fb pixcode

PUBLISHER
Siglio

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 6 x 8.5 in. / 176 pgs / 145 duotone.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2015 p. 69   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781938221101 TRADE
List Price: $32.00 CDN $42.50 GBP £28.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

TERRITORY
WORLD

THE SPRING 2024 ARTBOOK | D.A.P. CATALOG

Artbook | D.A.P. Catalog Cover Link
Preview our Spring 2024 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
  

SIGLIO

John Cage: Diary

How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)

Edited by Richard Kraft, Joe Biel.

John Cage: DiaryComposed over the course of 16 years, John Cage's Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) is one of his most prescient and personal works. A repository of observations, anecdotes, obsessions, jokes and koan like stories, the diary registers Cage's assessment of the times in which he lived as well as his often uncanny predictions about the world we live in now. With a great sense of play as well as purpose, Cage traverses vast territory, from postwar music to Watergate, from domestic minutiae to ideas on how to feed the world.
Typing on an IBM Selectric, Cage used chance operations to determine not only the word count and the application of various typefaces but also the number of letters per line, the patterns of indentation and--in the case of Part Three (published as a Great Bear pamphlet by Something Else Press)--color. The beautiful and unusual visual variances become almost musical as the physicality of the language on the page suggests the sonic. This first complete hardcover edition collects all eight parts Cage originally published in A Year from Monday, M and X. Coeditors Kraft and Biel have consulted these publications along with Cage's original manuscripts, and--with the Great Bear pamphlet as a guide--they have used chance operations to render the entire text in various combinations of red and blue as well as apply a set of 18 typefaces to the entire work.
Composer, philosopher, writer and artist, John Cage (1912-92) is one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. A pioneer in extending the boundaries of music, often composing works through chance operations, Cage also had an extraordinary impact on dance, poetry, performance and visual art.

Featured image is a spread reproduced from John Cage: Diary.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Hyperallergic

Gilbert Alan

A work in which the visual dimension has become as multifaceted as the textual one, making Cage the posthumous collaborator on an artist' book

The New York Times

Holland Cotter

The Siglio edition preserves [Cage's] graphic effects, but more importantly it gives a sense of the company he kept... and of his passionate feelings about a world locked in a state of perpetual warfare... Cage has a reputation for being a Zen-inspired wit. He was also much more, an intensely engaged moral thinker.

The Paris Review Daily

Nicole Rudick

These fragments of opinions and problems, worries and joys are meant to be meditative, and working through them recalibrates the reader’s perspective.

John Cage: Diary

STATUS: Out of print | 00/00/00

For assistance locating a copy, please see our list of recommended out of print specialists

JOHN CAGE MONOGRAPHS + ARTIST'S BOOKS

John Cage: A Mycological Foray

JOHN CAGE: A MYCOLOGICAL FORAY

Atelier Éditions

ISBN: 9781733622004
USD $60.00
| CAN $75 UK £ 47

Pub Date: 7/21/2020
Active | In stock


Love, Icebox

LOVE, ICEBOX

The John Cage Trust

ISBN: 9781942884385
USD $24.95
| CAN $34.95 UK £ 22

Pub Date: 8/20/2019
Active | In stock


John Cage: Diary

JOHN CAGE: DIARY

Siglio

ISBN: 9781938221217
USD $24.00
| CAN $31 UK £ 21

Pub Date: 10/21/2019
Active | In stock


John Cage: 4'33''– Sounds Like Silence

JOHN CAGE: 4'33''– SOUNDS LIKE SILENCE

Spector Books

ISBN: 9783940064417
USD $40.00
| CAN $54

Pub Date: 6/26/2018
Active | In stock


John Cage / Milan Grygar: Chance Operations & Intention

JOHN CAGE / MILAN GRYGAR: CHANCE OPERATIONS & INTENTION

Kerber

ISBN: 9783735601551
USD $47.50
| CAN $65

Pub Date: 3/22/2016
Active | Out of stock


Composition in Retrospect

COMPOSITION IN RETROSPECT

Exact Change

ISBN: 9781878972118
USD $15.95
| CAN $22.5 UK £ 13.99

Pub Date: 10/1/2008
Active | Out of stock