A Humument
by Tom Phillips
Thames and Hudson
(app for iPad)
Tom Phillips' A Humument is one of the great oddities of literary and indeed artistic history. It is also, quite simply, a great book. On November 5, 1966, the artist selected, at random, W.H. Mallock's verbose 1892 novel, A Human Document. Inspired by William Burroughs, Phillips set about the text, painting the pages and highlighting Mallock's text to form weird and wonderful new combinations. He has been updating and refining his method ever since. He has marked his 75th birthday with a new edition (the fifth) for printed book and iPad alike. There are strange and lyrical lines: 'beautiful/last/random fragments of poetry/finding syllables,/the waters fall/the waves fall/musical/ pencil murmuring'. The background is six squares painted a beatific light blue. While the iPad app loses the tangibility of the physical book, the images are bright and glorious. There is an interactive 'Oracle' function which randomises the order. Selecting two pages at a time, it transforms A Humument into something like the I Ching. Eccentric, funny and oddly moving, A Humument is a masterpiece.
Extras: the Oracle randomiser, 39 newly created pages unavailable elsewhere.