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Logogryphe
Quand le lecteur lit, le livre rêve.
Et le rêve du lecteur, c’est de rencontrer le livre idéal, à la fois universel et intime. Une somme d’émotions, d’imagination et de savoir qui le comblerait entièrement. Une telle chimère existe, peut-être. Logogryphe s’en approche grâce à sa finesse et à son érudition ludique.
Imaginez un croisement entre l’anthologie de récits et de légendes, le carnet de notes d’un bibliophile insomniaque, le roman et l’essai : vous obtenez un livre enchanteur dont les pages dégagent un enivrant parfum de mystère. Imaginez la réunion, sous une même couverture, d’œuvres fabuleuses nées du désir des hommes, d’ouvrages dont quelques pages disparaissent pour migrer vers d’autres bouquins. Imaginez un livre envahissant votre domicile, un infortuné personnage projeté jusque dans notre monde, des livres en forme d’îles, un exposé lumineux sur l’importance de l’écriture chez les Atlantes… Glissez entre ses pages magiques et suivez en filigrane l’histoire d’un jeune homme à qui on a, un jour, ouvert les portes d’une vaste demeure aux pièces tapissées de livres.
Imaginez bien ce livre. C’est peut-être celui qui se trouve devant vos yeux. L’auteur d’Un jardin de papier, une fresque inventive saluée par les lecteurs et la critique, signe avec Logogryphe une bibliographie de livres imaginaires unique dont les échos évoquent les plus belles pages de Borges ou Calvino.
Et le rêve du lecteur, c’est de rencontrer le livre idéal, à la fois universel et intime. Une somme d’émotions, d’imagination et de savoir qui le comblerait entièrement. Une telle chimère existe, peut-être. Logogryphe s’en approche grâce à sa finesse et à son érudition ludique.
Imaginez un croisement entre l’anthologie de récits et de légendes, le carnet de notes d’un bibliophile insomniaque, le roman et l’essai : vous obtenez un livre enchanteur dont les pages dégagent un enivrant parfum de mystère. Imaginez la réunion, sous une même couverture, d’œuvres fabuleuses nées du désir des hommes, d’ouvrages dont quelques pages disparaissent pour migrer vers d’autres bouquins. Imaginez un livre envahissant votre domicile, un infortuné personnage projeté jusque dans notre monde, des livres en forme d’îles, un exposé lumineux sur l’importance de l’écriture chez les Atlantes… Glissez entre ses pages magiques et suivez en filigrane l’histoire d’un jeune homme à qui on a, un jour, ouvert les portes d’une vaste demeure aux pièces tapissées de livres.
Imaginez bien ce livre. C’est peut-être celui qui se trouve devant vos yeux. L’auteur d’Un jardin de papier, une fresque inventive saluée par les lecteurs et la critique, signe avec Logogryphe une bibliographie de livres imaginaires unique dont les échos évoquent les plus belles pages de Borges ou Calvino.
154 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 4, 2004
10 people are currently reading
486 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Wharton
34 books167 followersI live near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and write for grown-ups and children. My newest novel, The Book of Rain, will be published by Random House Canada in 2023.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
February 24, 2015
"This book is not--as you had anticipated from the bas-relief depiction of a shipwreck on the cover--a novel about a castaway on a desert island. The novel is the island, and in reading it you become its solitary inhabitant.
page 43
page 43
September 1, 2018
For the truest readers, The Logogryph will be a resonant gem: resoundingly familiar, and utterly beautiful to experience.
It describes its own essence many times in its excerpts, far more enticingly than I possibly can:
(This, of the snow eagles who build giant, ever-changing nests from the unending supply of discarded, printed paper)
This is, indeed, a collection of fragments - snippets of book love, in various display. It may feel discordant and confusing at first, until you realise that YOU, as a reader - but as a TRUE reader - are the first and longest thread connecting these bits. There are other threads wending their own way, rest assured, and if you are patient you'll catch glimpses of them. How everything comes together in the end is really quite brilliantly impactive. But you, as the reader, should just enjoy being woven along with them. Take your time, and linger after each few pages. There is so much to connect with, so very much that a bibliophile will recognize and feel echoed back from their own bookish heart. At turns it is quirky, and sad, full of yearning and magic, silliness and seriousness, and all so eloquently stated.
