My father sent me this newspaper clipping from—it looks like—the Iowa City Press-Citizen (that’s a real stylebook, when one recognizes a font despite not having read the publication regularly for a zillion years):
UI BOOK MAY BREAK RECORD
“The University of Iowa is considering a book it recently put through the binding process to the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s thickest book.
“According to a news release, “Poetry City Marathon,” a collection of poetry written by Iowa City poet David Morice, has 10,000 pages and measures 2 feet thick. The book was written by Morice during a 100-day poetry marathon this summer as part of the celebration of Iowa City being named a UNESCO City of Literature.
"The book took 24 hours, spread over four days, to bind.”
I’ll quote my father’s note: “Do you think there’s a market for this poetry book?” My response: I hope this guy has a large family and a lot of very loyal friends….
Here’s a picture of the final product: http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/tag/david-morice (there’s also a link so you can read the whole book, if you’re so inclined)
If you’re interested in binding conundrums, here’s a blog post from the UI library that explains how the book was bound: http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/preservation/2011/01/13/big-book-explained/
And you can find the (extensive) Wikipedia biography of David Morice here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Morice