VOLLMANN, William T. The Happy Girls.

[New York, NY]: CoTangent Press, 1990. First edition. Elephant folio. A sumptuous and magnificent artist’s book, entirely handmade and unique in execution, based on a story from Vollmann’s Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs. Housed in a custom box constructed of birchwood and mirror-glass by James M. Lombino, measuring approximately 26 by 20 inches and secured with a magnetic clasp. The reader is admitted to the narrative through a deliberately staged ritual of access appropriate to the book’s subject: a buzzer must be rung to gain entry, and the straps of a brassiere fastened to the box must be unhooked before the reader may proceed — a device by which the reader’s own physical act of undressing becomes the threshold into the world of prostitution the book depicts. A peephole slides open on tracks, activating the buzzer along with a red lamp that illuminates a photograph of a Thai prostitute’s face. Lifting the door reveals the complete image beneath — an 8-by-10-inch frontal nude, her body marked with self-inflicted razor scars — which serves as the book’s front cover. A second window, inset into the box’s back panel, exposes a corresponding portion of the back cover: a rear view of the same woman, her tattoo reading “Hurt in Love.” Both cover photographs are window-matted. The interior of the box is lined in colorful fabric wallpaper. The text is hand-press-printed by Vollmann on triple-ply acid-free rag stock, each leaf a different color, with hand-set type and illustrations throughout. Every page is illustrated and hand-colored by Vollmann himself in transparent watercolors, rendering each copy individually distinctive. The volume further includes three 16-by-20-inch photographs of Thai prostitutes, bound in alongside the text; these, like the two 8-by-10-inch cover photographs, were taken and printed by Ken Miller and signed by him. Twelve pages in total, including the photographic plates; hand-guarded and sewn. The bleak, stark black-and-white photography of the prostitutes stands in deliberate contrast to the ornate, jewel-toned colour of the book’s construction and entrance, the reader moving from a lush and seductive threshold into an unflinching confrontation with the starkness of its subject. The elaborate physical apparatus is thus inseparable from the reading experience: The Happy Girls is not simply a book to be read, but an object through which the reader must physically enter the narrative. A very good copy, the buzzer and bulb will require some attention. Published in an edition of just 13 copies of which this is copy two.