“How to Grow Your Own Light Bulbs,” “Object D?Art,” “Burnout,” “Nightmare Hotel,” “Traces.” “Hieroglyphics,” “Peace Puzzle,” and “The Straytext Device”? Each title in this book requires the application of certain accessories for completion. In other words, the outcome depends upon your input. I hope you will be content with the final version!? j r
John Riddell's playful disquisitions with pre-scribed equipment of all sorts (gardening tools, matches, a mirror, scissors, darts and the like) move to bemuse and confound a reader, who must bring the self in to play in order to complete the "story". How to Grow Your Own Light Bulbs is literally a deconstruction of text: it presumes a radical redistribution of reader/writer resources along more equitable lines than is usual.
A freshly-tilled section of a light bulb farm, somewhere in Mexico. Liliaceous bulbous lightus flourishes in certain areas of South America, some midwestern American states, the southernmost regions of central Canada, as well as in various temperate European, African and Eastern climes... Note the clever use of camouflage deployed by the conspirators? such that this light bulb farm looks just like any other freshly-tilled field!

John Riddell’s first published story appeared in 1963 and his work continued to appear in little magazines like Kontakte, Ganglia, Descant and grOnk. An early associate of Ganglia magazine, he later became a contributing editor of grOnk and then in 1975, co-founded Phenomenon Press with Richard Truhlar. He has had visual work in exhibitions in Europe and Canada and his published books include How to Grow Your Own Lightbulbs and Transitions (Mercury), a/z does it (Nightwood Editions), Criss-Cross (Coach House Press), E clips E (Underwhich Editions), and Shit (Letters).

John Riddell's profile page