his book’s title - or should I say object? - N O N (is it Latin?) can be read from right to left or left to right and mean the same thing. If the word’s meaning is independent of the direction in which weread it, something else is at stake with this word isolated on the page: the empty pages that surround the different signs, words, fragments or phrases of this book (Smoke this page) can be taken for a negation of all context or for a résumé of all the contexts in which these found words figure. Like its first word, the entire book, and this underlines the object nature of the suite of signs as much as that of the visual rhythm of this book, can be read starting at the beginning or the end; this starts, if we keep to five pages, the same way each time: N O N and the mathematical sign for “infinity” alternate. Language is the infinite use of finite means, “finished” can be filed with negation. A day can begin with the first concrete word in the book: CORN FLAKES.
Benedikt Ledebur (Vienna)

Haim Steinbach
N O N
Published September 2002

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