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10 Books I Never Wrote

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A collection of phantoms, fragments, and short stories which have remained orphans among my books.

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10 Books I Never Wrote

Randy KleinTaking Shape Books

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10 Books I Never WroteThe Books

My Life in Baseball 7

High Concept 17

Dad’s Story 21

Doppio Senso 29

Texture of the Woods 37

Everyone I Met on the Day 47

Elephant 53

How I Became An Artist 63

Walking 73

FlipBook 83

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My Life in BaseballThis book was originally meant to be a collaboration with book artist John Bently. We were interested in the similarities between cricket and baseball, and how much the differences between them revealed about the nature of the UK and the US. We wanted to explain these two games to each other, and compare them by revisiting our personal childhood memories. After exchanging a series of emails, it became clear that the collaboration was not going to happen. I have given John the final word in this excerpt of the book that never was.

10 books I never wrote - book one

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Ebbets Field When I was a kid, I supported the Brooklyn Dodgers. Everyone did - at least, everyone living in Brooklyn. Their stadium was called Ebbets Field - in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn near the marshes, which were still underdeveloped. It was amazing that all the great heroes of my childhood were in such proximity to their fans. PeeWee Reese, Duke Snyder (the Duke), Yogi Berra, and their immortal manager, Casey Stengel - who invented baseball’s greatest saying - ‘It ain’t over till the fat lady sings’.

It seemed such a casual atmosphere, that one day when we were in the Ball park, one of my brothers urged me on to go on the field, and to talk to my hero, Duke Snyder. I did, but when my dad ran on to the field to photograph me, the cop came over, and the only photo he got was of me being ushered off the field by a gentle, elderly cop.

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A Man Stands TallestWhen I was about 12, I was in the Little League. Little League baseball is a totally regimented experience, having its own parks, local franchises, and even a national Little League World Series. Saturday baseball games were a serious family ritual. The coach was always a dedicated dad, the stereotypical army drill sergeant (who wanted to hang around with boys). I felt a bit

like I wouldn’t be doing my bit for America if I didn’t join a team. We were sponsored by a local Brooklyn hardware store - Colavito’s - and their name was embroidered in green across our uniforms. There was something very traditional about those uniforms....like they hadn’t changed since the 1890’s, with short sleeved shirts with long sleeved jerseys underneath, and 3/4 length elasticized britches. All in a striped heavy cotton with a beautiful long brim green cap.Well, this was the big day. For once I was in the starting lineup, and my parents were both there. “C’mon Randy, knock her out of the park” my mates were screaming. I just about held my own playing first base, really enjoying the long First Basemans mitt - for stretching and tagging out runners trying to get to first base. But when I came up to bat, it was like Casey at the bat. I could not get a piece of the ball. I felt great disgrace as I held my head down in the car on the way home. There was a sign on the wall at the ball park we played at. It said “A man stands tallest when he stoops to help a boy”. The only thing was, that sign was hung very low - just about the right height for a boy to read.

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Nose Story Actually, something similar happened to my brother Bob when he was about 15. He was in the designated box where batters wait when they are next at bat. When a batter connects with the ball, traditionally they toss the bat behind them before running like mad to first base. The batter ahead of Bob hit the ball, tossed the bat right into Bob’s face, and ran. Then everyone noticed that blood was pouring out of Bob’s nose, and play was stopped while he was attended to. The bat had broken his nose, and he was rushed to thehospital to have it reset. Now, as you probably guessed, all of the Kleins have a nose like mine - which is to say a variation on large with an ungainly hook.

But when Bob’s swelling and horrendously black and blue face finally settled down - lo and behold! He had the most attractive, chiselled nose ever seen in the history of the Klein gene pool. His life changed overnight. Being incredibly attractive to girls, he immediately gave up playing ball for more interesting

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pursuits. In fact, he also soon gave up studying (never his forte), and became a precocious gigolo. I can remember my dad getting phone calls from irate fathers saying their daughter had gotten knocked up by his son, and what was he going to do about it, eh?! Things got worse and worse at home until Bob finally moved out of the house (and into his car). He led a life of total debauchery for many years, basically until he finally settled down with his third wife at the age of 45 or so.I have often thought how much that careless batter affected Bob’s life. I wonder if Bob would agree.

