Jae Rossman, excerpt from JAB 23 “Reading Outside the Lines: Paratextual Analysis and Artists’ Books”: “…Silverberg poignantly tells the story of Sara Karig and her imprisonment in a Soviet Labor Camp. The publisher and artist are the same in this production and the initial formatting makes a striking impression that the reader carries through the reading of the work. The book itself is only three inches square and is housed inside a female head made of paper, which resembles a death mask. The book is a tight fit, and so it must be pulled from the head in order to read it. The small volume is made of rough brown paper. After an empty fly-leaf and paste-down the reader encounters a title page in the traditional placement on the right side. Unexpectedly opposite, on the left side, are two paragraphs giving the background to what turns out to be a volume of poetry. Sara Karig was a government worker who discovered voting fraud by the Communists in the 1947 election in Budapest. She was sent to a labor camp in the Arctic Circle until 1954. While at the camp, she worked some of her time in the library and had access to brown paper. She composed poems, memorized them, and burnt them before the weekly search and then kept the volumes of poetry in her memory until her release when she could record them again. The reader has a déjà vu experience as they turn the page and encounter the exact same layout they just experienced of the title on the right and two explanatory paragraphs on the left; however, this time all the text is in Hungarian. After a blank page the poems start, first in English, then repeated in Hungarian. When the poems are too long to fit on one page, Silverberg employs pages that fold down to reveal the full length poem, giving the reader the impression that the poetry is greatly respected and that the publisher went to great lengths to preserve its format. The final text, the colophon, is also in two languages, mirrored in layout. Once at the colophon the reader learns how many people were involved in the creation of this tiny volume.

“This work is close to a trade edition in many ways: a traditional codex structure and the straightforward textual presentation, such as the placement of title page and formatting of the poems. It is the slight differences in the paratextual elements, along with the unexpected housing, that emphasize the message. The book itself is notably different from a trade edition in its small size, which conveys a feeling of preciousness to the reader. By having to exert effort to free the volume from the paper head, the reader feels as if they are intruding on someone’s personal thoughts, further heightening the sense of privilege in being able to read this book. The action of unfolding some of the pages to read the poems and the exaggerated texture of the pages themselves are the final elements of the publisher’s peritext that alert the reader to approach this book in a different manner than the standard trade volume. With all of these clues, Silverberg emphasizes the uniqueness of the heroic story of a woman who persevered for freedom of expression in the most dire of circumstances, reminding us of a luxury we often take for granted.”