Susan Johanknecht

Books On Books Collection – Susan Johanknecht

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Fugal (2025)

A close-up of a musical score with handwritten notes and lines, featuring the title 'fugal' and the name 'Susan Johanknecht' printed on the right.

Fugal (2025)
Susan Johanknecht , Claire Van Vliet, and Andrew Miller-Brown
Vertical double-sided accordion book bound in “Landscape with Cows In It” structure designed by Claire Van Vliet, cover in calendered Barcham Green India Office, interior in handmade Japanese Kozo Natural fixed to Monadnock Dulcet; slipcase of handmade paper. Slipcase: H123 x W248 x D22 mm. Book: H120 x W240 x D18 mm. [6] double-sided panels. Edition of 100, of which this is #8. Acquired from Susan Johanknecht, 26 September 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection

In the hands of multiple readers, this collaboration among Susan Johanknecht’s Gefn Press, Claire Van Vliet’s Janus Press, and Andrew Miller-Brown’s Plowboy Press becomes the “book as performance” and “book as musical score”. Fugal is an artwork that works best with several simultaneous readers/voices/viewers.

A fugue generally has a “subject” (or main theme), an “exposition” in which voices or instruments each play out the subject, then an “episode” (or connecting passages) that builds on the previous material, then further alternating “entries” in which the subject is heard in related keys until a final entry that returns to the opening key. The subject of Fugal is the generative process of vocal changes due to aging. The phrases of the poem have been drawn from an unidentified speech and language textbook.

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Books On Books Collection – Claire Van Vliet (II)

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The Circus of Dr. Lao (1982)

The Circus of Dr. Lao (1982)
Charles G. Finney (text) Claire Van Vliet (design and illustration)
Hardback, cased in cotton cloth over boards, head and tail bands, sewn. H x W mm. 9 1/4 x 12 inches 140 pages. Edition of 2000, of which this is #996. Acquired from BlueMamaBooks, 9 February 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

If you have read Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust (1939) or Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955), Charles Finney’s novella illustrated by Claire Van Vliet will seem only marginally disturbing. If you have seen Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), it will seem more than tame. Somewhere in between is the appropriate trigger warning for The Circus of Dr. Lao (1982).

Finney drops Dr. Lao’s circus of P.T. Barnum-esque carnival sideshows, a bestiary of distorted mythological creatures and exaggerated stereotypes, into the Arizona backwater of Abalone. The denizen of Abalone and their reactions — from gullibility, lubricious fascination, racist hazing, and violence to shrugs and a smug return to unexceptional normality — are the targets of Finney’s fevered satire. Van Vliet mirrors the range with her illustrations printed from original relief etchings and her selection of contrasting Plantin and Victoria display types.

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