"X" is one of the most provocative representations in contemporary culture: a symbol of capital, power, waste, and illicit desire. Based on the connection between language and lack, Sign after the X ______ investigates the letter "X" that is used in our culture as part of a complex sign system that encompasses the evolution of language back to its mythic origins.

Including many of her drawings, Marina Roy uses narrative--and the book conventions of the dedication, preface, introduction, postscript, errata, and index--to form a compendium of X words that is part philosophical treatise on the foundations of image and text, part illustration, part math lesson, and part language primer.

For the author, the combination of text and image arises from a desire to make words "flesh" as it were, a desire to treat text as a thing that, in its visual impact, and in its arbitrary association with everyday objects, creates new meaning, leading to revelations about "how myth is constructed in our culture."

Beguiling in its ambitions, Sign after the X ______ is a subjective, subversive dictionary of modern culture that forces readers to see the world in a new light.

"An original and a joy to read. . . . Sign after the X ______ is a buffet, a collage. . . ."--Globe & Mail

"Delightful in conception. . . . This is meaty, interesting stuff, and its eclecticism is lovely."--Georgia Straight

"Clever, insidious."--PopMatters.com

Marina Roy is an artist whose practice includes sculpture, printmaking, painting, photography, and bookworks. She teaches fine arts at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.