Every office I have ever been in has at least one corner plastered with cartoons, doggerel, and folk art made possible by the xerox machine. Taped on walls and bulletin boards, circulated by friends, these half-serious postings are galleries for a national communications channel that touches nearly everyone. Like all folklore, they are unexamined messages from the culture’s subconscious; the material which gets passed around the most is often racist, pornographic, or anti-bureaucratic. These two collections, accurately subtitled “Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire,” relay the quiet shift from an oral folklore to an inked folklore, driven by the inventions of typewriters, copy machines, and instant printers.
