Notes to ‘The Book of Supplemental Diagrams’ for Marco Knauff’s Universe
by Norman Lock

Description

Two copies left (one an unnumbered file copy.)

“In truth, alack, I, Gordon, am positively nuts for Knauff and nuts for Lock, in whatever guise the waggish Lock (not to mention, Knauff) decides to produce himself. In truth? In truth, Lock writes it, Lish reads it!—which is a damn sight more than Lish will say for Proust.” (Gordon Lish)

This is Ravenna’s first book.  And it is all made up–the Notes, The Book of Supplemental Diagrams, Marco Knauff’s Universe (though there is an actual Marco Knauff.)  A wonderful text in a pamphlet designed in the spirit of Gertrude Stein’s A Book Concluding With As A Wife Has a Cow (A Love Story) a 1973 copy of which our editor keeps behind an ink drawing by Jay Steensma.

A limited edition, twenty-five of which are hand numbered.

Comments:

“After so many years of hearing about the great Machinery of Marco Knauff (and having long since come to suspect one labored within it), it is a great satisfaction to read Knauff’s own writings at last. One can only stand in awed astonishment that these Notes, which in truth cannot be said to exist at all, are there in one’s left hand.” (R. M. Berry, author of Leonardo’s Horse and publisher, Fiction Collective Two)

“Using the epistomology of Norman Lock’s Marco Knauff’s Universe, the text is the first or second child, meaning, perfect. Once again, Mr. Lock presents the impossible in a way that makes splendor common. We are thankful for him and his efforts!” (Deron Bauman, editor of elimae and author of Mockingbird)

Excerpt:

18.

Space—that is, the Universe—is, in its entirety, taken up or occupied by the Machinery and its precincts (the Lawn, the Forest, the Sea, the Rest House, the Hall of Machines & Science, etc.). There is nothing to hand, or that can be brought to hand, that is not in the Universe.