Advertisement: Kent Johnson’s Day
BlazeVOX Books is proud to announce the release of Day,
by Kent Johnson (BlazeVOX / The Figures, paperback, 836 pp.), 2009
Price: $21, plus shipping and handling. ($250 for each of ten numbered copies signed by the Author, no charge for shipping and handling.) All copies come with specially designed, affixed stickers (on cover, back cover, title page, spine, etc.) to impart authorship, copyright, blurbs, and co-production.
If the 836-pp. Day established Kenny Goldsmith as without a doubt the leading conceptual poet of his time, the 836-pp. Day by Kent Johnson may well be remembered for nudging the politics of Conceptual Poetry out of blithely affirmative, institutional framings, and into truly negational critical spaces.
–Juliana Spahr
Recent trends in technologies of communication have already begun to subvert the romantic bastions of “creativity” and “authorship,” calling into question the propriety of copyright through strategies of plagiaristic appropriation… Such developments have caused poets to theorize an innovative aesthetics of “conceptual literature” that has begun to question, if not to abandon, the lyrical mandate of originality in order to explore the potentials of the “uncreative,” be it automatic, mannerist, aleatoric, or readymade, in its literary practice… Such activity (employing self and ego-effacing tactics via uncreativity, unoriginality, appropriation, plagiarism, fraud, theft, and falsification as its precepts) has become one of the most radical, if not one of the most popular, limit-cases of the avant-garde at the advent of the millennium. With Day, Kent Johnson claims his place as one of the major figures of this new writing, showing, in single move, how Conceptual Poetry has been nearly forty years behind the politics of Institutional Critique.
–Christian Bök
As he once asked, at the blog of the Poetry Foundation (though with what seems in retrospect a disingenuous banality), “Nearly one hundred years after Duchamp, why hasn’t appropriation become a valid, sustained[,] or even tested literary practice?” Here now, Kent Johnson wagers the query with a vengeance, brazenly upping the ante of Uncreative dialectic by throwing down before us a readymade gesture that is nothing but dizzying in the synthesis of its conception: a flagrant appropriation of a Conceptual work’s Authorship and Copyright, categories which themselves had been branded into this same text, in flagrant appropriation by another K (yes, me), in first, antithetical instance. Thus, here at Boring Ranch, in gamble with a gambol, he claims all the cow chips, one could say, with the searing, asterisked irony of a double-K smoking iron. His Day emerges hot and bright from the dead-dark of an innocent pre-dawn, a sort of authentic Afterlife that rises from the “original” simulacral body in which it had lain (latent and expectant). As in the best of Sherrie Levine, but more radically still, it summons us, now, that we might think harder in its sudden light. Indeed, Kent Johnson’s Day stands as the first Conceptual gesture of its kind in the history of American poetry: An open, literal theft of an entire “book,” exhibited without shame, as a new and strange Work of Art in our Museum of Modern Poetry. I can only tip my hat.
–Kenny Goldsmith
Order from BlazeVOX Books. Orders also available in the near future from SPD and Amazon
Kent: excuse my taking this perchance for referential, but can this really be? you are beyond, whether or no.
Judith,
Yes. The book may be ordered through the BlazeVOX page that comes up when you click on the cover image. With exception of the corrected paratext, which designates me now as the correct Author, the contents are identical. I mean, it’s the same exact book, except that I have stolen it from Goldsmith.
I guess we’ll see if the Conceptual ends where Copyright Law begins. Kenny G. openly advocates “literary theft,” so I assume it is fine that my book supplants his.
Kent
It would have been better if you erased it.
You seem to assume there is something to erase…
Kent
OK, OK, I doff my hat. Or I would doff it if it hadn’t already shot off into the pink tree of credulity—I admit I thought those blurbs were real. I snorted coffee out my nose when I first saw this, & then when I understood that the blurbs too were “conceptual,” I snorted it back up into my nose. Need to stop drinking coffee through my nose. This is very good. I hope you get sued.
>I hope you get sued.
By Goldsmith, or by the NYT?
Maybe it’s my turn to turn you in…
I still think you should’ve called it Same Day.
Or Duh.
My mistake, Kent, I was confusing you with Jeffrey Jullich for a second — he’s the one that turned me into the NY Times.
He turned you “into the NY Times”?!
