Legendary Lexical Loquacious Love

Legendary, Lexical, Loquacious Love is an alphabetized romance novel; I took all of the words in an existing romance novel and sorted them alphabetically.  I wondered how the love story would exist without a narrative structure/plot line.  I used the alphabet—an arbitrary, non-hierarchical ordering convention—for its objective unemotional character, which places it at odds with the subjective emotional character of romance novels.  I wanted to see if there was a particular lexicon of words used for romance writing that would be made available though alphabetization.  I wondered if I put a cover like this on it–essentially announcing to readers that it is a romance novel—does it then become possible to read an alphabetical list of words as a love story. I think it is still a love story, although perhaps not a romance.  In any case, there’s definitely a loose narrative readable moving from “marriage” to “mastery” and “mattresses” and shouting “me! me! me!” to “meal-planning.”  And several pages of the “F” chapter read like a steamy sex scene.

This book is part of a series of artist novels based on pulp fiction genres, including romances, science fiction, and westerns.  The series was conceived and edited by Sally Alatalo, founder of the artist book publishing company Sara Ranchouse Publishing.