Another Famous Baseball InjurySpeaking of my brother Bob’s life-altering nose injury on the baseball field, I am reminded of my sister Shelly’s baseball head injury. Which is pretty amazing, considering that she never actually played baseball in her life.Growing up in Brooklyn, there weren’t many grassy places to play ball, and so games were usually organised in the school yard.

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Well, soon after my sister Shelly learned to ride a bike confidently, my dad offered to take both of us out for a ride - in the road. This was an essential transitional part of growing up, when you could finally ride your bike in traffic. It was quite a perilous adventure. Even in those days, the roads of Brooklyn were full of big heavy American cars with acres of chrome bumpers and big, bloated fenders. We were riding along Ocean Parkway, a big wide street with six lanes of traffic, and we were cycling in single file - my dad, followed by Shelly, with myself last. As we passed a school yard, we could hear the distinctive crack of a batter solidly connecting with a hard ball. I could see the trajectory of the ball as it effortlessly sailed high over the chain link fence at the perfect angle to collide with a heavy smack into the side of my sister’s head. It was like one of those slow motion demonstrations of docking space ships. It must have hurt like hell, and my sister just exploded in screams and tears. But, through fear and inertia, she kept cycling right behind my dad - who seemed unaware of what had happened. Her legs kept on pumping the pedals with a life of their own, while the rest of her was frozen rigid - hands gripping the handlebars for dear life, eyes looking neither left nor right. I was the only one who had been treated to the whole view of the freak accident. When it finally dawned on my dad what had happened, there was considerable wobbling of bicycle wheels, before he led us to a safe place between some parked cars. It was only then that we could see the huge blue swelling on Shell’s face, made more intense by her continued uncontrollable sobbing, tears streaming down her face. God knows how we ever made it back home. Funny, but I can never remember Shelly riding a bike in the road again after that.

and from John Bently:Mike Gatting’s Nose - JB - 10/3/00Hi Randy,Just reading your last message again, about

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close proximity to stars....I think that’s so important in sport. I remember getting Maurice Setters’ autograph when he was playing cricket on a council pitch behind my house (He was at the time a Manchester United footballer...lots of people played both games in my childhood....not now...too much money involved). I think one of the consequences of rampant commercialism of sport is this separation which leads to alienation and eventually the sport dying because the heroes get too far removed to Mount Olympus beyond the clouds. Another great memory of mine is watching the great West Indies team of the Seventies with their fearsome fast bowling quartet Garner, Croft, Roberts and Holding practising in the nets and all of us laughing and thinking, fuck, these guys are fast. Next year, Holding, I think it was, stuck a ball right on Mike Gatting’s (England batsman of the Yeoman Footsoldier Variety) nose and they had to pick bits of shattered bone out of the ball before restarting the game (This is not an exaggeration). Brilliant thing was, they were real, these people, Gods, but mortal.

I end with a quote from a song by the Kinks.

“ Some people say that life’s a game, And if this is so I’d like to know If there’s a game more fitting than Cricket. It has honour, and character and it’s British So, Keep a straight bat at all times let the bible be your guide and you’ll get by!”

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High ConceptThis was a book which grew out of frustration at the marketing of artists as product. It seemed that an artist’s work had to be able to be described in one sentence, similar to the idea of ‘high concept’ which gets a film financed. Short, simple tags give a better chance of being a sticky USP in a crowded marketplace full of hype.Hence the idea to gather together a large number of these ‘high concept’ descriptions which in few words encapsulate an artists’ practise. I thought it would be fun as a guessing game too.However, it soon struck me that this whole idea smacked of envy. Especially because my own work is so diverse and could never be summarised so succinctly.

The work is an attempt to examine how people communicate with each other and how objects often get in the way

His painting calls into question false opposites; the replete subjectivity of the expressive artist against the anonymous and rationalised objectivity of ‘processed-based painting’

He turns the seeming banality of the everyday into a site for serious reflections on the shadowy depths of the contemporary collective psyche

She explores the ways in which social groups psychologically adapt to new conditions

His stripe paintings are instantly recognizable as responses to the formalist vocabulary of Clement Greenberg that defined the art of the 1950’s and 1960’s.

