Camden's Knife
Page 37
Julia
The Inventory
Abbreviations
M = Missing In Sequence/Unaccounted For/
Never Created/Appears Elsewhere/Reworked
WP = With/Including Pencil
WO = With/Including Object(s)
WM = With/Including Modeling Paste
OTS = Off-The-Shelf Canvas
EXP = Exception to Set Description
Please note that the Artist did not provide any titles for the following works; rather, I elected to speculate what JLD might have named them.
Set One/Black Numbered on Reverse
Works On Canvas, Acrylic and Enamel
Off-The-Shelf/Store Bought Canvases
01. Combat Prototype 36x36 WP, WO
02. Combat Astronomy 36x36 WP, WO
03. If You Knew Uzi 36x48 WO
04. Combat Sex 30x48 WP, WO
05. Chaos #1 20x20
06. Untitled 24x24
07. Untitled 18x36
08. Send Lawyers #1 36x48 WO
09. Combat Law 36x36 WO
10. Combat Commodities 36x48 WO
11. M
12. Hook #1 36x36
13. Is It Combat Art? 36x36 WO
14. Combat TV 18x48 WP, WO
15. Combat Radio 18x48 WP, WO
16. Makeup #1 30x30 WO
17. M
18. M
19. Hook #2 20x30
20. Pandora’s Obsession 18x36
21. #1 18x36 WO
22. Is It? 18x36
23. Obsession #1 30x30 WO
24. Obsession #2 30x30
25. M
26. Control/-30- 18x36
27. M
28. Send Lawyers #2 30x30
29. Reflection 18x48 WO
30. Control #2 18x36 WO
31. M
32. Nemesis 36x36 WO
33. Control #3 20x30
34. Hammer/Sickle 18x36
35. Commodities 28x36
36. Money Changes 36x48
37. Cage #1 24x36 WO
38. Combat Control 18x48 WO
39. Cage #2 30x30 WO
40. Send Lawyers #3 30x30
41. Makeup #2 24x36
42. Chaos #2 20x20
43. Radio 24x24
44. Runaway 30x30
45. Hard/Soft 28x36
46. Fear 18x36
47. Time 24x24
48. Chaos #3 24x36
49. Tough Darts 24x36 WO
50. M
51. Chaos #4 24x36
52. Pandora #1 24x36
53. Numbers 24x36
54. M
55. Sixers/-30- #1 40x40
56. Nightmare #1 36x60
57. Infinity/Numbers 36x60
58. Retribution 48x48
59. Risk 36x60
60. Runaway 24x24
61. Death 24x24
62. Changes 24x24
63. Hair 40x40
64. #2 40x40
65. Revenge 30x30
66. Untitled 30x30
67. 24x36
68. Pandora #2 24x36
69. Flag 24x36
70. Sixers/-30- #2 40x40
71. M
72. Annonces Classees 30x30 WO, WM
73. Untitled Pyramid 30x30 WM
74. Mirage Pyramid 40x40 WM
75. Control Pyramid 40x40 WM
76. M
77. Letter S 24x24
78. Letter Z 24x24
79. Letter K #1 24x24
80. Numeral 26 24x24
81. Alphabet 24x24
82. Letter K #2 24x24
83. Numerals 99 24x24
Set Two/Red Numbered on Reverse
Works On Canvas, Acrylic and Enamel
(Incidental Use of Pencil on Many)
Hand Constructed Canvases
Exceptions (EXP) as Noted
099. Jasper/Don’t 68x90 WM
100. Dazzle Me 56x72
101. Black Box 30x40
102. Jasper/Giant 68x80 WO
103. Jasper/Win A Prize 56x72
104. Q&A/So Many Men 68x80
105. Jackson/Drunk 30x68
106. Jackson/Nursery 56x72
107. Jackson/Lucifer 56x72
108. In The Air Tonight 60x80
109. Ouija 30x40 WO
110. Trinity 30x40 WO
