The Author of The Children on Art Within Text
Years ago I worked as an editor at an art museum, where part of the job was proofreading stacks of gallery labels, divorced from the art they were describing. I developed an odd appetite for these texts: one person’s translation of the instantaneous experience of seeing; tangible objects vivisected and ordered into words. It almost felt like a personality test. The actual art never came close to what I saw in my head.
I think it’s this appetite that draws me to books centered around invented pop culture. Short of actually producing the art within the text (see: Pale Fire, Death of the Author), a writer can only exert so much control over what their readers imagine. At some point these imaginary works pass into the realm of co-creation.
The Children centers around the writing and fandom of the Ninth City, a Narnia-esque children’s series set in a predatory magical land: a place literally built on the stolen dreams of the children who visit it. The author could herself be considered predatorial, having written her own children in as the books’ protagonists, saddling them with a strange kind of fame. The book explores fandom’s strange double edge, and the idea of books as a treasure box, where you tuck a piece of the person you were when you first read them. It’s built also on my fascination with that symbiotic bond between creator and consumer, a bond that feels doubled when it comes to art about art. Here are six books I’ve loved that have made-up art inside them.
