Tim Youd and the 100 Novels Project

This profile first appeared on the LAIP in 2015. Tim Youd is still performing his 100 Novels project. Learn more at timyoud.com.

Today we present a conversation with Tim Youd, a visual and performance artist who is currently working on a fascinating project to retype 100 novels–obviously a performance piece that is very intriguing to literature lovers! Read on to hear more about the 100 Novels project and Tim’s relationship to libraries in the past and today. ~ Laura

Library as Incubator Project (LAIP): Please introduce yourself to our community–who are you, and what sort of creative work do you do?

Tim Youd (TY): I’m a Los Angeles based visual and performance artist. I am currently engaged in a ten year undertaking to retype 100 novels. I retype each novel on the same make/model typewriter used by the author; and I stage each performance in a location germane to the novel or the writer’s life.

LAIP: What is / has been your relationship to libraries – as a reader, as an artist, as a community member…however you feel like answering the question.

TY: My mom made visiting the library an important and regular part of my and my brother’s childhood. That was a very formative exposure for me.  And it led to my lifelong involvement with books.

Throughout life, and it’s ups and downs, I would say the most constant pleasure and most reliable means of escape has been reading. That my visual art has had to do with text and literature for many years even preceding my 100 Novels project seems like quite a happy inevitability.

LAIP: For your 100 Novels project, you are not only transcribing the words of the novels on the same make/model of typewriter that the author used – you also find locations that approximate the locations where the novels were themselves typed. Have any of them taken you into libraries, and can you tell us about the experience of being and transcribing in those libraries?

TY: I had a very recent experience retyping novels in libraries. Both occurred on my now almost complete retyping tour of England. The first of the four novels I retyped in England was Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim at the library at the University of Leicester. I staged the performance there because Kingsley got the idea for the novel when he went to visit Philip Larkin at the University of Leicesyer, where he (Larkin) was then an assistant librarian. The main character is based on Larkin, and the novel dedicated to him.

After completing that retyping I travelled to Manchester where, at the invitation of the International Anthong Burgess Foundation, I was allowed to retype  Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange at the Manchester Central Library. The Central Library is a spectacular building;  I was allowed to commence the performance in the main reading room – a vast domed room with incredible acoustics. It’s also a silent reading room, and so after the first hour I relocated to the area of the library where most of the foot traffic occurs –  and got to meet a lot of interesting people as a result.

I will also take you back only a few months earlier, to Kansas City, where I retyped Evan Connell’s Mr. Bridge at the Kansas City Central Library, arranged by the Kansas City Art Institute’s ArtSpace gallery. The people at the Kansas City Central Library were very welcoming and supportive. The building itself is quite impressive. It was a former bank, and fits exactly the description of the bank that Mr. Bridge did his business in.

LAIP: How do you decide which novels to transcribe for your 100 Novels project?

TY: The first criteria is that the novel has to have been typed by the author. So that is, generally speaking, the 1900 to 1980 time frame. Of course there are still a few writers working on typewriters, and I hope to include a few more contemporary novels in the project.

The second criteria is that I have to like the novel enough to want to spend the many hours it takes to retype it.  At its heart, this project is about the devotional act of reading. And I think the best readings come on the rereading. So I’ve read everything I retype beforehand, at least once.

Artwork: Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty; 304 pages typed on an Olympia SG-3, Aqua Art Fair, Miami Beach, FL, December 2013

Artwork: Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn, 298 of 332 pages typed on an Underwood Standard, Brooklyn, NY, May 2013

Artwork: Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, 303 pages typed on a Smith Corona Coronamatic 2200, Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Indianapolis, IN, September 2013

LAIP: As an artist, what would your ideal library look or be like? What would it have in it?

TY: Well, clearly libraries need to evolve to stay relevant. I don’t have all the answers, but I will say that the Manchester Central Library was remarkable for its maintenance of the beautiful features of a classic building with the energy of community and technology.

Read more about Tim Youd’s work on his website, timyoud.com

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