Digitize This! Jonathan Safran Foer's Crazy New Book

There are people out there who digitally modify e-books so that they resemble earlier, more handsomely formatted editions. Others build their own book scanners so that they may upload older titles that aren't digitally available. Both of these camps would be stymied by Jonathan Safran Foer's new project, Tree of Codes.

On the heels of his vegetarian manifesto, Foer has teamed up with British publisher Visual Editions to produce a book that simply can't be digitized because it has a different die cut on every page. Let me repeat that: a different die cut on every page. The text is culled from Foer's favorite story, Bruno Schulz's "The Street of Crocodiles." Foer cut around the text to create a new story that uses the INDIVIDUALLY DIE-CUT PAGES (different on every page!) to complement the narrative. VIsual Editions reports the great lengths they went through to make the book happen:

As Jonathan began to carve out his story, we started doing our production homework and literally got turned down by every printer we approached – their stock line being “the book you want to make just cannot be made”. Thankfully, we found Die Keure in Belgium who relished the challenge of making a book with a different die-cut on every page.

The book is due November 15.