10 books I never wrote - book two

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She begins her creative process by stretching, rotating or cropping forms, combining images and photocopying them over and over again until she produces a collage that can serve as preliminary study for her paintings

His elliptical work frequently involves open-ended investigations and collaborations

Her on-going investigation into dystopian architecture, secular habitation and the construction of sanctuary as an inherent drive to form refuge from the world

His pioneering practice at the intersection between art and other disciplines such as cybernetics, systems research, learning theory, communications theory and computer technology

His idea of gaming with time and space is an absolute, though not negative, re-evaluation of the idea of human progress

He is in seemingly indefatigable pursuit of darkly comic trouble and the capsizal of order

What the artist is famed for, of course, is a load of shit. There’s a radical pessimism here.

Her compositions in a continuous feedback loop, making manipulated reproductions of her partner’s results

She is a kind of restless deconstructionist: following a period of making cutout versions of brushstrokes, she cleved to a historical intersection of painting and photography

A lot of effusive, colour-laced bulbosity

He captures the ‘spirit of childhood’ without giving way to silliness or obsession. Nostalgia, disquieting strangeness, dreams that turn into nightmares

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The trailblazer of painting-scaled, truth-querying, postproduction-laced photography

Since the 1990’s she has moved from sites of entertainment and fantasy downwards towards the homespun spaces of hobbyists clubs and in a conflux of film and photographs, the remote New Zealand cabin of a former possum trapper

Cut construction paper carefully, even lovingly, glued together in order to create playfully absurdist tableaux

etc,. etc., etc.....

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10 books I never wrote - book three

My Dad was always saying to me “I’ve had so many experiences, I could write a book”. He even went to the extent of trying to hire a ghost writer to help him in this quest, only to be horrified at the exorbitant fees.

I thought it would be a nice gesture to get him to tell me stories from his long life, and put them down in a book for him. It would be a nice surprise for him, I thought.Then, one time on a visit with him, he was so insulting I thought, ‘Why bother?’

Dad’s Story

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Pickles and Paint“I was 10 years old. I had a barrel of pickles on the weekend - on Sunday of course, what do you think, are you crazy - Saturday was Shabot. I sold them until there were none left.

“After the pickles, I got the idea to buy lollipops and sell them off a push cart. I would buy them by the box, and sell them four for a nickel. That was cheap! I would rent a push cart, sell the lollipops.

Origin“My family came from Austria - I don’t know what city. They didn’t talk about that. Mom’s family was from Bialystock (Poland/Russia).”

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“10 years old - after school for $10 a week I worked for P. Dulchin Paint on 8th Ave. “They sent me to the Bronx with a 5 gallon can of paint. I dragged the can of paint with a string tied to the handle on the subway, up and down the stairs”.

“That was too much - I quit after a week”.

“I was a bill collector, collecting bills for ‘cotton goods’, you know, fabric. It was sold on time, and you had to go around and collect the payments when they became due.”

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Rent Collector“Uncle Paul owned property in Brooklyn. Not in the best neighborhoods, you know, slums.“I collected rent for him. He shut off the heat in the winter and went down to Florida. I was lucky to get the rent from them - I could have been killed down there. It was small amounts, $10. Uncle Paul owned brownstones - by Macy’s in downtown Brooklyn. Who knew they would be worth something one day? ““Uncle Paul owned property in Florida too.”

Butcher“Later, in Brooklyn, I became a butcher.”

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Property“2544 Hubbard Street. I bought it in the depression for $8100. $8100 in 1930 was a lot of money. Sold it to go to Florida for $22,000.I sold it with a sign in the street. No agency, no realtor.

“Rocco was the handyman at Hubbard Street. Rocco built the downstairs for me. He had to make the toilet - had to dig into the sewer drains.”

Florida“Davie. I bought the house in Davie in Florida for $16,000. Sold it for $32,000. Sold it to a nice man from Fort Lauderdale for his girl friend. A rich man, he paid me in CASH.

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I just found a purchaser by myself. I used to follow the salesmen around, talk to people, sell the house that way - no commission.“When the builder finished Davie it could have been sold for 80,000 - who knew?

“I bought Miramar for $25,000 and sold it for $50,000. I doubled my money. Sold it to a woman who worked for a charity.

“Finally, I bought in Sunrise - a condominium, for $28,000. 20 years later, I sold it for $32,000. I had to give a commission this time - it was hard to operate with an apartment. I tried to follow salesmen around - but I couldn’t find anyone interested. The commission was a fee, not a percentage - how could you give a percentage, what, are you crazy!?”

