Against Expression Against Expression An Anthology of Conceptual Writing E D I T E D B Y C R A I G D W O R K I N A N D KENNETH GOLDSMITH Northwestern University Press Evanston Illinois Northwestern University Press www .nupress.northwestern .edu Copyright © by Northwestern University Press. Published . All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America + e editors and the publisher have made every reasonable eff ort to contact the copyright holders to obtain permission to use the material reprinted in this book. Acknowledgments are printed starting on page XXX. ISBN ---- Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data [CIP to come] o + e paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z.-. To Marjorie Perloff Contents Why Conceptual Writing? Why Now? Kenneth Goldsmith + e Fate of Echo, Craig Dworkin Monica Aasprong, from Soldatmarkedet Walter Abish, from Skin Deep Vito Acconci, from Contacts/ Contexts (Frame of Reference): Ten Pages of Reading Roget’s ! esaurus from Removal, Move (Line of Evidence): + e Grid Locations of Streets, Alphabetized, Hagstrom’s Maps of the Five Boroughs: . Manhattan Kathy Acker, from Great Expectations Sally Alatalo, from Unforeseen Alliances Paal Bjelke Andersen, from + e Grefsen Address Anonymous, Eroticism David Antin, A List of the Delusions of the Insane: What + ey Are Afraid Of from Novel Poem from + e Separation Meditations Louis Aragon, Suicide Nathan Austin, from Survey Says! J. G. Ballard, Mae West’s Reduction Mammoplasty Fiona Banner, from + e Nam Derek Beaulieu, from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions Samuel Beckett, from Molloy from Watt Caroline Bergvall, Via ( Dante Translations) Charles Bernstein, from I and + e Untitled Poem Ted Berrigan, An Interview with John Cage Jen Bervin, from Nets Gregory Betts, from If Language Christian Bök, from Busted Sirens from Eunoia Marie Buck, from Whole Foods viii Contents William S. Burroughs, from Nova Express David Buuck, Follow John Cage, Writing + rough ! e Cantos Blaise Cendrars, from Kodak + omas Claburn, from i feel better after i type to you Elisabeth Clark, from Between Words Claude Closky, + e First + ousand Numbers Classifi ed in Alphabetical Order from Mon Catalogue Clark Coolidge, from Cabinet Voltaire from Bond Sonnets Hart Crane, Emblems of Conduct Brian Joseph Davis, from Voiceover Katie Degentesh, + e Only Miracles I Know of Are Simply Tricks + at People Play on One Another Mónica de la Torre, from Doubles Denis Diderot, from Jacques le fataliste et son maître Contents ix Marcel Duchamp, from notes Craig Dworkin, from Legion from Parse Laura Elrick, from First Words Dan Farrell, from Avail from + e Inkblot Record Gerald Ferguson, from + e Standard Corpus of Present Day English Language Usage Arranged by Word Length and Alphabetized Within Word Length Robert Fitterman, Metropolis from + e Sun Also Also Rises Lawrence Giffi n, Spinoza’s Ethics Peter Gizzi, Ode: Salute to the New York School, –, A Libretto Judith Goldman, from dicktée from from r’ture/ CENTaur Kenneth Goldsmith, from Day from No. ..-.. from Soliloquy from + e Weather Nada Gordon, Abnormal Discharge x Contents Noah Eli Gordon, from Inbox Michael Gottlieb, from + e Dust Dan Graham, Exclusion Principle Poem-Schema Michelle Grangaud, from Biographies/ Poetry Brion Gysin, First Cut-Up Michael Harvey, from White Papers H. L Hix, Poem composed of statements made by George W. Bush in January Yunte Huang, from Cribs Douglas Huebler, from Secrets: Variable Piece Peter Jaeger, from Rapid Eye Movement Emma Kay, from Worldview Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler, from Apostrophe Michael Klauke from Ad Infi nitum Christopher Knowles, from Typings Contents xi Joseph Kosuth, from Purloined: A Novel Leevi Lehto, from Päivä Tan Lin, from BIB Dana Teen Lomax, from Disclosure Trisha Low, Confessions Rory Macbeth, from + e Bible (alphabetized) Jackson Mac Low, from Words nd Ends from Ez Stéphane Mallarmé, from La dernière mode from Le livre Donato Mancini, Ligature Peter Manson, from Adjunct: An Undigest from English in Mallarmé Shigeru Matsui, Pure Poems Bernadette Mayer, from Eruditio ex Memoria Steve McCaff ery, Fish Also Rise + e Kommunist Manifesto xii Contents Stephen McLaughlin and Jim Carpenter, from Issue David Melnick, from Men in Aida, Book II Richard Meltzer, Barbara Mauritz: Music Box Denny Lile Maple Leaf Cowpoop Round-Up Christof Migone, from La première phrase et le dernier mot Tomoko Minami, from : + e New Shakespeare K. Silem Mohammad, Spooked and Considering How Spooky Deer Are from Sonnagrams Simon Morris, from Getting Inside Jack Kerouac’s Head from Re-writing Freud Yedda Morrison, from Kyoto Protocol Harryette Mullen, Bilingual Instructions Elliptical Mantra for a Classless Society or Mr. Roget’s Neighborhood Alexandra Nemerov, First My Motorola C. K. Ogden, Work in Progress by James Joyce Tom Orange, I Saw You Contents xiii Parasitic Ventures, from All the Names of In Search of Lost Time George Perec, Attempt at an Inventory of the Liquid and Solid