I’d heard the fellow was into voodoo, or something, but that he turned you into newsprint… Now that’s some dark magic, man.
:~)
Kent
Kent, you should seriously publish the whole book under your own name and see what Kenny does. If he takes action against you we will see his aesthetic for the posturing it is. Of course, he won’t take action against you out of fear of being ridiculed, but it will ruffle his feathers none the less.
Kent, is it alright with you if I use an extract from Day for the Argotist, with your name alongside it?
Hey, didn’t Adam Fieled have this idea first?
Also—Jeffrey, Kent is publishing the whole thing under his name. That’s the point of this post.
Oh…I just thought he was testing the waters. Good on him. I applaud this. He has my full support.
Then follow the link & order the book! (Shameless, I know.)
Who will the money go to–Kenny or Kent?
Kent, of course! It’s his book! Plus it is almost infinitely richer than the original.
Of course…how stupid of me.
Jeffrey,
Yes, it’s an actual book, 836 pp. in length, hefty in the hand, and I’m glad you asked because quite a few other people have asked me the same (most people seem to have thought it was just a fake ad).
But no, the contents are identical to Kenny Goldsmith’s Day, save wherever Goldsmith’s name appears (cover, back cover, title page, etc.), in which case specially designed stickers with my name are pasted on to mark the book’s new and–dialectically speaking–higher conceptual authorship. As well, stickers designating BlazeVox as the “co-publisher” and distributor of the new work will be added beneath any mention of The Figures Press (and a fine press it is, the latter) on or inside the book.
In other words, it’s the exact same book (copies are purchased from Amazon as the orders come in to BlazeVOX; these are then properly prepared for their new paratext and sent back out to those who have ordered). A number of orders have already been placed, and no doubt more will be sold when a full-page paid ad appears soon in a very prominent magazine. There have been a couple indications of interest, too (amazingly enough!), about purchase of the $300 signed version.
By the way, all monies go to support the wonderful work of Geoffrey Gatza’s BlazeVOX, the bravest little or big poetry press in the country (watch for an upcoming feature in Poets & Writers). I’m not taking any royalties!
I hope you’ll order a copy of my new book, Day, and help support the further advance of truly authentic, non-compromised Conceptual Poetry, in this our country, the United States of America.
thank you,
Kent
There is something else I’ve been meaning to say:
After sending the initial post to Bobby Baird at Digital Emunction last week, he sent me the link to a long comment he posted on June 2, 2008, at the Harriet blog, under a post by Goldsmith on Marjorie Perloff. The subject of the post was Marjorie’s forthcoming book, Unoriginal Genius, one of the essays of which is devoted to Goldsmith.
I had not seen this comment by Bobby, but as you can see, he anticipates, in uncanny manner (and remember my post on the mysteries of plagiarism some days ago?), and in typically brilliant and eloquent argument, the very authoring of Day I have carried out.
I post an excerpt from this post below. You can find the link to the whole comment beneath it. But one can see that really, because we are dealing in all this with concepts, with ideational gestures, and not “written” texts, that Bobby Baird must be seen as the True Author of my own Day, whether I knew about his post when I Authored it, or not.
Kent
[from Baird’s comment to Goldsmith:
>And so here’s my question: who gets to be an uncreative genius? And more importantly: on what grounds? If I recreate Day–an achievement, one must admit, that would be even more uncreative than the “original”–am I a genius? Will The Figures publish it under my name? Will Publisher’s Weekly review it? Will I be invited to speak at the next Conceptual Poetics conference on the basis of it?
Of course not, and the reason is not because of any residual traditionalism infecting the publishing industry or academia. It’s because the “perfectly valueless space” is as much a myth here as it is in the utopian fantasies of Chicago School economists. The “valueless works” are describable as such only insofar as one willfully forgets the roles they play in building careers and organizing conferences, and forgets as well that they’re built on the backs of RISD BFAs and tenured professorships. I don’t hold any special grudge against any of these things, but I think it’s disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst to go around touting one’s freedom from the world of vulgar values–values that all the rest of the world mucks around in day after day–at the same time that that very freedom (or at least the feeling of it) is a *direct secretion* of that value-laden muck.
