In the State Capitol and around Louisiana, performance artist Tim Youd retypes classic novels

Walking into the echoing Memorial Hall of the State Capitol building, you can hear Tim Youd working before you even see him. He’s at a folding table on one side of the hall reading Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All the King’s Men.

He’s also typing. As he reads, he types out the same story Warren told—word for word—on the same make of typewriter Warren used, with the tick, tick, tick reverberating through the hall.

On a Friday in mid-January, he’s almost halfway through. He started at the New Orleans Museum of Art for three days, then relocated to the Capitol—where key scenes of the book are set—for 12 days of intensive typing, coming in around 10 a.m. and sauntering out when the building closes at 4 p.m.

“My neck kind of went out a few days ago, so I had to get a massage and try to stretch it out,” Youd says with a laugh about the long hours spent at his makeshift desk.

His fingers are stained with ink, partially because he’s fidgeting with the old Remington portable typewriter, but also because he’s limited himself to one sheet of paper. The entire novel, all 464 pages, relegated to a single sheet he re-inserts into the typewriter over and over. Tick, tick, tick. Word on top of word.

There’s another page behind it that serves as a photocopy for all the ink that seeps through.

“This typewriter is pretty hard on the paper, and the novel is so long that I’ve had to patch and repatch it several times,” he says.

But that, in a way, is sort of the point. Retyping All the King’s Men is part of Youd’s ongoing performance piece called “100 Novels Project.” He started the project four years ago, and now, on his 44th novel, he doesn’t see it stopping for another six or seven years. For each novel, he aims to find the same make of typewriter the author used and to spend some time retyping it in a location that was relevant to the story.

In October, he retyped A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole at Faulkner House Books in New Orleans. In November, he retyped The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines beneath the “Miss Jane Oak” tree in Pointe Coupee Parish.

The New Orleans Museum of Art organized his performances in Louisiana, with five completed works displayed at the museum in February.

“Why I’m doing it is to be as good a reader as possible, and I think you stand the best chance of being a good reader if you’re reading something beyond the first time and really trying to parse it out,” Youd says. “I think the typewriter and the location is sort of the other half of it—there’s this very devotional close reading of the text, then perhaps this more whimsical or absurd literary pilgrimage component of it that’s tied to the typewriter and location.”

For a novel informed by Louisiana politics, it’s almost fitting that Youd got to see politics at work from his desk during a particularly volatile time inside the Capitol. “When I did my first day here, [the Louisiana Legislature] were just having their fight over the new speaker,” he says. “I started that afternoon right after that session broke, so I met a few of them.”

What Youd calls his “oddball pilgrimage” made sense to him when he started the project. It allows him to engage with anyone who stops by and asks what he’s up to.

“I don’t think the performance would be as interesting if I just sat in my studio in Los Angeles with the door open and said anybody can stop by,” he says. “It’s kind of defined itself and gained profile, and I’ve been invited to different places. The logistics of it become more complex, but … I enjoy it more each time. Each one I’m getting more out of—I’m in no rush to wrap it up.” timyoud.com