From Aaron Krach’s series, The Author of This Book Committed Suicide are two new editions now available through Field Projects!  In his work for Field Projects Show #6, Krach created an installation of books checked out from the New York Public Library by authors who had committed suicide.  

‘’We know the famous authors who committed suicide…Woolf, Hemingway, Plath. But more than 300 other writers who took their own life. Is being a writer dangerous? Is there a link between creativity and despair?  Last summer I spent one week in the New York Public Library making The Author of This Book Committed Suicide (NYPL). At home I stamped each title page with this information—then I stacked the books from largest to smallest. They leaned against the wall like a tired gravestone. Before returning them, I scanned each stamped page to make this book, a collection organized in the same order as the stack. The book is now the sculpture, flattened but still holding all the necessary information.

For the prints I picked the only book I could get from David Foster Wallace. His books are never available at the library. Hemmingway? Whatever I wanted. But DFW? No way. Maybe if Wallace knew how popular he…we will never know.  In contrast to DFW’s brainy popularity, I fell in love with the design of Reinaldo Arenas “Farewell To The Sea.” The author only became famous in the US after Julian Schnabel’s movie “Before Night Falls.” But he deserves more. His writing is clean, humane, and romantic. His title could work for the entire project. Farewell, I hear these authors saying. But it’s not true because as long as their work is with us…so are they.’’                                                                                                         -Aaron Krach, 2012

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