OĀB: One + Two (Set of 2)
$375.00
OĀB is a set of two books, which are one of the most original post-modernist poetic “novels” in the world.
“Robert Zend has applied with great wit all the gestures of mime, the optical illusions of Escher’s logic, the play of concrete poetry, the psychology of paranoia and split personalities, and the closed literary circles of Borges to the creation of his extraordinary chronicle of a life collapsing into fullness, OAB.” —Barry Callaghan
“OAB is a piece of experimental writing to which I know nothing comparable in Canada. It looks at first glance like merely a game played with letters, and of course it does have that aspect. But it goes on to dramatize for the reader the whole process of verbal creation, in which any kind of relationship among letters may be important and significant. As more characters are begotten of the story, we get into deeper problems about the relation of the creative to the actual personality. The book should have a considerable impact.” —Northrop Frye
Concrete Poetry, limited edition; 1983 • PB 8.5 x 6.5 inches • 9780920428221 (same ISBN for both books, as a set)
Book One: 98 pages / Book Two: 236 pages
Very Rare: only 10 sets available of OAB One + OAB Two (sold together)
“I greatly appreciate OĀB. It is so fantastically and brilliantly inventive, really most exciting. Aspects of it do have an affinity to some of the things I have done in film — the way elements are put together, grow out of each other, play with each other — the general spirit in which the matter is attacked: only Zend has carried this very much further than anything I attempted. He is a sorcerer, par excellence.” —Norman McLaren
“The book of OĀB is a creation-story, a salvation-story; a new bible; a miniature universe. Like Chaplin’s tramp or my Bip, OĀB is Zend’s character” —Marcel Marceau
“Zend is the author of what may well be the best unpublished book in Canada. It is the story of a poet called Zend who creates, on paper, an imaginary character called OĀB. Zend sees himself as a God and regards OĀB as a worshipper. But OĀB won’t remain subservient. He rebels against his creator, asserts his independence and creates a third character, Irdu, whom he treats the way Zend treated OĀB. The circle of creation and re-creation goes on endlessly. Zend conceived OĀB in two weeks of feverish creation in the spring of 1970. The excellent literary magazine Exile Quarterly published a 30-page fragment of the manuscript, which was enough to suggest the book’s quality and make many people — myself included — devoted OĀB-fans. Zend wants very badly to make OĀB, when it appears, a stretching of the boundaries of book design. He thinks books like OĀB will be the books of the future.” —Robert Fulford, The Toronto Star (August 18, 1973)
“The volumes display an astonishing range of intellectual resources.” —Globe and Mail
“Knowing your poem, I understand why you like mine. You created your dream-son the way my magician in Circular Ruins created his dream-son. You consider me one of your masters, yet you were my pupil even before reading my work.” —Jorge Luis Borges
“The opening issue of Exile Quarterly includes, along with more conventional works, an excerpt from an extended visual fiction — Robert Zend’s OĀB — of a kind and quality rarely, if ever, seen in U.S. literary quarterlies. I am floored.” —Richard Kostelanetz (April 2, 1973)
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