Heliogabalus

William E. Jones

The third release in a series of books by William E. Jones, Heliogabalus pays tribute to the most decadent Roman Emperor. Who was this creature who called himself Elagabalus, after El Gabal, god of the sun? What to make of his addiction to luxury, his overbearing mother, his controversial genitals? Enlightening texts can be found in the latest 2nd Cannons publication. The book features accounts of Heliogabalus by Edward Gibbon, Herodian, Cassius Dio, and the spurious Aelius Lampridius. It also contains a contemporary text, “This Necrophilic Strategy Entails Some Risk,” a collaboration by Bruce Hainley and William E. Jones, previously published only in expurgated form, and now presented with all lurid details intact.

Varius Avitus Bassanius, later known in his infamy as Heliogabalus, ruled Rome from 218 to 222 of the Common Era. After he was murdered by the soldiers who had formerly supported him, his successor, Alexander Severus, ordered that all sculptures of Heliogabalus be desecrated. The iconoclasm directed against Heliogabalus was so nearly complete that very few portraits of him still exist. William E. Jones has somewhat opportunistically dealt with the paucity of images of this imperial person by inserting advertisements from a bygone era at intervals in Heliogabalus. These advertisements, and the book’s design in general, derive from the pages of that avatar of 1970s urban culture, After Dark.

2nd Cannons Publications 016
2009, 1st printing, edition of 500. 11x8.5" 43 pages $18.00

Selections from the Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

William E. Jones

Selections from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton telescopes 350 years, the period from the 1620s to the 1970s. It is what artist William E. Jones imagined Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy would have looked like had it appeared in the pages of Drummer magazine. In preparing the book, Jones condensed Burton’s vast 450,000-word masterpiece of 17th Century English literature to a small fraction of its length, and paired the excerpts with vintage images of leather men at work and play. Robert Burton was fascinated by the variations of human sexuality, albeit more as an observer than as a participant. He wrote about sex in covert Latin passages that are newly translated in Jones’s book. Selections from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton is a delightfully perverse condensation of Burton’s speculations on the sexual proclivities that subsequent generations of gay men put into exuberant practice. www.williamejones.com

2nd Cannons Publications 014
2008, 1st printing, edition of 500. 8.5x11" 43 pages $14.00

Tearoom

William E. Jones

Tearoom is a companion piece to Jones’s video of the same name. A work of appropriation, the video Tearoom is a police surveillance film – presented virtually unaltered – of men having sex in a public rest room in Mansfield, Ohio during a three week period in the summer of 1962. This film, used as evidence in court, led to the conviction of over 30 men on charges of sodomy, which at that time carried a minimum sentence of one year in the state penitentiary.

In the book Tearoom, William E. Jones presents the results of research on these cases and on the production of the surveillance film. The book includes a number of historical texts, as well as two new essays by Jones. Tearoom is extensively illustrated with more than 100 film stills, most of them in color. These stills show men from all walks of life who met for furtive sex under the central square of Mansfield, and who went to jail as the result of a law enforcement sting. Tearoom provides a unique view of the clandestine sexual life of a small Midwestern city at the beginning of the 1960s. www.williamejones.com

2nd Cannons Publications 010
2008, 2nd printing, edition of 1000. 8.5x11" 43 pages $24.00

Is It Really So Strange?

William E. Jones

Based upon an exhibition and a documentary of the same title, Is It Really So Strange? by William E. Jones documents the fan culture around The Smiths and Morrissey in Southern California. The book includes 60 black and white photographs of the fan scene, color stills from the movie, an extensive essay on contemporary Morrissey fans by Jones, and a preface by curator Bill Horrigan. Published by David Kordansky Gallery and designed by Brian Roettinger. www.williamejones.com

David Kordansky Gallery
2006 8.5x 5.5" 108 pages. $30.00