111. 6 Commonalities 36x48
112. Chisel 36x48 EXP OTS
113. Study for #105 EXP
114. Study for #106 EXP
115. Study for #107 EXP
116. Misfire 27x27 9 mounted
Polaroid photographs EXP
117-124. See Set Three, infra
125-126. See #131, infra EXP
127. Jackson/Tree 30x80
128. Stencil Madness #1 36x48 WO
129. TB&GITB 68x90
130. Zuni vs Popular 36x48
131. The Serpent 46x64 note: it appears #s 125 and 126 (acrylic on wood 12x36) were intended to be companions to #131, forming a triptych
132. Red Scare 46x64
133. Jackson/Split Second 56x72
134. Susanna & The Pharaoh 56x72 WM
135. Stencil Madness #2, 68x90
Set Three/ The Keyholes
Acrylic, Enamel and Pencil on Deck-
Stained Wood Constructions with Brass
Hooks and Silver or Zinc Plated Hotel Keys
117. Blow 12x24
118. Nerd 12x24
119. Pearls 12x24
120. Heart 12x24
121. Whore 18x36
122. Tramp 18x36
123. Stud 18x36
124. Slut 18x36
(WARNING: Please use care in handling any of The Keyholes. The screw points of the brass hooks protruding through the backs of each work are hard to see and are unforgiving, as discovered with a five-stitches-visit to the ER by Kari earlier in the week).
Set Four (A)/Numbered on Reverse
Observations and Board Game Designs
Pencil, Enamel, Marker and Ink
All examples on Paper, all 22x30
All signed Lionne-Demilunes
All stamped with Artist’s chop
Observations
72. Mugger
73. IRA
74. Elvis
75. Russian
76. Gold/Hoffs
77. Black Holes
78. Answering Machine
79. Astigmatism
80. Notre Dame
81. Diagonal
82. Maria
83. S&P 500
84. All The Hits
85. Humid Saturday
86. Hell
87. Progress
88. Apes
89. Hole
90. Send
91. Rubber Dress
92. Pyramid (Coins) #1
92(a). Pyramid (Coins) #2
93. Cat Assassins
Board Games
94. Best Seller
95. MSDS
96. Two’s Company, Three’s A Crowd
97. Presumed Innocent
98. Honey, Do You Want Me To Tie You
Up Before We Go Out Tonight?
99. Honey, Will You Wear Your Black
Garter Belt Tonight?
100. Standoff! Logo
101. Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
102. Down The Dark Ladder
103. Pyramid (Johns) EXP
104. Death
105. Enough Is Enough
106. A Loaf Of Bread, A Bottle Of
Wine, And A 66S
107. Dumb Investment
108. Wrap It Up (incomplete)
109. Get Away
110. I Don’t Want That Prick Coming
Over Here For Dinner Tonight
111. Lawnopoly
112. Law School Fantasy Camp
113. Pick A Fetish—Any Fetish
113. Screen Writer
114. Springsteen Video Quiz
115. Big Shot Pop Star
116. Big Shot Movie Star
117. Countdown To Love
118. Really?
> 119. Academmys ER
120. The Park
121. The Dream
122. Blinded By The Light
123. Streets Of Fire
124. The Trip
125. The Other Trip
(I’ve misplaced the final page of this list which contains the titles of an additional number of games and will add them in the next draft).
