As I mentioned yesterday, for my lecture at the Co-Prosperity Sphere, I created new examples of both the Spell Check Technique and dictionary expansions. Here’s the DE one.
I started with the following text:
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. (Samuel Beckett’s Murphy, 1938, opening sentence)
I then looked up all the nouns, verbs, and adjectives:
- sun: a self-luminous heavenly body
- shine: shed or cast light
- have: to possess
- alternative: a possible or remaining course or choice
- nothing (adj): amounting to nothing, as in offering no prospects for satisfaction, advancement, or the like
- new (noun): something that is new > something that is of recent origin, production, purchase, etc.; having but lately come or been brought into being
Replacing the original words with their definitions yielded:
A self-luminous heavenly body shed or cast light, possessing no possible or remaining course or choice, on something of recent origin, production, purchase, etc.; having but lately come or been brought into being but that amounted to nothing, as in offering no prospects for satisfaction, advancement, or the like.
I then ran the procedure again, yielding (after some editing) the following:
An object in space, as a planet or a star, of or in the heavens, and having in itself the property of emitting light, threw or hurled or flung or emitted or let fall, as tears, something that makes things visible, or affords illumination, this object not having either reserved or in store, as a faculty or quality, any other right, power, or opportunity, or direction or route that could be taken—and so it imparted or released its radiance or illumination upon a certain unspecified or undetermined person or thing, which was possibly one of some value or consequence, and that had arisen or been derived from a particular source of late occurrence, appearance, or origin (that derivation having happened or having been done, or having been made, or having been obtained as of late), but despite said quality or even indeed because of it had so far failed to develop into or to become any real thing, being instead more like something or someone of no importance or significance—indeed, being not unlike something nonexistent, since this thing or person refused to present for acceptance or rejection any apparent probabilities of success or profit or the like, or possibilities for promotion in rank or standing, or the means required for confidently accepting some other person or thing as satisfactory, or as dependable, or as true.
A clear improvement on the Beckett, if you ask me.
Related posts:
- Another way to generate text #1: “The Spell Check Technique”
- Another example of the Spell Check Technique
- Another way to generate text #2: “backmasking”
- Another way to generate text #3: “dictionary expansions”
- Another way to generate text #4: “dictionary clusters”
- Another way to generate text #5: “synonym clusters”
- Another way to generate text #6: “word splitting”
- Another way to generate text #7: “Gysin & Burroughs vs. Tristan Tzara”
- Another way to generate text #8: “Writing through a foreign language dictionary”
- Writing Game #1: “25, Strange as You Can”
[…] Another example of dictionary expansions […]
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Adam,
I recently came across your works on various websites. I’m interested in TNS in the same vein you are: the devices writers use to create this atmosphere of sincerity. To that end, your expansion example here reminds me of certain novels – the wordy, rambly works that follow the model of Dickens, Sterne, Elliot, etc. (I do enjoy readings these works, btw). This is the kind of expansion that has some interesting possibilities. But, I wonder how it fits in with your Dozen Dominants set of ideas, most notably that of Brevity and how does this relate to TNS rambling/wordiness you mention elsewhere? Also, have you seen this? http://www.metamodernism.com/2010/08/13/quirky/ How does quirky fit in with the TNS?
Cheers!
Michelle
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Hi Michelle,
Thanks for the comment and the link! As well as for reading.
I haven’t thought much about how these “text generation” techniques line up in regard to the New Sincerity. I think of them as being more related to the renewed interest in conceptual writing & constraint-based writing, especially post-Oulipo. (I used to work for Dalkey Archive Press, and it was largely my exposure to the Oulipo there that got me toying with such techniques.) But I think I can say this: one can do what one likes with these techniques, so they could undoubtedly be turned toward a more NS aesthetic. I don’t think of them as being “pure” conceptual or process based writing techniques, a la Kenneth Goldsmith, where the author conceives of an initial generative idea and then executes it without interfering.
I recently wrote a paper on certain affinities between conceptual writing and the New Sincerity. One point of comparison that struck me was that both “sides” seem committed to a certain thoughtlessness in writing—a lack of revision or editing. Kenneth Goldsmith starts a process going, then doesn’t interfere. And the NS often tries to present the appearance of non-revision—Steve Roggenbuck’s misspellings, Dorothea Lasky’s “I’m just thinking out loud” effects, etc. But the crucial difference there, I think, is that in the NS, it’s an aesthetic, and therefore the formal approximation of an effect. It may actually take Steve Roggenbuck hours and hours to get the misspellings right, for all I know. Whereas Kenneth Goldsmith really is, I think, dedicated to non-intervention in his work: to picking a starting idea and then accepting all the consequences of it, whatever they are. I’m still working on this paper but hope to have something presentable eventually…
As far as the “dozen dominants” concept, I haven’t really thought that through yet, either, I’m afraid. Other than to say that “sincerity” seems to me a real dominant right now, in that a lot of aesthetic devices are being harnessed toward creating that effect (or the effect of transparency/genuineness/what have you). Lots of folks out there aren’t concerned with it, of course, but a lot of other folks are committed to achieving that effect, or a related group of effects.
