On the Process
of Erasure

Loose Leaf & Bound Copies

I began by printing csv files of dates & deaths, and then inscribing each page in blue (dates) and red (deaths) pen. When this was finished, I erased, occasionally leaving multiple phrases “open” on a page that I could return to later. Once I caught up to the present, the erasure became a daily practice throughout the first year of the pandemic, like keeping a journal by taking away words instead of adding them to a page. Some phrases became self-contained on their page, and others formed sentences the length of their chapters. Sometimes the recorded death tolls at the bottom of the page acted like a prompt for the erasures, and other times like a coda, volta, question, or imposition.

What does The Art of the Death erase of an initial text so intent on misrepresentation that the ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, has called it a "fictional frame"? This erasure has, I hope, performed a collective revision of the autobiography that centers the text on language previously submerged. As the first page of the last chapter reads: "the / end / is an accounting". A categorical that may only exist in a fictional frame, the erasure turns language over again & again, seeking a way forward, harrowed, through a harrowing year.

Removing the spine from two soft cover copies to create a loose leaf version of The Art of the Death.

Loose leaf copy stacked and ready for inscription and erasure.

Recording dates & deaths.

Finishing erasures in the original, bound copy.

Bookmarks, lists, and copied verses-- transferring erasures from the bound copy to the loose leaf.

11 total copies cut, erased, and inscribed to make the final books.

Loose leaf & erased copies.