Set Four (B)/Unnumbered
The Repeaters - Enamel and Ink
plus The 2 Grids—Pencil, Marker and Ink
All examples on Paper, all 22x30
All signed Lionne-Demilunes
All stamped with Artist’s chop
a. Combat Art
b. Hard/Soft
c. Money Changes Everything
d. My Own Hook
e. Birth Life Death
f. Pandora’s Obsession
g. Send Lawyers
h. Sex Control
i. Infinity Numbers
j. Infinity Logic
k. TV Revenge Woman
l. Illinois #1
m. Illinois #2
n. JLD
o. Jasper/Own Hook
Set Five/The Fuhs
Numbered on Reverse
Biographies of Imagined People
Pencil, Marker and Ink
All examples on Paper, all 14x17
All signed Lionne-Demilunes
All stamped with Artist’s chop
111. Coincidence
112. Mister Ears
113. Turk
114. Teri Tracer
115. Robert Sanderson
116. Michael Marsh
117. Cindy Sharp
118. Merlin
119. Dreamer
120. Roddy the Rodman
121. Kookie
122. Evil Patricia
123. Magic Man
124. Sweet Susie
125. DJL
126. Vibrations
127. Laura Freckles
128. Masterwork
Set Six/Larger Studies and
Observations
Numbered on Reverse
Pencil, Marker and Ink
All examples on Paper, all 10x14
All signed Lionne-Demilunes
All stamped with Artist’s chop
37 Examples
Set Seven/Smaller Studies and
Observations
Numbered on Reverse
Pencil, Marker and Ink
All examples on Paper, all 8.5x10.25
All signed Lionne-Demilunes
All stamped with Artist’s chop
143 Examples
Set Eight/Smallest Studies and
Observations
Numbered on Reverse
Pencil, Marker and Ink
All examples on Paper, all 5.25x7.75
All signed Lionne-Demilunes
All stamped with Artist’s chop
106 Examples
Set Nine/The Shrouds
Unnumbered
Acrylic, Enamel, Marker and Ink
All examples on 6x9 foot Canvas
Drop Cloths
All signed Lionne-Demilunes
All stamped with Artist’s chop
5 Examples, believed to have been used in
the execution of the 5 Jacksons, supra
Set Ten/Miscellaneous
Various Materials and Objects
including etched stencils, tape,
Artist’s paint brushes, stirring
sticks, gloves, paint cans, paint
tubes, utensils, yardsticks, pencils,
receipts, notes, coins, shell casings, unetched stencil letters and other items
In excess of 200 Objects (estimate) not counting over 600 anchoring coins.
Set Eleven/The Missing Fifteen
Based on a Surfaces Inventory list kept by the Artist, it can be stated with certainty that an additional fifteen canvases are missing from the collection, no doubt additional works by JLD as this table tracks perfectly the quantities of various sizes of the canvases known to exist (e.g., there are ten which are listed as 30x30, and precisely that amount of finished works have been documented). With an extrapolation based on list-to-works, it appears these undocumented creations include:
Seven hand-constructed canvases measuring:
2 @ 68x90
4 @ 27x72
1 @ 30x96
Also unaccounted for are eight elaborate constructions for which JLD paid a substantial sum to a local craftswoman to fabricate. Custom made to his specifications including polished pinewood backing frames, substantial bracing and expensive primed canvas, they measure:
2 @ 30x40x3
3 @ 36x48x3
2 @ 46x64x3
1 @ 30x68x3
AUTHOR’S NOTES
There are three other sets of fingerprints all over this book besides mine.
The first belongs to Lori Perkins who in the autumn of 1986, as a rookie literary agent at Barbara Lowenstein Associates picked from the slush pile a query package submitted by a first time author regarding a near-future book titled Sapien II. Based on the treatment and first three chapters, she requested the entire manuscript and after completing it, liked the undertaking enough to retain a reader for a second opinion. Based on his and her own thoughts, she requested a number of changes for a rewrite which the novice novelist promptly accomplished, including a new title—Sixers.
On 31 July 1987, I accepted Lori’s offer of representation.
Following perhaps 20 rejections—most of them of the Close but no Cigar variety—she phoned me the afternoon of 04 March 1988 and said: “John? This is Lori Perkins. We’ve got an offer. You’re going to be published. Congratulations. Here’s the deal.”
My elation quickly turned to dread as she outlined her strategy, which included doubling the advance and our retention of all rights beyond print and even as to those rights, a much more generous cut of any foreign royalties. A few days later she called to say her counter-offer had been rejected but that my potential suitor was still mulling it over. A week later, the publishing contract arrived with all of the alterations Lori had negotiated.
Lynx Books, a division of Lynx Communications, Inc., had been launched 18 months earlier by a pair of publishing veterans backed by a huge chunk of venture capital money. They’d started off by picking up the reprint rights on over 200 previously published paperbacks and an assortment of other properties, and were now positioned to trot out their inaugural hardcover line, five books by new writers. Sixers, in March of 1989, was scheduled as the third released.
