all the books I never wrote or wrote and never published





.

JD at age 12 in family home.
The young writer, notebook in hand. Philadelphia, PA, 1964

Introduction: Note: This landing page is a placeholder; active site to come Spring 2016.

I am eleven years old in this picture, sitting in the dining room of my family house in Philadelphia. Writing is the focus in my existence; it defines my identity. Since I was small, I have carried a notebook and pen with me everywhere, hoping that the books will flow onto the pages in some unstaunchable spontaneous expression manifesting itself in prose and poetry. I write by hand, and yet, I think in terms of the book format, because that is the way literature has made itself familiar to me. My desire, drive, is not to be a writer, but to write. The activity and its absorptions are addictive. My ideas of how writing is created, what it expresses, and what its forms and sources might be are gleaned largely from the exposure to the canonical works of English authors. That changes in the decades ahead as I move through different communities — of school, friends, poets, artists, scholars, book artists, and printers, designers, and finally, writers working in the digital modes.

This is a memoire about and through writing. The texts in these pages are all unpublished, and there are many of them. I wrote proflically, regularly, and in each instance of writing, with a specific script in mind about what the possibilities were for writing. This project is about what I thought I was doing in writing, the constructs that produced and constrained these works. It is an autobiography as gloss, the detailed annotation of manuscripts. In some cases they are transcribed, in others, they are attached as full PDFs. They are the evidence of a life lived in writing, now refracted through critical self-reflection. They do not tell story of their making, so that is added, provided as the narrative frame.

Each of these artifacts speaks of a moment, place, mood, attitude, passion, drive, emotion and aspiration through its physical, documentary materiality and its textual specificity. Whether they are of literary value is not an issue, they are of evidentiary value, a testimony to their own production and my history.

All materials on this site were written, drawn, and commented upon by Johanna Drucker and are subject to copyright. To enter, select from the columns below or click here to enter and move through chronologically. N.B. At present none of the links below will work.

Titles by Dates:

