In addition to my writings, which are arranged by year, there are several adjunct pages on my Residua website (www.residua.org). One of them is entitled “Publications,” which lists all my publications over the years. Lengthy though it is, the list tells a great deal about my protracted struggle with publishers. Most important, it contains a hole of some eighteen years in my publication record. It stretches between 1979 and 1996, no less. But there are many other holes in the record that are barely visible. One way to appreciate some of these holes is to compare the publication record with the writing writeup on my Ca’ Bon Gallery website (www.cabongallery.org). In particular, many a selection of pieces from my Residua is still waiting for a publisher.

A number of my pieces were published in 1976 and 1977 in Slovene reviews, such as Časopis za kritiko znanosti, domišljijo in novo antropologijo, Prostor, Teorija in praksa, and AB - Arhitektov bilten, all of which were published in Ljubljana. All of these pieces were translated into Slovene. The Urban Planning Institute of Slovenia, where I worked at the time, also published a book with a selection of my pieces in 1977. Entitled Notes on Social Planning, it was in English. Two more selections appeared in 1977 and 1978 in Telos, an American review, but under a pseudonym, for my writings where quite critical of Yugoslavia at the time. The third selection appeared in the same review in 1979, this time under my own name, because I had moved back to the States in the meanwhile.

The next publication on the list is Residua I-XX: Selections, a hefty volume that appeared in 1996 under the imprint of the Hereford Salon in London. The eighteen years without a single publication span my stays in the States and Britain. I was trying to find a publisher in the States, but without any success. Thus I reverted to samizdat, which was popular in the Soviet Union at the time (“Samizdat in America: Documentary Evidence,” July 15, 1982). To wit, I printed out my writings in yearbook format and distributed them to my friends. From time to time, I would print out the whole collection reaching back to 1976. Try as I might, I could not find a single publisher interested in my writings.

The first book of selections from my Residua also appeared in 1996. Entitled Why I Am Perhaps not an Artist, it was published by the Hereford Salon in London. The following year, Salon: Whence and Whither? First and Second Lecture also appeared under the same imprint. Starting in 1996, many of my pieces appeared in several London reviews, such as Inventory, Butterfly, Tank, Another Magazine, and The Jackdaw. In addition, Flash Art from Milano, as well as Statement Art and Gazet from Amsterdam, published quite a number of my pieces. My first piece appeared in The Economist in 1999 and in MIT’s Technology Review in 2003. Many more were to follow.

Beginning in the early Nineties, I started distributing my writings on postcards. I would print them out, paste them on postcards, and send them to a large number of people, mostly from the art world. Short pieces of up to one-hundred and fifty words could be distributed this way, but the distribution was entirely in my hands. I had many postcards of my own printed in this period, but I also used other postcards that were available for free in galleries, bookstores, and cafés. By the end of the decade, I also started using electronic mail for this purpose. Having amassed many an address, I would distribute my writings as electronic postcards. It was a joy to have everything in my own able hands.

Most important, my Residua appeared on the World Wide Web in 2000. This was a huge change in my life. Every three or four months, the website would be updated with new pieces, as well as addenda to old pieces. Although the website was kind of dead in the meanwhile, it contained much of my magnum opus, and I felt no less than fortunate to be able to publish my writings without anyone’s help. Everything changed once again in 2008, when my Residua appeared in blog format. The new software allowed me to add to my writings at will, as well as to post addenda whenever I wished. At long last, I became my own publisher for true.

Selections from my Residua continued appearing as books after the turn of the millennium. Vračarski Breg in Belgrade published my Belgrade Postcards in 2002 and Istrian Postcards in 2003. Published by C.A.C.I.T. in Trieste, a selection of my pieces also appeared in Italian in 2008. The same year, Republika from Belgrade published a selection of my pieces. In 2010, Elisabeth Sandmann Verlag from Munich published Toward a Short History of Motovun, and HESPERIAedu from Belgrade published What Is to Be Done? Climate Change for Beginners in 2014. It is a joy to see so many books of mine in my study in Motovun.

As I already said, a number of selections from my magnum opus are still waiting for a publisher. They are available in Portable Document Format on my Ca’ Bon Gallery website, but it would still feel good to see them in print. This includes Cave Art Now from 2003, Motovun Postcards from 2007, Catching Up with Issa from 2012, and Dying to Go to Strasbourg from 2015. The World Wide Web is wonderful, no doubt, but a book is still a book. And it is an unparalleled joy to hold your own book in your hands. Besides, it would be wonderful to see all of my writings in so many volumes, which would take an entire bookshelf by now. But the publisher on a white horse is still eluding me. Is there such a person or company anywhere around? After forty years with my Residua, I cannot but doubt it. Perhaps I will have to become my own publisher in the fullness of time. My savings ought to be sufficient for the endeavor, I reckon.

Addendum (October 24, 2015)

For completeness, I must add one more book of selections that has been shaping up for a bit more than seven years already: Who Is Yoga? Although its progress has been rather disappointing over much of that formidable stretch of time, the last few months give me much hope. In fact, I expect it to be finished next year. More precisely, I expect to finish it in time for my seventieth birthday. I will keep adding to it afterwards, as I always do with selections from my Residua, but it will be rounded off to my satisfaction within a bit less than six months. What is amazing about my expectation is that it gives me tremendous pleasure way in advance. Indeed, I am over the moon on account of my upcoming book, which I often think of as my last. Whenever it crosses my mind, and it so does a few times a day, I am overcome with joy. As far as expectations go, I do not remember them playing such an important part in my life ever before. This is an unprecedented experience, which only adds to the pleasure of it all. One way or another, my last book is just behind the corner!