Along an assembly line in another life, a master of boredom exchanges compulsion for quietude, toward the realization of some obscure industrial plan. Elsewhere, monastic pursuits at the Abbey of Gethsemani occur. Set to a strict regimen of work and prayer, Tim Youd finds synonymy in the two: truth from ascetic devotion. Yet in this life, where he is an artist, little is different. It’s still truth and revelation through work—in banal, rote repetitions—a typewriter his book of hours, the model and location his only variables.
Process, procedure and meditation are the crux of Youd’s series of “100 Novels,” in which over a period of 10 years, Youd has set out to re-type that many great works of English-language literature. Youd commented, “[I am to carry out the project in a] location charged with literary significance specific to the subject novel… on the same model typewriter [used by the author to compose the novel.]” A smile on his lips, he called the project an “exercise in devoted reading.” At Vassar, Youd spent the months of April and May retyping Mary McCarthy ’33’s “The Group.” This was exercise number 56.