Foodstuff s Ingurgitated by Me in the Course of the Year Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Four M. NourbeSe Philip, from Zong! Vanessa Place, from Statement of Fact Bern Porter, Clothes Raymond Queneau, from + e Foundations of Literature Claudia Rankine, from Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Ariana Reines, from + e Cow Charles Reznikoff , from Testimony, Volume II: + e United States (–): Recitative Deborah Richards, from + e Beauty Projection Kim Rosenfi eld, + e Other Me Raymond Roussel, from How I Wrote Certain of My Books Aram Saroyan, Untitled Poem xiv Contents Ara Shirinyan, from Your Country Is Great Ron Silliman, from Sunset Debris Juliana Spahr, + rashing Seems Crazy Brin Kim Stefans, from + e Vaneigem Series Gary Sullivan, Conceptual Poem (WC + WCW) To a Sought Caterpillar Nick + urston, He Might Find Rodrigo Toscano, Welcome to Omnium Dignitatem Tristan Tzara, from Dada Manifesto on Feeble and Bitter Love Andy Warhol, from a: a novel Darren Wershler, from + e Tapeworm Foundry Christine Wertheim, Finnegans Wanke/ Finnegans Wake (translation) Wiener Gruppe ideas for a «record album/ functional» acoustic cabaret abecedaries William Butler Yeats, Mona Lisa Steven Zultanski, My Death Drive Contents xv Vladimir Zykov, from I Was Told to Write Fifty Words Acknowledgments, xvi Contents Why Conceptual Writing? Why Now? Kenneth Goldsmith + ere is a room in the Musée d’Orsay that I call the room of possibilities. + e museum is roughly set up chronologically, and you happily wend your way through the nineteenth century until you hit this one room that is a group of about a half a dozen painterly responses to the invention of the camera. One that sticks in my mind is a trompe l’oeil solution in which a painted fi gure reaches out of the frame into the viewer’s space. Another incorporates three-dimensional objects into the canvas. Great attempts, but as we all know, impressionism won out. With the rise of the Web, writing has met its photography. By that, I mean that writing has encountered a situation similar to that of painting upon the invention of photography, a technology so much better at doing what the art form had been trying to do that, to survive, the fi eld had to alter its course radically. If photography was striving for sharp focus, paint- ing was forced to go soft, hence impressionism. Faced with an unprece- dented amount of available digital text, writing needs to redefi ne itself to adapt to the new environment of textual abundance. When we look at our text-based world today, we see the perfect envi- ronment for writing to thrive. Similarly, if we look at what happened when painting met photography, we fi nd the perfect analog-to-analog correspon- dence, for nowhere lurking beneath the surface of painting, photography, or fi lm was a speck of language, thus setting the stage for an imagistic revolution. Today, digital media has set the stage for a literary revolution. xvii In , Peter Bürger was still able to make the claim that, “because the advent of photography makes possible the precise mechanical reproduction of reality, the mimetic function of the fi ne arts withers. But the limits of this explanatory model become clear when one calls to mind that it cannot be transferred to literature. For in literature, there is no technical innova- tion that could have produced an eff ect comparable to that of photography in the fi ne arts.”1 Now there is. With the rise of the Internet, writing is arguably facing its greatest chal- lenge since Gutenberg. What has happened in the past fi fteen years has forced writers to conceive of language in ways unthinkable just a short time ago. With an unprecedented onslaught of the sheer quantity of language (often derided as information glut in general culture), the writer faces the challenge of exactly how best to respond. Yet the strategies to respond are embedded in the writing process, which gives us the answers whether or not we’re aware of it. Why are so many writers now exploring strategies of copying and appro- priation? It’s simple: the computer encourages us to mimic its workings. If cutting and pasting were integral to the writing process, we would be mad to imagine that writers wouldn’t explore and exploit those functions in ways that their creators didn’t intend. + ink back to the mid-s, when Nam June Paik placed a huge magnet atop a black-and-white television set, which resulted in the détournement of a space previously reserved for Jack Benny and Ed Sullivan into loopy, organic abstractions. If I can chop out a huge section of the novel I’m working on and paste it into a new docu- ment, what’s going to stop me from copying and pasting a Web page in its entirety and dropping it into my text? When I dump a clipboard’s worth of language from somewhere else into my work and massage its format- ting and font to look exactly like it’s always been there, then, suddenly, it feels like it’s mine.2 You might counter by saying that, after all, home computers have been around for twenty-fi ve years.