Friday, September 19, 2008

Camp Concentration 006 - A Cracked Vellum





From the inventory of Mordecai Washington's worktable:


"...a cracked vellum sheet with a crude drawing on it, in colored inks, not much superior to an average men's room graffito. That part of the drawing I could see represented a crowned and bearded man holding a tall scepter upon which were mounted, one above the other, six further crowns. The king stood upon an odd pedestal that grew flowerlike from a vine that branched, above the king's head, into a sort of lattice. At the interstices of this lattice were six other male heads, lower, lesser types, and beside each head a letter of the alphabet, from D through I. The left-hand portion of this head-bearing vine curled out of sight into George's closed book".
(CC, p. 74, June 16 entry)


This is the cover illustraton of the novel's first edition (see below).



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