I, as the reader, found that I could pull so many things from these excerpts that vibrated at my same frequency. So many that, ultimately, I see that they are all just best exactly where they are. This is the kind of book that it is hard to do justice to, because any review or reaction is just so very dependant on the person reading it, and it's true and acceptable that someone else may find this to be just so much meandering tripe. I mean, I will think they are wrong , and not actually true readers- not readers at heart, because this book spoke to the part inside of me that is forever curled up in some comfy chair, surrounded by mountainous, endless stacks of books that I will tirelessly be questing to make my through.
I did actually read this once before, about 13 years ago, and it clearly did not strike me the same way then. I came into this reading with no recollection of what was inside these pages. So, perhaps my advice might be this: Secure yourself a copy of this book right now. If you can, find the lovely little bound edition with a slipcase, illustrations and delicious paper. Then put it on your shelf and let it sit there while you read your way through your own mountain of books. Stew in the juices of those other books, and let their fun and flavour and sadness and adventure seep into your very marrow. Do this for a very long time. I think it is the best way to prepare yourself for a ride on the back of the Logogryph.
It describes its own essence many times in its excerpts, far more enticingly than I possibly can:
(This, of the snow eagles who build giant, ever-changing nests from the unending supply of discarded, printed paper)
" The eagles, they say, mate with the black-blooded lions of the interior. And their offspring is the Logogryph, the fabulous creature that flies on wings made of ribbons and shreds of ink-dappled paper.
Should you dare to ride this dreadful beast, you would awaken later as if from a deep sleep, with some of these printed scraps clutched in your hands. Fragments that would hint at ideal books, impossible books, books that you have always longed to read"
This is, indeed, a collection of fragments - snippets of book love, in various display. It may feel discordant and confusing at first, until you realise that YOU, as a reader - but as a TRUE reader - are the first and longest thread connecting these bits. There are other threads wending their own way, rest assured, and if you are patient you'll catch glimpses of them. How everything comes together in the end is really quite brilliantly impactive. But you, as the reader, should just enjoy being woven along with them. Take your time, and linger after each few pages. There is so much to connect with, so very much that a bibliophile will recognize and feel echoed back from their own bookish heart. At turns it is quirky, and sad, full of yearning and magic, silliness and seriousness, and all so eloquently stated.
I, as the reader, found that I could pull so many things from these excerpts that vibrated at my same frequency. So many that, ultimately, I see that they are all just best exactly where they are. This is the kind of book that it is hard to do justice to, because any review or reaction is just so very dependant on the person reading it, and it's true and acceptable that someone else may find this to be just so much meandering tripe. I mean, I will think they are wrong , and not actually true readers- not readers at heart, because this book spoke to the part inside of me that is forever curled up in some comfy chair, surrounded by mountainous, endless stacks of books that I will tirelessly be questing to make my through.
I did actually read this once before, about 13 years ago, and it clearly did not strike me the same way then. I came into this reading with no recollection of what was inside these pages. So, perhaps my advice might be this: Secure yourself a copy of this book right now. If you can, find the lovely little bound edition with a slipcase, illustrations and delicious paper. Then put it on your shelf and let it sit there while you read your way through your own mountain of books. Stew in the juices of those other books, and let their fun and flavour and sadness and adventure seep into your very marrow. Do this for a very long time. I think it is the best way to prepare yourself for a ride on the back of the Logogryph.
May 29, 2023
"In all that I read now, in memory and in the scattered library that is the world, I search for you" (234)
Recently in life, i've been feeling like i was never at home in any place. Not in my home with my family. Neither with my boyfriend. Not in Edinburgh where I spent a semester studying and that semester changed my life. Maybe the airport where I don't know where i'm going and the instability of it feels like home. But i never feel complete. I never feel understood. And i therefore often feel alone.