Jobs In Florida“My first job in Florida was in 1969. Combined Insurance. People in the poor neighborhoods bought life insurance by the week. They liked to show off with a big funeral, so this way when they died there was some money to send them off in style. Small amounts they paid, every week - $2, $3.They were poor people.

“I had to give Combined Insurance a $50 bond. He gave me a black area - they did wrong calculations, and every week I came up short. They never paid me my commission.“I should have stuck to real estate.

“Then I was a sales representative for artificial grass. Nobody was ready for it - you couldn’t sell it.Magnetic Signs was later.

“I sold dishes at night - you would go to the house, the lady would say ‘Come back when my

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husband is here’. So I started going around at night. The first dish was free, then they had to buy a whole set of pots and pans”.

Second World War“We were on Mannis Island - in the Philippines. South Sea - there were kamikaze pilots. Suicide bombers, just like now. I was on an LST - Landing Ship Tank. We brought military equipment, marines, unloaded on the island.

“I was a cook and baker - round the clock baking. I did 24 hours and then they tried to make me do another shift. I

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refused! What could the captain do to me? Put me in the brig? There is no brig on an LST - the ship was full.

“I kept a diary, but it wasn’t allowed. I thought, let me get out of here. My tour of duty was over. I was in Tsintao, China. I was the last to go home from my ship. We were island hopping - returned via Hawaii. I didn’t want trouble - just let me get home - so I buried the diary in the sand.

“The anti-Semitism on the ship was amazing. We were fighting against the Nazis’ anti-Semitism, but the worst anti-se mitten were in the US Navy!

“ ‘The Jews have everything’, they would say. That’s not true, is it?

“On the beach in Hawaii, finally we were sent home on an aircraft carrier. The diary is buried there, along with the carbide gun. All buried. I wanted to write it all out again - tried a celebrity ‘ghost’ writer, but she wanted 200 dollars an hour. Now I don’t have the desire any more.”

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Doppio Senso10 books I never wrote - book four

Written in both Italian and English, this book developed the theme of how fragile our communication with one another is. That even with two languages, we misunderstand one another.Kind of a text-heavy conceptual extravaganza. Not really my kind of thing in the end...

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10 books I never wrote - book five

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‘Texture of the Woods’ was inspired by following the changing seasons in the countryside in Italy. It had a promising start, but refused to go further. Finally, I realised that no matter how sympathetic I felt towards the landscape, I still was a city rat at heart. And so this book eventually morphed into what became ‘Inner Cities’, about being in the countryside and still having the city within.

It begins with a very romantic view of the countryside and then gradually gets distracted by the dreary annoyances of living in a remote landscape.

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Little things like ants in your bed, and wasp eggs in your thermostat start to drive you crazy if you are used to living in a city. Eventually these little problems wear down the romantic illusions about nature.

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Finally, the romantic fantasy of buying somewhere in a really remote place comes to a head on viewing a tumble down house, in a delicious state of decay.The cracks in the old stone walls and the huge rotten supporting beams all fit the dream perfectly.

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The bed was covered in debris from the falling masonry. And yet it was still perfectly made, with sheets tucked in and a pillow tucked in its pillow case. It was all just too perfect.

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And then somehow seeing the dinner table, with places set but disturbed by the presence of hunks of fallen plaster, sets the alarm bells ringing, and it becomes clear how preposterous is the idea of living somewhere as remote as this.

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And finally, watching a local farmer cutting the grass brings home the realisation that only as a fantasy is this is a life for someone from New York City.

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Everyone I Met in a Day

10 books I never wrote - book six

The idea being to photograph everyone I met during the course of a day. The day? April Fools Day, 2004. The photos all look interesting to me now, but I wasn’t sure it would be that interesting to anyone else.

