The Tower of Silence
Limited edition of 150. Hardback in slipcase, casebound and hand set letterpress
on mould-made paper with tipped-in colour plates.
‘For those of us who have an affection for language, the word, and this
of course includes Lanyon’s ‘Tower of Silence’, this is a
provocative work. The battle between image and word is re-engaged. At first
an assault on imagery has gentle beginnings in the faking of worthless snapshots
(for which their forger is tracked down by Scotland Yard’s Fraud Squad,
arrested and tried). Intellectual mayhem follows when another character produces
art which inadvertently prefigures modernism and includes conceptualism, an
outline of which we are told he passed on to his friend Marcel Duchamp, a nobody
in Paris at the time. This character’s notion that everyday objects are
not only deprived of usefulness, but that as art they are also untouchable,
had been formed merely to assist another character experience forgetfulness,
crucial in helping her to suppress language in favour of a new image-based system.
After some exploration, delicately illustrated by our narrator and guide, a
new language is created, not to communicate with but to think in and the vast
edifice of the title, covered in defensive text, ‘the lower ramparts a
profusion of abuse’ is raised in the grounds of Rowley Hall. This volume,
as consistently poetic as the previous ones, will not disappoint fans, while
for the uninitiated it is as good a place as any to begin the profound and hilarious
journey onward or back.’
John McDowall