88, [8] pp. Engraved illustrations throughout. A collection of absurd and bizarre images paired with an assortment of stories, satirical self-help tips, etc., by the visual artist, photographer, writer and satirist who also published under the pseuodnyms Norman Conquest and Doktor Bey. He was also editor in chief of Zoom Street Magazine and DingBat Magazine. Derek Pell explores literary modernism/postmodernism themes and styles in his craft. Using a remarkable range of formal discourses and methods, Pell's work often employs elements of intertextuality, metafiction and reflexivity, decenterization, pastiche, appropriation, found materials, and sampling. Through various mediums such as mail art, text-and-collage, gallery exhibits, and book object (Artist's book), his style uses satire, sarcasm, wit, and humor (wordplay, dark humor, absurdist humor, shock humor, visual and textual puns) to comment, criticize, and occasionally openly mock America's traditional cultural attitudes and values though work that is as much conceptual and performance art as it is fiction.
