Apprentice Book : A&P by John Updike

Reflect, Your Choice: I chose this story because it sparked the most emotion from me, as I felt infuriated by it.  I found myself being able to engage with this story the most, as I could feel myself being able to see myself in the situation more so than the other two stories.  The part of the text that I chose “I say ‘I quit’ to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero” because it was the area of the text that confused me the most and made me the most angry.  I was confused as to how this boy could think that quitting his job would somehow benefit him in the long run.  The guiding force to me was purely the emotion that the story brought out in me.  By being able to have a connection with the text, I found it easy to visualize the words in front of me and be able to to run it into a tangible piece of “art”.  Being able to see myself in this story, as the girls in it were only a little younger than I am, aided in my choice of story as well.  This story was the first story we read, but also the one that I remembered the most vividly when I began to think about making my apprentice book.

Reflect, Bookmaking: I chose to make the book really simplistic, as I envisioned it to be made by the boy behind the counter while he is on the clock, almost as if it is a note that he jotted down.  The front cover is the open sign that I imagined to be on the window of the small corner shop that he works at, while also incorporating the title “A&P”.  Similarly, I put the closed sign on the back of the book, as it symbolized not only the ending of the book, but also the end of the story in general, as the girls never talked to him again, and his time at the corner shop also ended.  The inside pages of the book are laid out in a way of expectation versus reality.  The left pages are what the boy thought was going to happen, what he hoped was going to happen.  Whereas the right pages are what actually happened, the harsh reality of his choices and his decisions that he didn’t see coming when he made them.  In creating this artist book, I was hoping to capture the simplicity of the situation, as it only took place in a maximum of a half an hour, but also showing how the expectations and the reality of the situation were nearly complete opposites.