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boring boring boring press |
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Written by Zach Plague
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Sunday, 13 April 2008 |
boring boring boring boring boring boring boring By Zach Plague
 P R I N T * P R A I S E
"Designed to death, Plague’s seething contempt for banal art gives this satire an edge" —Publishers Weekly
"The effect is that of artist's journal meets ransom note: the text held hostage by the design."—Jami Attenberg, Print Magazine
"One absurd plot twist after another, a tie-dyed spiral of schemes, porn, and drug-induced insanity. Though boring's style and theme make it easily likened to Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, its made-up slang, depraved characters, and sour ending bring it closer to A Clockwork Orange." —The Austin Chronicle
"Alienation devices(!) Ridiculous(!) Cute(!) Antic(!) Anticlimactic(!) Clever(!) Fairly interesting(!) Mostly well written(!) Occasionally funny(!) Sex(!) Drugs(!) Stale satire(!) Art world nonsense(!) —Chicago Reader (exclamation points added for emphasis)
"A more tangible aesthetic in book production... certainly idiosyncratic."—Publishers Weekly
"A typographic riot, in all senses. Unexpectedly, this doesn't result in chaos, but it does reinforce the book's fictional style, which, with nods to Gibson and Pynchon, is rich in absurdity and abrupt changes in narrative perspective. Boring it is not."—STEP Inside Design
Portland Mercury interview with Zach Plague about booty.
"Part grit, part fantasy, part winking comedy... boring boring boring boring boring boring boring is not boring."—Newcity Chicago
"[Zach] Plague is... a tall, affable young writer[!]"—Austin American-Statesman
"Besides featuring some gorgeous design, boring7 starts out with one couple's endangered anti-love affair and ends with art terrorism" *Suggested* by The Seattle Stranger.
New and Noteworthy Books —Poets & Writers
"With graphic surprises, exotic fonts, and format zaniness on every page, Zach Plague's new "hybrid typo/graphic novel" boring boring boring boring boring boring boring is anything but." —Interview with the East Bay Express
"This is the most negative book I have ever read. It's as if that lemon-headed baby from "The Family Guy" did audio commentary for the DVD of Terry Zwigoff's "Art School Confidential." —Austin American-Statesman
"Anything but…well, boring." —ALARM magazine
"If reading isn't your thing, it'll probably be enticing if you're on drugs."—The Onion (Chicago A.V. Club)
"Dang cool." — *Highly Recommended* by the Willamette Week
"Zach Plague broke every rule in the book. You'll soon find yourself addicted to the mayhem. A dead-on satire of the art-school world, this hilarious and innovative novel is anything but boring."—Zink Magazine
"A sometimes esoteric title." —Eugene Weekly
"Unique is sometimes not strong enough a word to describe a book. A brilliant work of satire, "Boring" is for any fan of fiction seeking something different." —Midwest Book Review
"An art world satire on amphetamines, as described by Todd Dills." —Birmingham Weekly
"Zach Plague's newest novel is anything but 'boring boring'"—Campus Circle
"It’s a hell of a
head-turn to the book in its traditional form, and only
gains more prominence hand-in-hand with its subject
matter. Sure, there’s the irony of the cultural art satire
chaffing against Plague’s insanely designed conceptual
work. But Plague’s book caused a lot of thinking,
turning back pages, and fascination on my end – and
hell, part of the fun was the weird looks I got while
reading it on the train." —Skyscraper Magazine
"Written in a serious tone—sometimes coming off as tounge-in-cheek, other times as pompously sincere—the book is dripping with irony and self-awareness." —UR Chicago
"Author/Designer Zach Plague is known for thinking beyond the binding when it comes to presentation, but his debut novel... defies classification." —The Onion (Austin A.V. Club)
P I X E L * P R A I S E
"The multiple forms remind one of Transformer robots that change into vehicles. The project is an ambitious multimedia exercise, but as its boring title suggests, the enterprise is undercut with self-deprecating humor... The indulgent expressive graphics (an aesthetic of punk and neo-Victorian) are justified by the novel’s subject matter and cast of characters" —David Barringer, AIGA Voice
"An intelligent, sometimes witty, and sometimes sad book that offers sharp criticism of the art world, and our society in general. Boredom has brought many an empire to its knees in the past, and Zach Plague has done a fine job of depicting the ennui that sucks the life out of us." —Richard Marcus, BlogCritics Magazine
"The art boldly enhances the storyline in one of the year's most cleverly designed books." —Book Notes, Largehearted Boy
"Sparkling, Sexy, Bizarre." —Three Imaginary Girls
"Zach Plague [has] gone above and beyond and created something just absolutely remarkable. Not only well-written, which you'd hope from any book, Plague created... page after page of constantly busy, captivating artwork that clearly must have cost them Featherproof about $80 per book purely in black ink. And that's before you even get to any of the writing, which reacts surprising well to the chaos the surrounds it. Even if you're illiterate, it's a book that would be well worth your time."—UnBeige
"The book is beautiful. As a physical text-object, boring presents a reading experience unlike most novels or short story collections... Between the covers of the book, the level of detail seems to explode, as if Plague could not stop himself until he had modified each block of text in some way."—The Quarterly Conversation
