From Something Else Press: an annotated bibliography by Peter Frank: “The Anecdoted Topography documents in loving indulgent, but never boring detail the history of every morsel of detritus situated on a table in Spoerri’s Paris flat. Imagine Francis Ponge’s micro-realism take to extremes. Spoerri’s aesthetic, which figured prominently in the nouveau r&#233aliste movement, celebrates and magnifies the mundane and the usually minute changes that circumstances effect on the mundane. In most cases he has explored this by exhibiting as art objects the remains of meals affixed to the tables on which they were originally enjoyed. This book supplants the actual objects with historical itemization, replete with intimate illustrations by the French artist-illustrator (Roland) Topor. The histories, in turn, are expanded and supplemented by associative discursions characterized equally by banal factuality and towering erudition: recollected dialogue among friends, literary quotations concerning the item (or genre of item) in question, comparisons of quality and function between some given object and another (perhaps in Spoerri’s possession, perhaps an idealized version), etcetera. In translating this diverting discourse Emmett Williams added his own anecdotal annotations, like an Old Testament scholar appending commentary to scripture that becomes itself part of its fabric of knowledge and experience. Spoerri then annotated his translator; the possibility of unlimited embroidery and expansion becomes apparent. The book concludes with index, glossary, and a publisher’s note threatening supplements which never, alas, appeared.”