"He had to admit that his world didn't exist where he was now. It would never appear on the schedule board, no matter how long he waited. He was displaced in time as well as space. His world was a place that only stories came from, and those who had lost their stories, and no bus would take him here" (61)
This book felt like home. It felt like a friend. It wasn't that extraordinary and I read it too quickly because I had to return it to my uni's library.
"The novel is the island, and in reading it you become its solitary inhabitant (...). Everything you build now is temporary, makeshift, constructed for survival and prone to collapse when the elements grow fierce. But this now is your space: here you can make a new beginning, discover an entire world and be recreated by it" (35)
But for a short 200 pages-time, I felt understood. I didn't feel alone. I felt linked with every reader on earth, I felt heard, like someone could understand what I felt while reading books. And for a short moment, I felt at home. It was actually a strange encounter: I was browsing through the shelves of the library, looking for American Psycho by Ellis, when I came upon this strange book and felt a pull towards it. Like it was calling me. And I was right to answer it.
"In this new world he found refuge now and again with people who spotted him across a room, or stopped to talk to him in the street. It was as if they could sense that he would not (...) - look for the end of the quote
"For a while I lived within its story, until another book tempted me away. I could tell you its name: the novel is well-known, but what mattered that day was the possibility of the book's still unread pages, its dreams of what other books it might be" (23)
"The object of his desire would be drawn to him as a woman's blood is drawn by the moon" (101)
"If one knows the stories, one knows the people" (118)
"We thought of the beliefs of the ancients, that books had souls which over time became inseparable from those souls which over time became inseparable from those of their readers" (222)
"He could not leave these poor wretches in their solitude, and so he would remain here, reading to each of them in turn through the unending night. We had much proof already, during the long journey to this region, of his impulsive, romantic temperament, and now it appeared he had finally found a purpose worthy of his exalted sense of destiny" (225)
"I didn't know it then, but this was my first glimpse of what I have come to call the logogryph, the elusive creature that lives within books" (22)
Recently in life, i've been feeling like i was never at home in any place. Not in my home with my family. Neither with my boyfriend. Not in Edinburgh where I spent a semester studying and that semester changed my life. Maybe the airport where I don't know where i'm going and the instability of it feels like home. But i never feel complete. I never feel understood. And i therefore often feel alone.
"He had to admit that his world didn't exist where he was now. It would never appear on the schedule board, no matter how long he waited. He was displaced in time as well as space. His world was a place that only stories came from, and those who had lost their stories, and no bus would take him here" (61)
This book felt like home. It felt like a friend. It wasn't that extraordinary and I read it too quickly because I had to return it to my uni's library.
"The novel is the island, and in reading it you become its solitary inhabitant (...). Everything you build now is temporary, makeshift, constructed for survival and prone to collapse when the elements grow fierce. But this now is your space: here you can make a new beginning, discover an entire world and be recreated by it" (35)
But for a short 200 pages-time, I felt understood. I didn't feel alone. I felt linked with every reader on earth, I felt heard, like someone could understand what I felt while reading books. And for a short moment, I felt at home. It was actually a strange encounter: I was browsing through the shelves of the library, looking for American Psycho by Ellis, when I came upon this strange book and felt a pull towards it. Like it was calling me. And I was right to answer it.
"In this new world he found refuge now and again with people who spotted him across a room, or stopped to talk to him in the street. It was as if they could sense that he would not (...) - look for the end of the quote
"For a while I lived within its story, until another book tempted me away. I could tell you its name: the novel is well-known, but what mattered that day was the possibility of the book's still unread pages, its dreams of what other books it might be" (23)
"The object of his desire would be drawn to him as a woman's blood is drawn by the moon" (101)
"If one knows the stories, one knows the people" (118)
"We thought of the beliefs of the ancients, that books had souls which over time became inseparable from those souls which over time became inseparable from those of their readers" (222)
"He could not leave these poor wretches in their solitude, and so he would remain here, reading to each of them in turn through the unending night. We had much proof already, during the long journey to this region, of his impulsive, romantic temperament, and now it appeared he had finally found a purpose worthy of his exalted sense of destiny" (225)
"I didn't know it then, but this was my first glimpse of what I have come to call the logogryph, the elusive creature that lives within books" (22)
December 13, 2023
2023 review: 1 star
DNF at pg. 69; 25%.
