Book Review

Gretchen E. Henderson's Galerie De Difformité is unlike any other book you are liable to find yourself reading this fall. If you were to throw the book into the air so that it came down face open downward and began reading, you would be starting exactly where the author would want you to be. At one point in the book the text reads,

Gretchen Henderson writes a-novel-that-deforms-a-novel about her fictional relative Gloria Heys and Gloria's fictional Galerie in which Beatrice is reincarnated as a fallen… angel. Bea (a.k.a. Gloria a.k.a. Gretchen – at least a fictional version of Gretchen) reimagines her story from shards of a perceived paradise. Writing straight with crooked lines, she tries to deform "deformity."

Got that? If so, forget it because this paragraph just deformed the paragraph that preceded it. Diving into the labyrinth at random is the only way to discover the structure of the labryinth itself, but in doing so, you continually change it. Fortunately, all is not lost. At the bottom of almost any page you were to find the book open to, you would see a list of options as to where you might want to go next.

For example, the bottom of page 48 reads:

To continue reading Gretchen's letters to Gloria, turn to page 69.

    To try on a second skin, visit page 57.

          If you don't know where you are, turn to page 6 or 185.

               For more options, see next page.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, recall those "choose your own adventure" book that you read as a child. Of course, in Galerie De Difformité, this technique is much more than a clever gimmick. By pursuing these various choices, certain patterns do seem to emerge that give shape to the book. (Note: probably the least successful strategy is to start at page one and insist on trying to read straight through.)

Of the patterns that emerge, three seem to predominate. The first is a series of epistles from Gretchen to Gloria in which the presumed author recounts how she came into possession of the galerie de difformite, events in her life that lead her to try to complete Gloria's project, and her attempts to develop a plan on just how she will proceed.

A second pattern running through the book is a series of "Exhibits," ostensibly belonging to Gloria's original gallery. These are labeled alphabetically "Exhibit A" through "Exhibit Z." They read like prose poems. For instance, "Exhibit C" begins: "Color is a chronicle of chemistry, fueled by desire." For "Exhibit M": "It's a matter of digging up a body. Digging up and into: a body, of myths, any legend…" Of course, in keeping with the spirit of the non-linear structure, these pieces do not follow in alphabetic sequence. For those who cannot free themselves from the compulsion to work through the "Exhibits" alphabetically, the author providesa key in the form of a rhymed acrostic tucked away in the text. That is one way that a reader might approach the book.

By keeping "Exhibits" unnamed (A-Z), they hopefully rouse curiosity about the curated collection and, secondarily, become exhibits with political implications (allied with "exhibits" in a legal trial).

One thing that seems to be on trial are constructions of (dis)ability and (in)accessibility: how these notions operate on bodies, even on the body of this book, in different environments.At one point,in a section entitled "How to Make This Book More (In)Accessible," readers are invited to transcribe ortranslate the text through assistive technologies,like speech-recognition software, sign language, Braille output, audio description, and related approaches. Through the Galerie De Difformité's playful process, our strategies for reading and writing both books and bodies are called into question and broadened.

A third major pattern or thread in the book is that of deformity or deforming. Throughout the book are scattered a number of pages with the word "deformity" in the title, such as "Deformity as Definition," "Deformity as Character" or "Deformity as Natural" There is even an examination in the book part of which asks the reader to create their own "Deformity as _______ page. The locus of this part of the book, however, is "The Destruction" room where directions are given to the reader for deforming the book. Deforming can involve any number of activities including cutting, adding to, reshaping, using as wall paper, making paper dolls from, or painting over any of the exhibits or, for that matter, any page in the text.

An interesting aspect of Galerie De Difformité is that it enlists the help of subscribers to carry the project beyond the bounds of the pages of the book. In "the Undertaker's" words:

I'm enlisting the help of "Subscribers". ~ a very minimal commitment, which need only happen this one time, more if you like. To participate download a copy of an "Exhibit" from the project's website http://difformite.wordpress.com/ to deform however you like. One you have materially deformed your "Exhibit," please email me a representation (e.g., a digital image) to post on the site with your permission.

Indeed if a reader goes to the !HOME page of the Galerie De Difformité website they will find examples of each of the exhibits that the subscribers have deformed. Early submissions helped to illustrate the book, and the online gallery and other offshoots will continue to grow as the project expands (or better said: deforms).

Henderson also stretches the bounds of the book in another way. All of the exhibits, and many other pages too, contain Quick Response codes. Better known as QR codes, these are square-like barcodes that can be scanned with an iPhone or Android that allows you to automatically enter that exhibit in the web site gallery. This breaking down of the conventional barriers between two traditionally discrete media is just one more way that the gallery deforms preconceived ideas.

Any way one looks at it, Galerie De Difformité is a prodigious undertaking. There is little wonder why the book form (now published by &NOW Books) garnered Henderson the 2010 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer's Residency Prize. The amount of research, the creativity and the sheer variety within the book. It takes the metaphor of the novel as a "baggy monster" to a whole new level. It even gives Henderson the opportunity to show her skills as a poet, as she does in the opening lines of "The Beekeeper's Apprentice:"

When she first appeared
she was whitewashed,
bandaged gauze

haze of clouds
collapsing
knit with frenzy

of bees. She was
buzzing. Limbs locked
in light-wire, quiver

ing, I watched
thick with trembling.

The emerging field of disability literature is not only about recording personal experiences of disability through memoir and poetry or even countering negative or paternalistic images of disability that have persisted in literature since the beginning of written language, it is also about using language and perceptions culled from the disability experience to create new forms. In that regard, Gretchen E. Henderson's Galerie De Difformité makes a real contribution. It provides a seedbed for new ideas of how disability might be thought about and the forms that it might take. Beyond any appeal to the post-modern sensibility, Galerie De Difformité is sheer fun and, addictive, at that. Whatever it is that drove you as a child to want to keep returning to those "create your own adventure stories" is going to grab you here as well, but on a deeper and much more multi-layered level. Go ahead and click on the website link above. Then go out and invest in the book.