"Equal parts Dos Passos and maybe Coupland, the book distinguishes itself primarily by its unashamed use of typographical elements to effect meaning in the text, as fonts pile upon fonts and emphasis is occasionally forced on the reader."—Interview with Todd Dills, THE2NDHAND
"As with any auteur, his total control means one thing, he can break all the rules. Because no one is there to stop him. So this is what he does."—Notes on Design
"boring boring is an entertaining romp with a hilarious cast of characters who keep the plot moving along in several different directions. We loved it." —Art MoCo
"Zach Plague caters to those with fleeting ADD. Jump in anywhere for quirky character studies or definitions of words such as beeramid (a pyramid of empty beer cans)." —DailyCandy
"The writing is energetic and arresting. Filled with surprising use of language and deftly constructed sentences. A weird obsessive tone creates an atmosphere that envelopes the reader and draws you into the narrative. The dialogues (and monologues) capture a convincing, naturalistic quality with well-rendered diversity between characters and some are quite hilarious. The plot is clever and unpredictable." —Gently Read Literature
"A hybrid typo/graphic novel that is as artistically stunning as it is well-written. Boring... is a unique and beautiful debut." —Interview at What to Wear During an Orange Alert
"A beautiful hybrid of typography and imagery." —Design Milk
"A dizzying mixture of obsessive typography and design wrapped around a bonkers tale of sex and drugs." —Under the Covers
"Extravagant and strange..."—Interview at Powell's Books Blog
"The book looks more like art than literature, emblazoned as it is with human-monster hybrids and ink that sprawls across the words. It's anything but boring, really."—New York Animal
"boring boring boring boring boring boring boring tries very hard not to live up to its namesake." —Green Lantern Press
Chicago Artists Resource Interview
"The novel itself is quite unconventional. Handwritten pages merge with typed ones, and fonts expand and decrease and tilt across the page. The novel appears to be compiled by hand, as though bits and scraps of thoughts and writing had been pieced together. That’s not to say it’s difficult to read boring boring boring boring boring boring boring; in fact, the opposite is true. The innovative design added an extra incentive to move further in the book, as I wanted to see what shape it would take next."—Bibliolatry
"Anything but."—The Scowl
"A book which actually deserves the designation 'novel' for once." —feuilleton
"boring boring boring boring boring boring boring is a collection of incidents that never builds any momentum." —PopMatters
"I loved the design concept: Each of the trade paperback's signatures—the large sheets of paper which are trimmed and folded to produce 32 book pages—was printed as a giant double-sided poster, so each page in the book has little bits of artwork poking out at weird angles."—Galley Cat
"What makes this book stand out amongst many others is its beautiful hybrid of typography and imagery. I feel like a kid in a candyshop. *drooling*" —This That These and Those
"If his book were a drink, it would taste like black licorice, feel like syrup, and need to be chased with plenty of water."—Hipster Book Club
"A rollicking good skewer of hipsters, the art scene and most commonly held notions of book layout and typography." —O-Scene
"Boring." —Discovering Goodness
"Alice-In-Wonderland-meets-Bret-Easton-Ellis-College-Novel"—The Trap Door
"I’ve only seen an online version of this book, but I love the graphic concept behind it." —Cheeta Fight
"Maybe Boring Boring is supposed to be boring boring." —New Pages
"When I was in college, I found art students terrifyingly cool." —Literago
"An enchanting, garbage-juice mishmash of art-scene characters, absurdist storylines, Megan Jasper-esque slang, hyperactive typography, and gorgeous imagery aplenty." —Flavorpill
R A N D O M * P R A I S E
"Zach Plague stretches far beyond the printed page."—Eight Forty-Eight, Chicago Public Radio
GOLD design winner in Creativity 38.
Merit Winner HOW International Design Competition
Nom de Plume, trivialized.
STEP Design 100 Runner Up
boring Tour diary in Proximity Magazine #2
"Hahaha! A really innovative book."—Hello Beautiful, CPR
Excerpt "Best of 2008"—Thieves Jargon
Perlabra! Holiday Gift Guide!
“This book gleans the generational malaise of its characters, floundering and beautiful. It manages to amble along the surface of their lives falling here and there into pockets of private desires and loneliness. These are the stunning moments, buttressed by deft absurdity, hilarious antics and wordplay. boring boring boring boring boring boring boring is fantastic.”—Ryan Markel, Author of 101 Reasons Not To Have Children.
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boring boring boring boring
boring boring boring
Written and designed by Zach Plague
The effect is that of artist's journal meets ransom note: the text held hostage by the design.—Print Magazine
When the mysterious gray book that drives their twisted relationship goes missing, Ollister and Adelaide lose their post-modern marbles. He plots revenge against art patriarch The Platypus, while she obsesses over their anti-love affair. Meanwhile, the art school set experiments with bad drugs, bad sex, and bad ideas. But none of these desperate young minds has counted on the intrusion of a punk named Punk and his potent sex drug. This wild slew of characters get caught up in the gravitational pull of The Platypus' giant art ball, where a confused art terrorism cell threatens a ludicrous and hilarious implosion. Zach Plague has written and designed a hybrid typo/graphic novel which skewers the art world, and those boring enough to fall into its traps.
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