"Les livres imaginaires, comme l'on trouve dans la fameuse collection de M. Byers, sont à la fois bibliophiliques, superchériques, et pataphoriques."
Gigi Duquesne
Director
"Imaginary books, such as one finds in Mr. Byers' famous collection, are at once bibliophilic, deceitful, and beyond metaphorical."
Livres Imaginaires, Reid Byers’ exhibition of Imaginary Books, is a collection of volumes that live only in other books: lost, unwritten, or fictitious books that have no physical existence. Its exhibition at the Fortsas Club has been extended until the end of 2024, when it will move to the Grolier Club in New York. In April of that year, the collection will be exhibited at the Book Club of California in San Francisco.
The difficulties associated with exhibiting a non-existent collection cannot easily be overstated. In addition to the purely ontological considerations involved, the mechanics of presenting to the public a series of objects that cannot possibly be on show present a broad spectrum of curatorial challenges, only some of which have been completely overcome.
There are three kinds of imaginary books. Lost books once really existed but have now disappeared completely. Examples include: Aristotle’s Comedy (the deadly book in The Name of the Rose), Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Won, the sequel to LLL, or Hemingway’s One Must First Endure, his first novel, the manuscript that Hadley left on a train in Paris.
Unwritten Books are books that authors tried unsuccessfully to write: Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, whose writing was interrupted by a “person from Porlock”. Sylvia Plath’s projected Double Exposure, left unfinished at her death, or the abandoned comic novel Scorpion and Felix by the young Karl Marx.
Fictional Books are books that appear only in stories. The Murder of Gonzago is Hamlet’s play-within-a-play. The Diseases of Seamen, its spine resewn in sailcloth in the 1840’s, is Dr. Maturin’s great work in the Jack Aubrey books. Tolkien’s beautiful Yénonótie, bound in mallorn leaf and stamped in mithril, can be found only in the History of Middle Earth, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy can be consulted only in the eponymous novel. Also on display are some large folios: Mr. Pickwick’s first speech to the Pickwick Club, and Panurge’s great work On the Utility of Long Codpieces, with illustrations, several charts, and two codpieces tipped in. There is an edition of the Strand Magazine that includes Dr. Watson’s legendary “The Giant Rat of Sumatra.”
And sealed forever in a Wells Fargo strong box is John Dee’s copy of the Necronomicon (HPL 5), on permanent loan from the library of Miskatonic University.
Mr. Byers, the great-great-grand-nephew of the Comte himself, has determined to go him one better at his own game, for while the Comte collected only books that existed in a single exemplaire, Mr. Byers collects only books that have none whatsoever.
Implicated Institutions:
- Le Club Fortsas – 145 rue la Fayette, Paris 10, 15/3/21-30/12/21
- The Orne Library, Miskatonic University, Arkham MA, 2/1/22-8/20/22
- New Library, Shrewsbury College, Oxford, 9/21/22-1/15/23
- The Library, Pelby College, Cambridge, 2/9/23-6/10/23
- Johnny Chung Library, Plainfield Teachers’ College, NJ, 7/1/23-9/1/24
- The Grolier Club, New York City, 12/5/24-2/20/25
- The Book Club of California, 4/1/25-6/25/25