This book really must have the ability to acquire and lose its pages because I swear I loved this the first time I read it. On this reread it so aggressively gave male MFA student that I couldn't continue. For a much better book that has similar vibes I would recommend Piranesi or The Starless Sea. A real shame because it is a truly beautifully bound book - the paperback has a removeable jacket and a small paper box to slide into. Someone at my local used bookstore will be very happy to find him.
To paraphrase two quotes that rubbed me the wrong way:
1. A young male protagonist is peeved a girl won't look at him and continues to be vexed that she doesn't talk with him. Then later as young adults she's extremely intoxicated and drunkenly kisses him and he says something mean to her. It felt like male entitlement that was not challenged at all by the text.
2. a different older male adult protagonist describes a woman he slept with calling him mean and then he reflects that she really is a girl not a woman. Yuck. I hate reading male self-actualization stories where women are set pieces.
2015 review: 5 stars
frosted cranberries, old round buttons, porcelain dolls in your grandmother's attic, the crunch of pretzels, fresh hay, stale chips, a loose tooth
A book about books, with books within. Already I can feel the phrases and punctuation moving about, shaping it once again into a new possibility for a book, never defined but confined within its covers.
DNF at pg. 69; 25%.
This book really must have the ability to acquire and lose its pages because I swear I loved this the first time I read it. On this reread it so aggressively gave male MFA student that I couldn't continue. For a much better book that has similar vibes I would recommend Piranesi or The Starless Sea. A real shame because it is a truly beautifully bound book - the paperback has a removeable jacket and a small paper box to slide into. Someone at my local used bookstore will be very happy to find him.
To paraphrase two quotes that rubbed me the wrong way:
1. A young male protagonist is peeved a girl won't look at him and continues to be vexed that she doesn't talk with him. Then later as young adults she's extremely intoxicated and drunkenly kisses him and he says something mean to her. It felt like male entitlement that was not challenged at all by the text.
2. a different older male adult protagonist describes a woman he slept with calling him mean and then he reflects that she really is a girl not a woman. Yuck. I hate reading male self-actualization stories where women are set pieces.
2015 review: 5 stars
frosted cranberries, old round buttons, porcelain dolls in your grandmother's attic, the crunch of pretzels, fresh hay, stale chips, a loose tooth
A book about books, with books within. Already I can feel the phrases and punctuation moving about, shaping it once again into a new possibility for a book, never defined but confined within its covers.
September 24, 2020
Sometimes, in books, there is a touch of magic. Sometimes books are a touch of magic. Sometimes I stumble on books like this that I want to share with other people, wondering if they will find the magic in them. All of which is to say, this book has, is and allows for magic. Or perhaps it allows for ways of noticing and sensing and imagining, and for some kind of echo, however magical that is. Or perhaps you just have to read this book, and experience it, and see where it takes you, and see if you are the kind of person it can take anywhere, and see if you are the kind of person who finds that books are ways of being somewhere, whatever any "somewhere" can be because of a book, and whatever "being there" can be as well.
I liked it. A lot.
I liked it. A lot.
June 22, 2016
Even in paperback this is a beautiful book with a slipcover, dustjacket, quality paper and laid out in Adobe Caslon. It's a book with chapters that are mostly unrelated to each other but all tell interesting stories. I particularly liked the tale of the Atlanteans and their reading habits and the giant underground library.
The LA Times book blog recently had a nice story on this book:
In Appreciation of Thomas Wharton
I've also read and enjoyed Wharton's two other books Icefields and Salamander
The LA Times book blog recently had a nice story on this book:
In Appreciation of Thomas Wharton
I've also read and enjoyed Wharton's two other books Icefields and Salamander
June 16, 2018
A gorgeous little book of imaginary books, dueling marginalia writers, displaced protagonists, and a family, as seen by an outsider. For bibliomaniacs only. No one else will appreciate it enough, and would probably spoil the brown paper slipcover. That would be horrible.
