The Beautiful Book of Exquisite Corpses: A Creative Game of Limitless Possibilities is out now. I’m so proud of this book, I can’t even begin to tell you, but I guess I should try.

Let’s start with a quick explanation: it’s an creativity book, designed to send blue sparks through your brain and to enable long-distance collaborations with incredibly cool people (more on them in a minute). It’s based on the century-old game of Exquisite Corpse, invented by surrealist artist Andre Breton: you might know it by a different name, and the game has variations, but basically, you fold a piece of paper into three sections, and then three people draw a picture on it, without looking at what any of their fellow artists did. Then you unfold it to reveal a glorious or disturbing collaboration!

In the case of The Beautiful Book of Exquisite Corpses, edited by yours truly, the book has 110 contributors who started an Exquisite Corpse for you and friends to finish. (And they’re on perforated pages, so you can easily pull them out!) Because I am ridiculously fortunate, those 110 contributors include some amazingly gifted comics artists, writers, musicians, and actors, who have collectively won the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award, and the World Series. To name nine: Stephen Fry. Emily Nussbaum. Peter Kuper. Alexandra Petri. James Hannaham. Jane Espenson. Grace Slick. Moby. Mark Alan Stamaty.

Most of the pages have drawings, while a minority are seeded with sentences. (There’s also a verbal version of the Exquisite Corpse game.) But what’s consistent is that the contributors brought their A games: if you flip through this book, you will be constantly delighted. And once you actually tear it apart and start playing with it, you’ll be having as much fun as is humanly possible with your pants on. (Unless you take your pants off first.)

You can buy The Beautiful Book of Exquisite Corpses from your local bookstore or from many online retailers, including Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, Amazon, and Target–or just go to the Penguin web page for links to those venues and many others.

posted 30 August 2018 in Buy My Stuff and tagged exquisite corpses, The Beautiful Book of Exquisite Corpses. no comments yet