letters and images

Letters are images, too. I’m not a drawer, but I do like to draw letters on the board:

Every page of Marshall’s story displays this incredible nuance of play between what is read and seen, in whatever order. The art and the writing are nuanced and complex on their own, but they are companions; they could be taken on their own, but without the image, the writing is incomplete, and vice versa. Later, on the final page, at 10:40, George can be seen seated at a chair, reading a book. He has a contended, oddly unknowing look on his face, the neck of the cuckoo clock fully extended behind him.

“Read and seen.” This isn’t such a great way of putting the issue. Words and image. Writing and watercolors. In any case, what do writers see when they work in a word processor in terms of the construction of an image? In other words, does double spacing matter to:

The dog ran
stopped, ducked
a red ball plaps the capstone.

But then, in the environment, what does matter: a column, a square border, or just the arrangement itself? How does the tool influence the image?

1 thought on “letters and images

  1. gibb

    I see words as visual symbols, and even in typing them, you watch as they appear, you can play with color and font, you can make them bold or big or anything you want. Your fingers–just like holding a brush–create them (don’t forget, much visual art is created the same way these days). Letters started out life as pictures. Now they merely work harder to create the image in the reader’s mind.

Comments are closed.