  • 1960-63 Poems
  • 1963 Kennedy Assassination
  • 1964 The Letter
  • 1964-65 Dear James Diary
  • 1965 Cat the Herman and
  • 1965 Roddy
  • 1965 The Arbor
  • 1965 Felice
  • 1965-6 Mirror Mirror
  • 1964-5 Mss titled 1964
  • 1967-8 Poems
  • 1967-8 Minnie Malouse
  • 1965 Prose manuscript
  • 1968 Nameless I
  • 1968 Journal of a Summer
  • 1968 Characters, first draft
  • 1968-69 Characters, full draft
  • 1969 Value of Hypocrisy (notes)
  • 1969 Summer Journal
  • 1969 Fall Journal
  • 1970 Spring Journal
  • 1970 Inventory of my Room
  • 1970 Summer and Fall Journal
  • 1964 to 1984, Amy manuscripts
  • 1970 Mr. Kay letter
  • 1971 Poems
  • 1971-73 Whole
  • 1971 Summer prose poems
  • 1972 Spring prose
  • 1972 Summer
  • 1972 Summer-Fall dreams
  • 1972-3 Accounts/texts
  • 1972-3 Mite mite
  • 1972 Light
  • 1972 Godthing
  • 1973 Any Other
  • 1973 Modoc Journey
  • 1973 Oregon original account
  • 1973-74 Oh Oh
  • 1973 Real Accounts
  • 1973 Summer etc.
  • 1973 Rosewood box
  • 1973-4 Light and the Pork Pie
  • 1973-4 Pupa House
  • 1975 Performance scripts (Pupa)
  • 1975 Character sketches
  • 1975 Tank and Turret
  • 1974-5 Patronage
  • 1975 Concerning Sequence
  • 1975-77 Weather journal
  • 1975-77 Bromige and others
  • 1975-76 How Wet Can You Get
  • 1976 Mss
  • 1976 The Parents
  • 1976 26 76 Mss
  • 1976 26 76 Note on typefaces
  • 1976 Any Other Performance Script
  • 1976 Passing How Fancy
  • 1976 Object Journey
  • 1976-77 Pieces
  • 1976-77 East
  • 1976 Debutante Year
  • 1976 New Friends
  • 1977 Blonde Boy
  • 1977 Hermit Child
  • 1977 Various performance scripts
  • 1977 Notes for books
  • 1977 On deck with Raoul
  • 1977 Man I Fester
  • 1977-8 From A to Z explanation
  • 1978 Aspects of Devotion
  • 1978 P 78
  • 1979 Greece and Good Behavior
  • 1979 Marusa, Santorini
  • 1979 Journal notes. Oakland
  • 1979-80 Diary notebooks
  • 1979 jour/her on:all
  • 1979 New Age Kiddie
  • 1979 jj manuscript
  • 1979 Temporary assignment
  • 1979 Travel US
  • 1979 Baby outline
  • 1979 City Paper
  • 1979 Business notes, Otis
  • 1979 Why Not Make Art?
  • 1979 Claustrophobia
  • 1979 Art History
  • 1980 The Mundane
  • 1980 Notes on American Landscapes
  • 1980 Agony and Ecstasy
  • 1981 Mark and the Medium
  • 1980 Queenie and the Prince
  • 1981 It Happens Pretty Fast
  • 1981-83 Family Accounts
  • 1981 Home
  • 1982 The Wedding
  • 1982 Home again
  • 1983 Home
  • 1981-2 What I love about musicals
  • 1981-2 Tongues
  • 1982 Family Life, a play
  • 1982 Performing functions
  • 1982 The Mundane again
  • 1982 Just As mss
  • 1982 Real/Realism
  • 1981-2 Blank Minded Murder
  • 1980 Vested Interests
  • 1981-2 Journall
  • 1978-83 Against Fiction
  • 1980-84 Dreamlife and Desire
  • 1984 Spectacle
  • 1984 Detail Center
  • 1984 Fiction
  • 1984 Plague City
  • 1984 Through the Dark end of [...]
  • 1984-85 Paris Texts
  • 1984-85 Maria Letters
  • 1984-85 Why a Woman
  • 1984-85 Paris Sites
  • 1984-85 Children of the Moderns
  • 1984-85 Amy
  • 1985 Mind Massage
  •     Eusabia
  •     Suburban miracle
  •     I have no Face
  • 1985-86 The Yellow Dog
  • 1985-86 Self as a Trope of Genre
  • 1986 Architecture of a Theater
  • 1986 Au Bord de la Mer(e)
  • 1986 Final Fiction
  • 1986 Good Girl
  • 1986 Model Child
  • 1986 Correspondences
  • 1986-87 Dallas Landscape
  • 1986-87 MT
  • 1987 Rodefer Project
  • 1987-88 Lovers and Others
  • 1987 List of manuscripts
  • 1987 Sui Generis
  • 1987 Meta modernism
  • 1987 Paris after Dallas
  • 1987-88 Femme
  • 1987-89 Ars Historiae Feminae
  • 1988 SG and Meta
  • 1988 Wittgenstein Gallery
  • 1988 Tabloid Life
  • 1988 Bad Appetites
  • 1988 Ms.D and outline
  • 1988-89 Demise
  • 1989 Filmscripts for Tamia
  • 1989 m/f
  • 1989-90 Critical Crime
  • 1989 metatemporality
  • 1990 Pop Cult
  • 1991 Ms.D and I
  • 1991 M/F
  • 1991 Heavy Breathing
  • 1990 Here and Now
  • 1990s Against Culture
  • 1990s Core Sample
  • 1990s What Maisie Never Knew
  • 1990s Brain Cell
  • 1990s Emma’s Dilemma
  • 1990s Call it Fate
  • 1990s Smoke
  • 1990s Total
  • 1990s My Baby Came by Email
  • 1990s Embeddment
  • 1991 Miscs Time and Weather
  • 1991 Past/Present/Future
  • 1991 Gros Morne
  • 1992 Postcards: New Millennium
  • 1995-96 Undead Blonde
  • 1995-96 Feminist Art History
  • 199? Thumbelina
  • 1996 Maneater
  • 1996 Mickey
  • 1997 Museum
  • 1997 Pulp/Megapulp
  • 1997 She
  • 1997 How/Now
  • 1997 The Push
  • 1990s New story
  • 1990s Virus
  • 1990s Total Synthesis
  • 1997 VisCults
  • 1999-2000 Wayward Website
  • 2000 Avatar
  •     Writing Avatar
  •     Clarity
  • 2000-01 Face Off
  • 2001 Italy (Cortona)
  • 2001-02 Like Totally
  • 2002 From California
  • 2003 Total Paranoia
  • 2000s The Medium
  • 2000s Lives and Wives
  • 2002 Media Culture
  • 2000s Femme Vitale
  • 2000s (In)F
  • 2003 Pollution
  • 2003 War Journal
  • 200? Unwritten books
  • 2004 List of Titles
  • 2004 Art Event Discourse
  • 2004 Xmas Small Crimes
  • 2004 Children’s Theater
  • 2004-5 Jane
  • 2005 American Mythology
  • 2005 Theory of bonds
  • 2005 Monstress
  • 2005 Pink Noire
  • 2006-07 News
  • 2007 The Old New World
  • 2008 Poetry Wars, Part 1
  • 2008-09 Poetry Wars, Part 2
  • 2009-2010 The Celestial Bed
  • Period:

