“We all know about Vincent van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo that were packed with drawings for painting ideas. Today’s mail artists only wonder why the hell he didn’t mail that severed ear off to Gauguin in Tahiti.”
“The Paper Snake is copyrighted, I don’t know why—that seems excessive caution.” Praise and bewilderment from critics of the book by Ray Johnson as well as Ray Johnson’s “Review,” 1964.
“Valery describes the language of poetry as ‘abrupt returns of the fruit to the wild state.’ I can’t think of a better description of Johnson’s work.”
“In Ray Johnson, how many times do you see the final words of his sentences, speeches, questions, adumbrated by white space or by the rumble of a new thought.”
In the spirit of Ray Johnson, a collection of Johnsonia and academic research that engage with the many forms of “the snake.”