Andre

Sarah, Ruby and Carol

Jenny

Steve

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Jonathan and Justine

Ivor Ivor’s hands

Beatrice Beatrice and Tina

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Jenny and Helen

Olivia Olivia and Natalie

The guys at London Engineering

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Fiona teaching ballet

Eva with Josie and Beatrice

Randy Jenny

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Sarah Wendy

Ava and family

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10 books I never wrote - book six

An Elephant’s EyeWhile I was teaching sculpture at an Art College, one of my students saw some of my artists’ books and thought I should try my hand at creating a children’s book for a commercial publisher. This wasn’t the first time it had been suggested to me, but I had always ignored the suggestion. But I had two small children at home at the time, and this student of mine was a ‘book packager’, so I decided to give it a go. I wrote a simple book with cut-outs, which encouraged a child to imagine seeing the world through the eyes of animals. Sheesh, can you imagine anything more ill-advised?Anyway, I soon found out what a waste of time these so-called ‘book packagers’ were, and how little they actually risked of their own time and money in trying to make ‘book deals’.Ah well, a lesson learned.

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If you can imagine.....

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why don’t you try

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seeing the worldseeing the world

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through an elephant’s eye

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10 books I never wrote - book seven

How I Becamean ArtistThis was going to be a humourous autobiography, hang your dirty linen out warts and all, amusing riff on why I decided to be an artist. A close friend took one look at it and said, ‘What, are you going to put all of that in one book?!?’ It made me realise the foolishness of such an idea. Not immediately, of course, At first I kept at it, writing and creating images. But then it dawned on me. Yes, what a mad idea it would be.......

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I used to help my dad out in his shop - Homecrest Wine and Liquors. I used to deliver crates of wine on a bicycle with a huge basket over the front wheel. I will never forget delivering a crate to some Italian family. I stood the bike on its stand, but before I could lift the crate, the kick stand gave out and the gallon bottles crashed to the ground. There were four gallons of wine pouring down the Bocciacalupi driveway. The smell was very strong, and the neighbors had to come out and have a look. Very embarrassing.In the liquor store, out of boredom, I used to sketch little portraits of the customers, and one day an art director from Esquire magazine came in. He said that Esquire had an art program for kids like me, and that perhaps my parents would like to send me to it. “What’s the point of that?”, said my dad to my mom. “Esquire should just buy some of his drawings”. So he put me to work with a new set of coloured pencils, and I was to produce a professional commercial art portfolio. My dad saw visions of dollar signs dancing before his eyes.Well of course, it was not very successful - somehow they weren’t ready for the humour of a precocious 14 year old. But my mom had grown up with Al Capp, the famous cartoonist of Li’l Abner. She wrote to him and he wrote letters back and sent some sketches. He said that the Art Students League had a great Saturday program for kids and that he had studied there himself. Once again, my dad was not impressed. I would have liked to have started studying then. But my road to becoming an artist was never going to be as straightforward as that.

Homecrest Wine and Liquors

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When I finally started studying art, it was at the very same Art Students League of New York, but I was now an adult and had to work while I studied. I lived on 13th St. and I began by driving a taxicab at night. This was a pretty unhappy experiment, and I eventually had my hack license revoked (see Tales of New York). Then I got a job at a wine store in Greenwich Village. I was alone in the shop every evening, and studied art in the day. Just as it had been in my dad’s wine shop, I used my free time in the shop to read and draw. It was fine, except for the time I got held up at gunpoint during my first week of work. The owner came in the next day and said, “Oh that’s normal. Whenever we hire someone new they get robbed in the first week, Things should get more relaxed now.” This was just before Halloween, and a former girl friend, hearing of this, thought it might be fun to play a trick on me. She came in with her new boy friend on Halloween night, both of them dressed in masks and guns drawn. They kicked in the door in and shouted, “Give us your money!” It wasn’t really that much fun for me, and they nearly frightened themselves to death as well.

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Drawing from LifeOne Saturday night I was alone in my apartment, working on a painting, when I decided to go out and have a slice of pizza. It was about midnight, and there was a pizza place right on 1st Ave. I walked in, bought my slice, and since it was a very cold night, decided to eat my slice there, leaning on the counter. There, next to me, was a very interesting- looking girl with very dark hair, who smiled invitingly at me as she chewed her slice. After talking for a bit, she offered to accompany me back to my apartment. “Wow”, I thought.

