes on ‘Inverse Ekphrasis’ as a way into book art“.

Penn, Cheryl. 2009. “The Artists Book in General, the Altered Book in Particular“. Paper based on the dissertation The Use of the Artist’s Book as a Versatile Form of Expression in the Work of Selected Artists, With Particular Reference to the Altered Book submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology in Fine Arts, Durban University of Technology (DUT): Durban, 2009. “By violating the ready made book, the artist challenges traditional reading patterns and inherent meaning, being at once destructive and constructive. ” (64)

Books On Books

Curated by Robert Bolick

Joy Drury Cox

Books On Books Collection – Jo Drury Cox

Old Man and Sea (2012)

Or, Some of the Whale (2013)

Further Reading