Full comment here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/05/marjorie-perloffs-unoriginal-genius/#comment-3663
Kent, I wish you luck in this endeavour. It will be interesting to hear Kenney’s response. But I think he’s been painted into a corner on this. If he sues you he will look ridiculous and his credibility will be ruined and if he doesn’t sue you he will leave his other “works” open to the same fate you have visited on this one.
Bobby Baird must be seen as the True Author of my own Day, whether I knew about his post when I Authored it, or not.
Aw, shucks, Kent. No wait–screw the humility: I’m putting this on my CV, right now. Hello, Princeton!
New blog post:
‘Another Day for Kent Johnson’
A new book by Kent Johnson is now available. It’s called Day and is published by Blazevox. It has had some good reviews, including the following by Juliana Spahr:
‘If the 836-pp. Day established Kenny Goldsmith as without a doubt the leading conceptual poet of his time, the 836-pp. Day by Kent Johnson may well be remembered for nudging the politics of Conceptual Poetry out of blithely affirmative, institutional framings, and into truly negational critical spaces’.
Commendation indeed, if not for the fact that Johnson’s Day is an exact reproduction of Goldsmith’s “work”. I’ve put “work” in quotes because Goldsmith would readily agree that the work in question was not “created” by him in any authorial sense. He describes his working procedure for the book ………
http://jeffrey-side.blogspot.com/
Much to my surprise, I’ve just learned from Geoffrey Gatza, editor of BlazeVOX, that fifteen orders have now been placed for my Day. I could be wrong, but I am assuming this means my new, more advanced version of the book has been outselling (at least in the past week) the older, outmoded Goldsmith version.
Kent
Sorry, meant to say the book is now available through SPD, if anyone wants to order it from there.
Kent
Fun.
Y’all know about this?
http://aftersherrielevine.com/
Thought you might enjoy it.
JB
Joel,
Thanks for this link. Didn’t know about it. But Levine is mentioned in Goldsmith’s blurb for my book.
Kent
Brilliant! Will you be bringing any to your upcoming reading in Chicago?
Since Kent isn’t allowed onto the Buffalo POETICS list, I thought I’d note a conversation about this book that is taking place there.
Jonathan Ball wrote:
And Skip Fox concurred with the “superficially interesting” characterization.
Here’s my response:
Now here’s a blurb: Christian Bok on Twitter:
>Quick!—get “Day” by the troll, Kent Johnson, who rips off “Day” by Kenneth Goldsmith, who rips off the New York Times: http://is.gd/3EbxV
Robert,
I am interested in this Buffalo discussion. This dual/contradictory interpretation of Goldsmith is very telling. Can you post the rest of the discussion?
Johannes
Sure, Johannes, what there is of it–which isn’t much. None of it, yet, takes up my post. (They often take a while to moderate things, so who knows what could come in later.)
Here’s Mairéad Byrne:
And Jeffrey Side:
And Skip Fox again:
I love that someone believes that Kenny typed the entirety of Day. Just sitting there day after day, developing carpal tunnel syndrome for his love of art.
I love even more that KG thought he was subverting capitalism by using a scanner:
“in capitalism, labor equals value”: OK, Kenny, whatever you say.
Michael Robbins: “I love that someone believes that Kenny typed the entirety of Day. Just sitting there day after day, developing carpal tunnel syndrome for his love of art.”
I love this idea too. In fact, Day fell apart for me when I realized, a few years back (and with some chagrin), that Kenny hadn’t actually retyped the whole paper. The act of simply re-presenting a day’s paper–flattening it out, reformatting it, placing the ads on equal footing with the news (and vice-versa)–is simply not that interesting of a project. It becomes potentially more interesting, however, if a performative element is added–one in which Kenny bangs out story after story, ad after ad, page after page of a given day’s paper, in order to produce a now perhaps Borgesian translation or replica. That this “performance” has not been preserved (via video, I suppose) only adds to its appeal, forcing the reader to imagine how and under what conditions such a feat could be accomplished and thus making the work, in a sense, more participatory–just as Kenny himself would have to participate more actively in the construction of a typed Day. His diminished role in re-presented version of the day’s paper, moreover, affects the significance of his claims to authorship. The physical act of typing the paper would have placed the paper itself onto a different diachronic plane, as Kenny’s work would likely stretch over weeks if not months, effectively highlighting the disparity between the agency of a lone individual and that of the efficient capitalist machinery that grinds out one of these monsters every 24 hours. Instead, the simple re-presentation of the paper re-affirms its bounded temporal window, making it a mere artifact of what one corporation (the Times) saw as newsworthy for one day. That Kenny puts his name on the Times’ “content” is likely the work’s signal gesture, but one that leaves little conceptual space for the participation of either the reader or writer.
