Innovate

Ron Silliman on new work by Jared Hayes and Janet Holmes:

Both books are well conceived, well executed and, as book objects, delights to have & to hold. But I’m wondering if these projects carry forward in the same innovative spirit as the works that initially inspired them, or perhaps represent something profoundly different altogether.

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Which gets me back to that problem of value. I’ve argued before that the history of literature is the history of change in literature & that “doing something best” really counts for very little.

To which Johannes Göransson replies:

Most obvious is your obsession with originality and authenticity. This of course comes out clearly in your dismissal of translation, which as much as any avant-garde practice trouble notions of authenticity and originality.

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[Nor - thankfully! - is any work of Flarf "Great" (but often funny, perverse and insightfully ludicrous). There's also some irony in christening Flarf as genuinely new, when its practices are patently anti-genuine and anti-originality. Likewise, your repeated description of Kenny Goldsmith - who is equally overtly anti-original (even his idea of un-originality are very 1960s!) - as genuinely "new."]