A new project I’m working on entitled PLASTIC MILLENNIUM is in many respects built upon older projects; however, PM has turned into something much more complex than a compilation. What I thought would take me a few weeks or months to put together has mushroomed into something much bigger, with a considerable amount of new material added.
Part of the project is visual. I have mixed feelings about including visual material in text; my experience is that editors are rarely impressed, and, in some cases, subtly against this sort of combination of media. Text-people tend to be text-only … I suppose that may be a reflection of the state of siege a lot of people in literary publishing feel they are under, and I suppose too that it is a reflection of a deep-seated assumption that image-and-text work tends to not be careful enough — not belletristic enough — in its employment of the latter.
I realize there are many exceptions to this rule. Experimental work in particular often merges image and text. Nevertheless, as a rule of thumb I still think it holds true that the tendency in literary circles is to view text-only novels as pristine forms of literary creation. As a result, I have two versions of this manuscript: one with drawings, one without.
[to be continued]
