\u201cI greatly appreciate O\u0100B<\/em>. 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 \u2014 the way elements are put together, grow out of each other, play with each other \u2014 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.\u201d \u2014Norman McLaren<\/p>\n

\u201cThe book of\u00a0O\u0100B is a creation-story, a salvation-story; a new bible; a miniature universe. Like Chaplin\u2019s tramp or my Bip, O\u0100B is Zend\u2019s character\u201d \u2014Marcel Marceau<\/p>\n

\u201cZend is the author of what may well be the best unpublished book in Canada.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 O\u0100B. Zend sees himself as a God and regards O\u0100B as a worshipper. But O\u0100B won\u2019t remain subservient. He rebels against his creator, asserts his independence and creates a third character, Irdu, whom he treats the way Zend treated O\u0100B. The circle of creation and re-creation goes on endlessly. Zend conceived O\u0100B<\/em> in two weeks of feverish creation in the spring of 1970. The excellent literary magazine Exile<\/em> Quarterly<\/em> published a 30-page fragment of the manuscript, which was enough to suggest the book\u2019s quality and make many people \u2014 myself included \u2014 devoted O\u0100B-fans. Zend wants very badly to make O\u0100B<\/em>, when it appears, a stretching of the boundaries of book design. He thinks books like\u00a0O\u0100B<\/em> will be the books of the future.\u201d \u2014Robert Fulford, The Toronto Star <\/em>(August 18, 1973)
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe volumes display an astonishing range of intellectual resources.\u201d \u2014Globe and Mail<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing 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.\u201d \u2014Jorge Luis Borges<\/p>\n

\u201cThe opening issue of Exile Quarterly<\/em> includes, along with more conventional works, an excerpt from an extended visual fiction \u2014 Robert Zend\u2019s\u00a0O\u0100B <\/em>\u2014 of a kind and quality rarely, if ever, seen in U.S. literary quarterlies. I am floored.\u201d \u2014Richard Kostelanetz (April 2, 1973)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

O\u0100B<\/em> is a set of two books, which are one of the most original post-modernist poetic \u201cnovels\u201d in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cRobert Zend has applied with great wit all the gestures of mime, the optical illusions of Escher\u2019s 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<\/em>.\u201d \u2014Barry Callaghan<\/p>\n

\u201cOAB<\/em> 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.\u201d \u2014Northrop Frye<\/p>\n

Concrete Poetry, limited edition; 1983 \u2022 PB 8.5 x 6.5 inches \u2022 9780920428221 (same ISBN for both books, as a set)<\/p>\n

Book One: 98 pages\u00a0 \/\u00a0 Book Two: 236 pages<\/p>\n

Very Rare: only 10 sets available of OAB One + OAB Two (sold together)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6373,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_cat":[313,315,573,586],"product_tag":[226,430,431],"class_list":["post-3171","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","product_cat-poetry","product_cat-visual-books","product_cat-jewish","product_cat-cultural-heritage","product_tag-226","product_tag-canadian-author","product_tag-experimental-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exileeditions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/3171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exileeditions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exileeditions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exileeditions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exileeditions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exileeditions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exileeditions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=3171"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exileeditions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=3171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}