The Pillow Book

by Peter Greenaway (Artist)

The Pillow Book is director Peter Greenaway's celebration of the literary and calligraphic potential of cinema, and the eroticism of inscription.

Genres: Fiction, Film, Art

150 pages, Paperback

First published December 2, 1996

About the author

Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. He is currently professor of cinema studies at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Reviews

[Katsumi · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it cannot match the visual orgy that characterizes the movie, this book (and what else to call it? names are complicated, in the interplay between cinema and print) serves to reveal some of the skeleton beneath the flesh: anatomy of the limits of language, the ordering of a work concerned with the order we confine our thoughts to. Handy for those who aspire to Greenaway's puzzle-box classicism; quote fodder for those who seek to dissect his repetitive themes of sex, catalogues, fat men, water, and repetition (to name a few); but nothing in this book can do more than hint at the luscious sensuality of wet paint on bare skin, the towering beauty of written characters, and the disaster than comes when we pin all on a medium of communication that is ultimately without value or significance.