OK, I’m going to read the Quirky article! (Thanks again!) & I’d be very happy to talk more about this with you either here or over email!
Cheers,
Adam
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I see that author has posted a follow-up as well:
http://www.metamodernism.com/2011/07/19/quirky-tone-and-metamodernism/
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Hi Adam,
Thanks for responding!
That’s the thing about cherry-picking techniques: an artist can use them as he/she sees fit in whatever aesthetic strain they wish. This is why we’re seeing so many cross genre works like “Cowboys and Aliens.” Some work better than others. I didn’t think “Cowboys and Aliens” worked very well, but as a concept it has some potential. I don’t think it worked well because the writers couldn’t get the story together in a coherent way. It wasn’t because it mixed genres, however.
The renewed interest in conceptual writing and constrained-based writing reminds me of several things. First, is the idea of emergence which is “the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.” Such simple interactions could be the mixing of techniques from one genre with another and coming up with a new form. Another way of looking at this is that an emergent literature originates from the periphery by being recombined with other elements in the culture to create something new. It could be a hybrid such as “Cowboys and Aliens”, or something more radical. The starting point is with elements already in existence. This leads to art based on the same sort of principles as Oulip and conceptual writing. Any art that uses algorithms, diastic poetry, or serialism would fit into these processes and used as techniques.
What interests me about Kenneth Goldsmith is his NS tendencies. He wrote, “Start making sense. Disjunction is dead. The fragment, which ruled poetry for the past one hundred years, has left the building. Subjectivity, emotion, the body, and desire, as expressed in whole units of plain English with normative syntax, has returned. But not in ways you would imagine. This new poetry wears its sincerity on its sleeve …” The way I see it, he’s combining the found art movement with Burroughs’ cut-up technique while at the same time bringing back the sort of rambling, wordiness of the 19th century novel. This falls in line with Ezra Pound’s idea that there are no dead forms of poetry (in this case, text) and that the past is available to be used as just one of the many elements in creating a work (that idea of emergence.)
I do understand Goldsmith’s point about there being some much text out there, why bother trying to “create” something new when there’s a ready-made source just waiting to be tapped. Some people would argue that this isn’t very creative, that it’s simply plagiarism. But this is what nature does. According to evolutionary development biology (or evo-devo), evolution tends to create new genes from parts of old genes; it creates novel structures from old genes. No one has accused nature of not being very creative. Those who are against conceptual writing conveniently forget or don’t know that such appropriation is nothing new (which in some ways may be Goldsmith’s point.) I don’t see conceptual writing getting a real foothold, at least not any time soon. We’re still in this Romantic/Auteur theory of authorship. (The Romanticism part being that if it isn’t original it isn’t creative. The Auteur theory having to do with the idea that a film reflects the director’s personal creative vision even though it has many “authors”. Both of these movements signify only “serious” works of art.) A lot of people have built careers on these two foundational theories. They aren’t going to let their turf go without a fight. (Which is too bad because literature needs some shaking up!) Technology is the game-changer in this arena (as it is in so many.) I do see NS as a reaction to pomo tendencies just as every other movement was a reaction against the previous movements. Perhaps conceptual writing and uncreativity will be a similar reaction.
You may have something regarding the unedited-ness of Goldsmith and others’ works. This may go back to Pound again. Pound didn’t use quotation marks in his poems and he didn’t include notes explaining his poetry either. He wanted the reader to experience it in an unmediated way. As a writer he doesn’t want to get in your way of the immediate experience he’s presenting. This can be construed as a sincere moment . There is the sincerity of feeling as well as the sincerity of an event.
As for the quirky articles, I found them to be of interest because of the emphasis MacDowell puts on “sincere emotional expression”. If I may be so bold as to say I think this fits in with your idea of an aesthetic movement featuring sincerity. There is something going on here with the notion of sincerity, whether it is of thought, feeling, experience, or what have you. My problem with the metamodern angle is that it still adheres to irony. Metamodernism swings between irony and sincerity, and I think it does so because we’re on the border of something else; we’re moving away from the pomo tenents in another direction. Whether it’s NS or not, I don’t know. But I’m willing to bet that people are exhausted from trying to figure out what everyone else means, so they’ve given up on trying and have turned to explaining what they mean (by blogging, memoirs, etc.). I don’t think we’re going toward an “Ah, shucks, what you see is what you get” kind of sincerity. I do think it’s about being more transparent and with a certain kind of authenticity that has been lacking until now. It may be that people are trying to live out E.M. Forster’s “Only connect! … Live in fragments no longer.”
I hope this serves as a basis for a lively discussion between us and others. I don’t mind posting on your blog, but I leave it up to you. If you’d prefer email instead, that’s great as well.
Cheers!
Michelle
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