  • Family life
  • Puberty
  • Amy
  • After Amy
  • Freshman year
  • Art School
  • Drugs
  • John / Isolation and Work
  • Art life
  • Maude/John/Sandra/Charles
  • Jeryl
  • John and Mountains
  • Books and printers
  • Betsy and Jim
  • Julie and Arnaud
  • Print Center and Poets
  • Travels
  • Greece
  • Amsterdam
  • Home with parents
  • Warehouse
  • Graduate school
  • Paris interlude
  • Texas years
  • Harvard and Gino
  • Columbia
  • Marriage
  • Yale / SUNY
  • Virginia
  • Stanford
  • UCLA
  • Writing category:

  • Personal
  • Fictions
  • Experimental
  • Procedural
  • Commercial
  • News
  • Essayistic
  • Project List
  • Associational
  • Language Writing
  • Women's Narrative
  • Theoretical
  • Accounts
  • Diaristic
  • Poetry
  • Lists
  • Notes
  • Outline
  • Supplementary Materials
  • Creation Place:

  • Philadelphia 1969
  • Rochester 1969-70
  • Philadelphia 1970
  • Channing Way, CA 1970
  • Hillegass 1970-72
  • Philadelphia 1971
  • Ocean View Fall 1972
  • Candlewood Island 1973
  • North Berkeley 1973
  • Philadelphia Winter 1973
  • Santa Cruz 1974-1975
  • Ross Avenue, CA 1975-76
  • John St., Oakland, 1976-77
  • Philadelphia 1977
  • In Transit 1977
  • Santorini 1977-78
  • Athens 1978
  • Amsterdam 1978-79
  • Philadelphia 1979
  • Warehouse, Oakland 1979-84
  • Paris 1984-85
  • Warehouse, Oakland 1985-86
  • Dallas, Texas 1986-87
  • Austin, Texas 1987
  • Dallas, Texas 1987-88
  • Somerville, MA 1988-89
  • New York City, 1989-90
  • Great Barrington, Summer 1990
  • New York City, 1990-94
  • New Haven, 1994-99
  • Charlottesville, 1999-2008
  • Santa Barbara interlude, 2004
  • Stanford, Palo Alto 2008-09
  • Los Angeles, 2009-10
  • Federal Avenue, LA 2010-