Intentions
I have felt a strong connection with Paul Bowles’ short story A Distant Episode since I first read it a decade or so ago. It’s quite dark and there’s a strong clowning element, a humiliation that feels earned by our protagonist, though it’s one we wouldn’t wish on anyone. I wanted to convey both the profound horror of the story, and also its clownish side; a sort of very black comedy, to the point of any remaining humour being so twisted as to be unrecognisable.
Execution
I designed the publication as a narrow and tall pamphlet, very portable and very easy to read with 11 or so words per line. Deep indents were used for direct speech, which is a particularly important component of the story; I wanted to clearly highlight it, and the dearth of it in the second half. These indents also structured the turning points of the story, which are based around conversation and silence. I then designed a font for the cover based on a sign I had seen in Tangier (where Bowles lived and wrote) on a recent trip. The type had an irregular, clownish feel; very alien, ungainly and silly, but also significant and monolithic. I loosely recreated a few letters of this, and designed the rest of the font to enlarge upon the feeling it gave off. I then placed my clown font on a black rectangle and put it on its side so it wasn’t immediately legible. This felt like an appropriately nihilistic gesture. The story is much concerned with an inability to communicate, so a degree of illegibility felt important. On the back, a black square with plain AG provided a degree of finality that also felt appropriate at the end of the story.