Author(s): Erica Van Horn

Essay | Les Fugitives

In this mosaic portrait of a singular everywoman, an undutiful daughter details her mother’s immutable rituals and her irrepressible anarchy. We Still Have the Telephone also describes a life laid out in detail, quietly registering the fuzziness of the line between eccentricity and madness. Erica Van Horn’s quirky, literary assemblage of fragments from the past and present evokes that of her fellow American writer and artist Joe Brainard.

 'My mother and I have been writing her obituary. We have been working on it for several years now. Before we started, she had already begun the project with my older sister. She wants to get it right.' Assembling fragments of past and present Erica Van Horn describes a life laid out in detail, quietly registering the fuzziness of the line between eccentricity and madness. In this mosaic portrait, a singular everywoman emerges, whose immutable rituals exist on a par with an irrepressible anarchy.

Review: 'For a story that takes as its starting point the ongoing task of writing the obituary for its protagonist, this is a remarkably (and for Van Horn, characteristically) unsentimental book. Like mother like daughter: both abhor waste. Gathered here are 'details' that are unlikely to find their way into the final draft of the obituary. These document some of the mother's rituals, preferences, and characteristic way with things, including eggs, envelopes, coins, clocks, calendars, Broadway musicals, and the United Nations. We read these through the tender, amused, exasperated gaze of the daughter, and the wry observational style that makes Van Horn's writing such a delight.' - Dr Julie Bates, Trinity College Dublin; 'In a work as personal and universal as that of her fellow American writer-artist Joe Brainard, Van Horn focuses on the small but revealing particulars of her mother's life; the loves, the hates, and the obsessions. Told, as only Van Horn can, with unaffected, yet sympathetic, candour, grace, and humour, the result is a subtle affirmation of the familial - the personalities and relationships, the memories, and the tensions that make all of us who and what we are.' - Ross Hair, author of Avant-Folk; Praise for Van Horn's book By Bus: 'A masterpiece in simplicity and acute observation. I laughed, smiled and was utterly beguiled. And something deeper... a perfect gem.' - Keggie Carew

Author Biography: Erica Van Horn is an American artist (and writer, editor, printer, bookmaker, and publisher) long transplanted to Ireland where she runs Coracle Press with her husband Simon Cutts. Her outsider's acumen is trained on the minutiae of daily life, collecting visual and textual details of what is often overlooked or seemingly insignificant. I Have Been Making Books Since the Day President Kennedy was Shot, an exhibition at Franklin Furnace, NYC in 1986, highlighted books she had produced up until that date. We Still Have the Telephone (Les Fugitives) is her most recent title, following Living Locally (Uniformbooks), Too Raucous For a Chorus (Coracle), and By Bus (Ugly Duckling Presse).