Hardcover. London, Fuel, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. 192 pages. Plutser-Sarno has been collecting Russian street messages, usually hand-written and posted on walls, for two decades; this book is a sampling from his Museuam of Ads and Announcements. The notes are of a great variety: seeking recruits for cults or prostitution, offering items, some of them bizzare ones, for barter, warning miscreants of dire harm should they, for example, continue to steal light bulbs from a common corridor, prohibiting--predictably--a wide range of activities, and occasionally pleading in tones of insanity. Many of the messages are shown in illustrations, and Pluter-Sarno offers brief comments, sometimes necessary ones: Without them I shouldn't have known, for example, that 'artificial rock' was a euphemism for a concrete slab. (I'm sorry though that he didn't explain what curious Slavic behaviors created the need for notices in public lavoratories asking users to abstain from standing on toilet bowls.) Given the range of notes here, it's possible for the reader to get a hint of Soviet and post-Soviet customs and beliefs, the daily struggling with poverty and paucity, and the impact of the political upon the individual. Because Fuel, the publisher, is a design company it's small wonder that as an object this is a wonderful book. It's a small hardback with a cover done in relief, and sewn in signatures. The outer 2/3 of the pages are a kraft-paper brown and the inner 1/3, with colour illustrations, a cream color.
