Dear subscriber,
This special issue of Five Dials comes to you from the heart of Bloomsbury, where an excited crowd has convened to hear Richard McGuire, on a lightning visit to London, talk about his experimental graphic novel, Here. Yes, we are sitting in the London Review of Books bookshop, but in our minds we are many thousands of miles away, in the living room of Richard’s extraordinary book (based on that of his family home) -- a fixed space charted over millions of years, rendered in all its incarnations including in non-existence in the millennia before it was even built.
Using the graphic novel’s unique form as a means to transport us simultaneously backwards and forwards in time, Here traces the lives of the people who inhabit this space and its environs in ways both startlingly intimate and surprisingly universal.
Late last year, New York's Morgan Library & Museum dedicated a show to Here, curated by Joel Smith in collaboration with Richard, drawn from the extensive archive of inspirations, references, sketches and works-in-progress which combined, over a decade or more, to form the finished book.
This issue of Five Dials is a kind of catalogue for that show: a cascade of beautiful images from the work displayed, followed by Joel Smith's essential essay on the genesis and realisation of Here, and a selection of images of the show itself in situ.
A few weeks ago we met up with Richard at a studio on 29th St. in Manhattan and leafed through his sketchbooks and notebooks. We found lists of phrases used by the Lenape tribe, various swear words from the past century, sketches and family photos. Early drafts of books can often be interesting. Rarely are they this beautiful. Enjoy the issue.
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