I was maintaining a hectic schedule on the road with my attorney pursuits but always found time to visit bookstores in the various cities my work took me to, but Sixers was nowhere to be found. Inquiring about this state of affairs, I was told there was a distribution problem so not to worry. Which I didn’t, because back in February Lynx had arranged for a catered book signing event to be held 15 April 1989, Kroch’s & Brentano’s at Water Tower Place in my sweet home Chicago. It was one of the best evenings of my life—Lori and my editor Judy Stern having flown in from NYC for the festivities—marred only by a snippet of a conversation between Judy and a K&B honcho I overheard during a brief break.”Things are pretty bad?” he’d asked.”We’re not sure,” she’d replied. I never got the full story, though apparently Lynx’s distributor was holding all of the company’s receivables when it went into Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which in turn led to Lynx going belly-up overnight.
Sixers made it as high as #4 on the Chicago Tribune’s Hardcover Best Seller List, did very well (I recently learned) in its Japanese translation, was reviewed as “(a) well-wrought first novel…engaging and fun to read” by Publisher’s Weekly, deemed “Terrific” by one of America’s most elegant novelists, Scott Turow, and was subsequently optioned for 20th Century Fox by the late film producer Laura Ziskin (of Pretty Woman and As Good As It Gets fame). But the brief party was over as there were only a small number of copies in circulation and no publishing house to produce additional volume
s.
I completed a pair of other manuscripts (one a sequel to Sixers) which never found a home. Lori told me that was probably due to the rapid contraction within the industry to a narrow focus on blockbusters, the massive shift in readership to non-fiction works and my minimal track record. Fair enough, although I guessed maybe the two works simply weren’t good enough to make the cut. So I moved on to other pursuits, creative and otherwise.
When I received an email from her in February of 2013 informing me she was now (along with running the L. Perkins Agency and juggling another half dozen balls of various sizes and colors) the head of Riverdale Avenue Books—who in that capacity wanted to chat about a project—I phoned her immediately. After a moment of awkwardness (we hadn’t spoken in years) we segued into the easy-going chat of two old friends and partners as if we’d last conversed a few weeks earlier. She asked if I’d be interested in reworking Sixers because it’d always been one of her favorites, had never gotten the chance it deserved, would still be timely with some updating and made for a good fit in the burgeoning worlds of electronic publishing and social media. Though near future pop culture novels weren’t the lead genre at RAB, she’d find it a place on the list. I replied I’d be willing to tweak it enough to make it current.
Sorry. Wrong number.
For starters, she wanted me to undertake a complete line edit; a survey extending from broad concepts down to the smallest details. Concurrently, she’d require replacing anachronistic references with more recognizable substitutes, adding more meat to the bones of tangents previously glossed over and eliminating some admittedly idiosyncratic fluff the novel contained. But above all, she wanted to see “The Universe.”
Not the one seen through a telescope; the universe I’d create that had a past, a present and more importantly a future.”What’s going to happen with the big board game tournament? How did the Combat Art painter end up? Are there some new seeds to plant for future reference? Does the Pope book (the other manuscript she’d read) fit in anywhere? Looking three or four books down the line, do we need some foreshadowing? Remind me—did you get rid of the dragon?”
Sixers didn’t exist in an electronic format, so I found a company that converted a sacrificed copy of the hardcover into an .rtf file. So far, so good. It was now mid-March and I’d jotted pages of notes so was ready to have at it. Prologue, 18 Chapters, Epilogue, 310 pages. I figured two four hour days per chapter, six days a week would be more than enough time to complete the exercise so marked May 5th as my target. Though I hadn’t read the entire book in ages, I figured I knew it well enough that the rewrite would be a snap. A page and a half into the Prologue, I leaned away from the monitor, folded my arms, then reached for my calendar and superimposed a large red X over the blue words THE END in the Cinco de Mayo square.