Douglass Rothschild’s complaint about Day is finally threatening to affect the reception of the rest of KG’s work. Did Kenny collect all the motions in Fidget, or the r-sounds in No. 111? The mondegreens in Head Citations. The reports in etc etc.
I admire No. 111 no matter how he did it. It just sounds good, even the part written by D.H. Lawrence.
“Go in Brack Man, de Day’s Yo Own.”
- John Berryman, epigraph to Dream Songs
(borrowed from Carl Wittke, borrowed from… Minstrel song…)
Have a nice Day.
Interesting comment from Jack Kimball today at Pantaloons (with apologies for the scrape):
That *is* an interesting comment from Jack. Quite different from his send up of me the other day, calling me all sorts of funny things… But I’ve collaborated with Jack on a couple somewhat extensive back and forths, and I know what he can do with this language stuff. It would be nice to be able to make a sentence like this:
“That claim, which strikes me as accurate, resides somewhere in the continuum between ferocious and pedestrian triviality.”
I agree with Rick.
Johannes
Robert P. Baird: I love even more that KG thought he was subverting capitalism by using a scanner:
But in capitalism, labor equals value. So certainly my project must have value, for if my time is worth an hourly wage, then I might be paid handsomely for this work. But the truth is that I’ve subverted this equation by OCR’ing as much of the newspaper as I can.
Kenny’s blowing (more) smoke (than usual) in this explanation. Perhaps he realizes that he compromised the project–and contradicted his earlier intentions:
“I am spending my 39th year practicing uncreativity. On Friday, September 1, 2000, I began retyping the day’s NEW YORK TIMES word for word, letter for letter, from the upper left hand corner to the lower right hand corner, page by page.” With these words, Kenneth Goldsmith embarked upon a project which he termed “uncreative writing”, that is: uncreativity as a constraint-based process; uncreativity as a creative practice. By typing page upon page, making no distinction between article, editorial and advertisement, disregarding all typographic and graphical treatments, Goldsmith levels the daily newspaper. DAY is a monument to the ephemeral, comprised of yesterday’s news, a fleeting moment concretized, captured, then reframed into the discourse of literature. “When I reach 40, I hope to have cleansed myself of all creativity.”
–Kenneth Goldsmith
(http://www.geoffreyyoung.com/thefigures/day.html)
So I guess the shifting methodology of Day marks the transition from the approach of the (Cagean) procedural earlier works–e.g., Fidget and Soliloquy, both of which feature a distinctly embodied poet engaged in some kind of mundane performance–and that of the later (Warholian) works of straight re-production?
I wanted to pose a question on something I think has gone missing so far in the conversation around the “legitimate” Authorship and property of my new book (though it’s entirely appropriate, of course, that this be focused on, as the “problem” is at the heart of it):
What about the *publisher* of my Day? Isn’t the publisher as much the Author of a book like this as I am? And what *of* a publisher who has the temerity to market a wholesale appropriation of an entire, much-discussed book? And not only that: for this publisher has put the name of his press right on the work’s spine, above that of the original publisher, The Figures, a venerable imprint in “post-avant” circles. In other words, the anterior publisher is now relegated to the status of assistant co-publisher of the new, more conceptually advanced work. Thus, one could say, the anterior publisher’s (and Author’s) reliance on perfectly conventional, “natural” forms of packaging and paratext is brought into the foreground.
Isn’t this worthy of prominent notice, inasmuch as it constitutes a thoroughly iconoclastic and unprecedentedly conceptual act in poetry “publishing”?
Kent
Should be worth even more than the ultra-rare BlazeVOX first edition of RK’s Musee Mechanique…
Which reminds me, on some British poetry site I saw Midge Ure listed as one of the last poets of England (sic)…
Anything But Indifference!
Now here’s something curious.
