Claes Oldenburg, the artist who set new terms for sculpture in the 1960s, is best known for his soft sculptures and his giant monuments of ordinary objects. Because they have been less well documented, Oldenburg's performances have not been fully integrated into the critical discourse surrounding his work. In Raw Notes, Oldenburg has scrupulously collected all of the material relating to his performances. According to his specifications, the text in the book is typed rather then set and appears on only one side of the page. Examples of the original manuscript are reproduced in sixty-three script plates, including stage plans, scores, sketches for programs, and posters. More than two hundred annotations by the author expand the text. Raw Notes will be indispensable as a document of these important aspects of Oldenburg's work.

Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq (Author)
Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq (1805 or 1806-1887) was a foundational figure in modern Arabic literature. Born to a prominent Maronite family in Lebanon, al-Shidyāq was a pioneering publisher, poet, essayist, lexicographer and translator. Known as ""the father of Arabic journalism,"" al-Shidyāq played a major role in reviving and modernizing the Arabic language.

Humphrey Davies (Translator)
Humphrey Davies is an award-winning translator of some twenty-five works of modern Arabic literature, among them Alaa Al-Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building, five novels by Elias Khoury, including Gate of the Sun, and Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq’s Leg over Leg. He has also made a critical edition, translation, and lexicon of the Ottoman-period Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded by Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī, as well as editions and translations of al-Tūnisī’s In Darfur and al-Sanhūrī’s Risible Rhymes from the same era. In addition, he has compiled with Madiha Doss an anthology in Arabic entitled Al-ʿāmmiyyah al-miṣriyyah al-maktūbah: mukhtārāt min 1400 ilā 2009 (Egyptian Colloquial Writing: selections from 1400 to 2009) and co-authored, with Lesley Lababidi, A Field Guide to the Street Names of Central Cairo. He read Arabic at the University of Cambridge, received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and previous to undertaking his first translation in 2003, worked for social development and research organizations in Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, and Sudan. He is affiliated with the American University in Cairo.