Melville House Books

Bookninja — the site that always gets there first and spells it right — points us to a truly outrageous, not to mention bodacious, piece of writing: a typographic map of Paris by artist Mark Andrew Webber. In an interview with Creative Review, Webber explains the enormous piece — it’s approximately 1.6 X 2 yards — is a linocut, which means he’s had to “carve out every single street and area name he’s included” by hand … in reverse.

Plus, er, he doesn’t speak French, so “it’s bloody hard,” he says.

Still, it’s nearly done, and he’s done this sort of thing before (check out the maps of London, New York and Amsterdam on his website). There remains only one problem. As the Creative Review story reports, “he can’t find a suitable printer who can accommodate his enormous piece of lino.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.