Jeffrey Side, who’s been blogging on this Day issue, just wrote me to say the following:
>Charles Bernstein emailed me about 15 minutes ago asking if I was aware that he’d appropriated a work by Goldsmith called ‘Weather” and reproduced it with his own name attached. He said he did this in 2006. That’s all he said. [...] I’ve just emailed him to say I wasn’t aware that he had done this, which is true. Here is the link he gave me to it:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/blog/archive/weather.html
Fascinating!
There is an important difference, though. Bernstein announces that the work is by Goldsmith, and he seems to add his name in a playful sort of gesture, a kind of “afterthought” beneath the attribution at the top: “Kenny Goldsmith’s The Weather.”
It’s a “half-hearted” ironic tweak, so to speak.
I’m not doing that. I’m *erasing* Goldsmith’s name and affirming myself as the book’s Author! I’m affirming (sardonic though the affirmation is) the book as my “property.” Which is to say that the category of Authorship is bracketed in uncomfortable sorts of ways.
This is great. Feel free to send this on to Charles.
Isn’t this getting interesting?
Kent
Kent writes:
“Isn’t this worthy of prominent notice, inasmuch as it constitutes a thoroughly iconoclastic and unprecedentedly conceptual act in poetry ‘publishing’?”
Rick writes:
“I love this idea too. In fact, Day fell apart for me when I realized, a few years back (and with some chagrin), that Kenny hadn’t actually retyped the whole paper. The act of simply re-presenting a day’s paper–flattening it out, reformatting it, placing the ads on equal footing with the news (and vice-versa)–is simply not that interesting of a project. It becomes potentially more interesting, however, if a performative element is added”
I’m left feeling a bit like Rick here in regard to the “publication” of your “Day,” Kent. After all, BlazeVOX hasn’t actually republished the book, which could have added a performative element to the project.
Beyond that, based on what is being considered the “publishing” of Kent’s “Day” (the application of stickers on a volume of work), I have to wonder if there are even any legal issues of plagiarism/ethics at work here.
There appears to be an italics problem in that post.
[Got it, thanks. This is why Kent doesn't post his own posts. Thanks for sparing a tag. --rpb]
Huh? What means “hasn’t actually republished the book”? And what what what could possibly be the “legal issues of plagiarism/ethics”? Dude plagiarized a plagiarism? Not compute.
Italics. yeah, don’t know how that happened.
(in fact, really, how does one put things in italics in these comments?)
[<em>whatever you want in italics, followed by:</em> --rpb]
Kent’s description of how the book is prepared:
“But no, the contents are identical to Kenny Goldsmith’s Day, save wherever Goldsmith’s name appears (cover, back cover, title page, etc.), in which case specially designed stickers with my name are pasted on to mark the book’s new and–dialectically speaking–higher conceptual authorship. As well, stickers designating BlazeVox as the “co-publisher” and distributor of the new work will be added beneath any mention of The Figures Press (and a fine press it is, the latter) on or inside the book.”
“In other words, it’s the exact same book (copies are purchased from Amazon as the orders come in to BlazeVOX; these are then properly prepared for their new paratext and sent back out to those who have ordered).”
This is publishing, Michael?
Brennan asked Robbins, after quoting me on BlazeVOX’s conceptual publication of Day:
>This is publishing, Michael?
Well, take Kenny Goldsmith’s Day: This is writing, Brennan?
I meant Brennen, sorry.
Kent, I never made the claim that G’s “Day” is writing. If it was more like Richard Long’s “A Line Made by Walking” (actually physically done), I’d have much greater respect for it.
So—& I’m not defending Day here, just finding fault with your logic—Duchamp’s urinal is not worthy of respect because he didn’t build it himself?
I love the thought of one small press publishing a book and selling it to another small press who sells it (with an upcharge for concept + sticker affixation labor) to a willing consumer. Both presses win, consumer wins.
Forget green construction jobs and modified business write-off regs. This is New Deal-style stimulus at its best.
Kent, you’re a true economic hero.
How are finding fault with my logic, Michael? First, you don’t answer my question about the “publishing” of Kent’s “Day,” then you infer, by analog, I may have no respect for G’s “Day.” Saying I’d have “much greater respect” doesn’t negate the possibility of my having a degree of respect for it.
And what makes you think I might not have respect for Duchamp’s readymade simply because he didn’t make? Your analogy is silly; the vast differences between G’s ‘Day” and Duchamp’s urinal are far greater than the thin similarity you’ve shown here.