December 23, 2011
This is my favourite book. Wharton creates a mutitude of beautiful worlds that are all interconnected.
April 6, 2015
nothing less than a treasure
November 17, 2017
This is a beautiful book, both in the physical material and the writing. It is from a small Canadian press. It comes complete with a cover sleeve and gorgeous, thick paper.
It has short passages that are about books and reading. Some are taken from real life, such as the story about the inventor of paper. But some are fictional.
I loved the story about the lost character. A man doesn’t know what to do with his life when he suddenly finds himself alone in a train station. But then he realizes that he must be a character in a story.
One thing I would change about this book is I would give each passage a title. It would organize them more, especially the ones that continue throughout the book.
I loved this book and I recommend it for all other bibliophiles!
It has short passages that are about books and reading. Some are taken from real life, such as the story about the inventor of paper. But some are fictional.
I loved the story about the lost character. A man doesn’t know what to do with his life when he suddenly finds himself alone in a train station. But then he realizes that he must be a character in a story.
One thing I would change about this book is I would give each passage a title. It would organize them more, especially the ones that continue throughout the book.
I loved this book and I recommend it for all other bibliophiles!
June 9, 2024
Incredible. Amazing. Beautiful in style and form and meaning. This book about books is a must read for everyone who likes books. I cannot comprehend the imagination of the writer, the skill of bringing everything together in the end. The writing is so delicate without being difficult or wordy...
Do yourself a favour and read this. Today. One of the best books I have ever read.
Do yourself a favour and read this. Today. One of the best books I have ever read.
May 31, 2018
Sur les imaginaires du livre. Magnifique.
November 14, 2022
first couple chapters : this book is MAGICAL. it's such a well written story, and it definitely exceeds expectations. i've read so many interesting descriptions of books and then read the story and it's nothing like what it seemed. they bring it down to earth too much to be enjoyed, but thomas wharton writes cinematically and it's absolutely beautiful. he lets you fall in love with a story and then ends it in such a way that somehow leaves you both satisfied and yearning for more, before weaving another wonderful tale that repeats the cycle of intrigue. 100/10, will be recommending to anyone who wants to get lost in a thousand worlds and swept into a sea of inspiration.
post finishing : welp. the writing style is incredible, but it gets dark. if you like that kind of thing, go ahead. i would also highly recommended it to writers, because his style is so beautiful and easy to get through. overall giving it three stars because of the turn it took. it was a really cool idea and there were some very interesting chapters, but, like i said, it got dark.
post finishing : welp. the writing style is incredible, but it gets dark. if you like that kind of thing, go ahead. i would also highly recommended it to writers, because his style is so beautiful and easy to get through. overall giving it three stars because of the turn it took. it was a really cool idea and there were some very interesting chapters, but, like i said, it got dark.
Want to read
September 16, 2009This "to-read" might take a bit, I'm in the process of ordering the book from the backlist of a small press in Canada.
June 10, 2009
There is a beautiful, fascinating, deeply characterized, sad sumptuous novel in here that Wharton just didn't quite actually fully write. Too bad. Not a waste of time, though, anyway.
January 4, 2011
This little book is mentioned in "Salamander" by the same author and is a kind of autobiographical explanation for why the narrator likes stories.
July 4, 2012
So gorgeaus and lovely. I keep putting it down, then picking it up. It's filled with interconnected vignettes :)
July 19, 2011
I've read his other books and was very interested in this new book. An interesting collection of ideas and thought and stories and narratives about stories, narratives, novels, reading. Wonderful.
October 29, 2025
I think in the hands of someone else this would be a beautiful read, but I just didn't get it. It was not what I was expecting, and just too jumpy for me to follow.
January 31, 2008
loved this...it made me smile.
Want to read
January 11, 2011Another Thomas Wharton! Yaaaay!
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews