Literary Graffiti: On the Stall and Wall

June 5, 2011 | Featured Miscellania

While out and about last weekend, I came across this interesting bit of graffiti in a public bathroom.

 

 

It was refreshing to see graffiti that was literary, even with the errors in capitalization and punctuation.  It was nice to see graffiti that’s something more than references to fellatio or some manifestation of a “your mom” joke.  This inspired me to do a search for literary graffiti, be it quotes on a bathroom stall or stencils on a brick wall. (I rhymed on accident, by the way.) Here are ten examples that I found:

 

 

 

This one is inspired by Alice in Wonderland.  It is unique in the fact that it contains no obvious drug references, which seemed to be the case with the other Alice graffiti I saw. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

 

 

Here we are shown Einstein, but it features a quote by Nobel laureate André Gide.  That’s a thought-provoking combination

 

 

You have to love Samuel Beckett related humor.

 

 

In case you can’t tell by the picture, those drippy letters say “John Steinbeck”.  Graffiti is an oddly fitting tribute to the man who rebelled against government authority for much of his life.

 

 

This is impossible to read, apparently this is the entire first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on a bathroom wall.  I admire the nerdish dedication of whomever did this.

 

 

Not surprisingly, this was not the only debate over the merits of Ayn Rand via graffiti that I found.  She tends to inspire either complete devotion or intense hatred.

 

 

This is my favorite quote from The Little Prince. I’m not going to lie, I wish I had done this

 

 

This one picture has references to Watchmen, Raymond Carver, Kurt Vonnegut, and Phillip K. Dick, just to name a few.  I’m not sure where this is, but it a appears to be the center of a lively literary debate.

 

 

Shakespeare does look pretty good with those aviator sunglasses on. Too bad they weren’t around in his day.

 

 

This was always one of the most intriguing quotes from Fight Club to me.  It makes me miss when Chuck Palahniuk was edgy and not just over-the-top disgusting.

I know I have barely scratched the surface with this list.  There are so many more interesting works of literary graffiti to discover, I’m sure I’ll come back to this subject again.