Narrator: Dieter Roth made about 50 of these Literature Sausages. He chose books that he didn’t like very much and shredded them. Then, he took a recipe for sausage, put in all the ingredients except the meat, adding instead the shredded pages, before stuffing it all into a casing.
The artist Richard Hamilton was a close friend of Dieter Roth. He witnessed some of Roth’s experiments with food while they were traveling together in Spain.
Artist, Richard Hamilton: We were out one day and stopped off at an island where some people I knew lived. They had just finished eating, and Dieter took one of the children's sheets of pages, yellow pages with rules on it, and then he began picking up bits of food and sticking them on. And, after he'd been doing this for ten minutes or so, he passed it to me, and said 'Get in the act. What are you waiting for?'
Narrator: Hamilton says that Roth took great care with these pieces.
Artist, Richard Hamilton: I think the people's whose house we were using were not so happy with us, because when they saw Dieter start making things, they thought, oh, they'll leave all these bits of paper here, but not Dieter. He carefully preserved them all, and back we went. And, the next thing he said was, well, let's go on with this. Now we've started something, let's go on.