Brennen said:
>Kent, I never made the claim that G’s “Day” is writing.
OK, Brennen, but if it isn’t, then what is it I might have “plagiarized”? I’m not saying I haven’t, I’m just curious what you mean.
I see that you are thinking about this at your blog in terms of recent art history and theory, quoting Danto, and I think that’s great (Kenny should think it’s great, too, since he’s supposedly all about reflection and discussion).
In their writings on the Duchampian readymade and its neo-avant-garde recyclings, I find critics like Buchloh and Foster more interesting than Danto. Though they take strong exception to Burger’s wholesale dismissal of the neo-avant-garde, they’re also very critical of ways the great, original readymade move has been cut and pasted ad infinitum into the art market since, say, Nouveau realisme– recycled gestures with this or that generic tweak or novelty, that is, emptied of any radical, anti-institutional charge– ready-made, as it were, for rapid capture and incorporation by the networks of “Museum Culture.”
This recycling, I’d say, is transparently the case with the work of Kenny Goldsmith (Goldsmith and Bok, to be sure, who despite their polemics for the benefits of ego-less “uncreativity” seem to have been drunk for the past few years on some kind of secret Author Function Ego Juice, are quite exuberantly open about their desire for the Museum). KG’s work is “uncreative” and “boring” not just as affective extension of its proclaimed poetic and “ontological” premises; it’s uncreative and boring because it’s so damn old hat: an attempted importation of decades-old gestures into a Po-Biz scene that, as Goldsmith himself puts it, “is forty years behind art,” and thus likely (at least part of its crowd) to take his “conceptual” banalities as exciting and new. In some circles, they call it snake oil.
But it’s MY Day, Brennen, that is truly new, you see. The Authentic Item. Because no one has ever done it quite like this before. I’ve taken his whole bookum and made it mine, in single decisive act. And doing so, I’ve put his plagiarized bookum into the dustbin of sub-poetic sub-history. I am being both funny and serious, in saying that. Doubled in my intent, so to speak, like the red-hot “Doubled K” poker that K. dreamily mentions in his blurb to my Day, where he acknowledges me, his mirrored K, as his master. And it’s why he’s going to put my book up on UbuWeb.
And one more thing, though here I’m not kidding around: What they call “Conceptual poetry”? It’s forty years behind Broodthaers and Institutional Critique.
Kent
You didn’t ask a “question” about the publication, so I didn’t answer one. “This is publishing?” isn’t a question, it’s a sneer—except that it’s actually just a way of completely missing the point. Likewise with whether one types out the thing or not: that’s a criterion? The fetishization of authenticity is always a mistake when thinking about art.
And the logic is straightforward, which is why it’s called logic. Kenny didn’t type out Day; you’d have “more respect” for the project if he had. This implies, very clearly, that the amount of labor an artist invests in a work is correlated to the amount of respect you have for the work. So the example of Duchamp’s readymades offers itself immediately, almost as a cliché. It’s trivial to point out that there are “vast differences” between the readymades & Kenny’s book, since you already established that what matters for you is whether the artist worked on the piece. If you now want to retract that, fine. But it’s not my logic that’s faulty here.
Michael writes:
“Kenny didn’t type out Day; you’d have “more respect” for the project if he had. This implies, very clearly, that the amount of labor an artist invests in a work is correlated to the amount of respect you have for the work.”
No, that explicitly states the amount of labor *this* artist invested in one particular work is correlated to the amount of respect I have for it — a work that the artist made claims he had in fact typed, that he claimed in interviews had been typed.
And I’m honestly sorry if what I came off as a sneer. It wasn’t my intention.
snake oil is anti-inflammatory
My plan was to have a copy of Homage to the Last Avant-Garde reproduced verbatim with myself as the new author. The problem is that this will not happen because I am not a known authorial celebrity, nor am I poet-pundit, in the po-biz. Who would publish this shit without total authorial street cred and celebrityist circle jerking at play?
name name names
After watching a video on Kenny G, I wondered how far this conceptualism, with its lack of concern for originality or copyrights, could go. That it has resulted in this “reproduction” is truly entertaining. I just wanted to let you know that, as a result, your accomplishment will be discussed in my graduate poetry workshop. Thought you might enjoy that knowledge.