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“And here I was thinking about what a boring Saturday night it was”.We got up to my apartment, and sat down at the kitchen table. As I was in the habit of doing in those days, I began sketching my unknown guest as we chatted. As we talked, she began to undress - starting with her sweater, then pulling off her leather skirt - until she was sitting opposite from me in a black lace bra and a pair of net stockings. Suddenly her expression changed. “I can take care of myself you know....” as her hand reached for her little black hand bag. “So don’t think you can take advantage of me...” and she pulled out from her bag a neat black pistol which she gently set on the table between us.I pretended to be unconcerned, but while my hand continued to draw automatically, my mind raced. “How am I going to get rid of this nutter without provoking her?”, I thought.Meanwhile, having placed her cards on the table so to speak, my guest was getting even friendlier - getting up and coming over to me with some idea of sitting on my lap. “Maybe it’s just a precaution”, I thought. “It must be hard for a girl on her own in New York”. But I stopped myself from pursuing this line of thought, and said something about having to get on with some work. Once again her expression changed - quizzical at first, and then embarrassed to be standing half naked in a strange man’s apartment. She slipped the gun back into her bag, and got dressed. Then, with quiet passivity, she allowed me to walk her down the five flights of stairs to the street, where she wandered off into the night.

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actual drawing by the Pizza Girl in my sketchbook

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My First Exhibition in ItalyOnce, when living in London, I got a phone call at about 8pm from the Croydon police station. They had picked up a lost Italian guy who couldn’t speak any English. He had my phone number with him. Translating between the police and the Italian guy, it seemed he was a friend of a friend, in London for the first time. The police released Massimo on my assurances, and he managed to find his way to the flat in Belsize Park..Massimo was a young man in turmoil. I never found out what was troubling him, but it was just apparent that the makeshift home I had created in London with Val and her kids was just what Massimo needed. He stayed for several weeks, having ‘an Italian abroad’ sort of adventures, and then returned to Italy. Well, he was very taken with visiting my studio, and when he returned to Italy, ended up setting up a gallery in Mantova in north Italy. When he was just starting out, Massimo wanted to christen the new gallery with a show of an American sculptor, living in London, namely me.The show was called “un Americano a Mantova” and Gene Kelly never had it so good.

Massimo was a bit of a muscle builder

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Renault 12 for a sculptureMy first important sale was to Nick, who liked a little bronze sculpture I had made of Phoebus, symbol of the Sun. He offered me his old Renault 12 for it. A beautiful car, which had only one door working, so you had to slide across the passenger side to get in. It was a strange shape, and was two-tone with a black roof and white body. Somehow I managed to get 28 bronze sculptures in it for the exhibition with Carasi, my first Italian show. Getting the sculptures in was a feat, but driving them across the alps was a treat. The frontier police asked me to pull one of the sculptures out, and scratched his chin uncomprehendingly. He called for his mates to come and have a look, and they agreed it was probably contemporary art, and therefore not subject to customs controls.

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10 books I never wrote - book nine

WalkingActually, there is a bit of confusion about whether this book should even be called ‘Walking’. It was meant as a collaboration, sort of a follow-up to ‘Jeff and Mabel Hit the Road’. The book was originally called ‘Gaps Between’. We kept revising, changing, developing ideas, until it became unwieldy. There was a lot of good writing and some interesting pictures. It just never coalesced into anything remotely resembling a book. Which is not to say that one day it won’t finally emerge, the sparkling, more profound, sequel to ‘Jeff and Mabel’.

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It is the story of a young woman returning to her suburban origins. Combining walking along Peckham Park with the trees of youth, and constantly interrupted by the distractions of domesticity and motherhood.

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The writing was eloquent, poetic, atmospheric and it inspired lots of drawings and collages from me. But there was a level of understanding of the writing which I never truly understood, and it made me feel stupid. And so the book remained unfinished and has joined this collection of books I never wrote.

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10 books I never wrote - book ten

Flip BookI have been creating work in series for a while now. For example, a group of paintings which are read like a comic strip in sequence. But most of all, I have been making a series of sculptures which work as a sequence, almost like storyboard. I have even made them into short animated films, which can be seen here:http://www.randyklein.co.uk/sculpture/transitions.htmIt struck me as a good idea to try and make these into a ‘flip book’ with one picture of a sculpture to a page. Well, this present book has already become a lot longer than I ever intended, and therefore it seems very extravagant to add another hundred or so pages. Instead, I have reserved a small section at the bottom of every page for one of these sculptures. If you flick the book from here to the front, you should see what I mean.

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