Thesurprising thing about Kenneth Goldsmith is what a good reader he is and, when he reads it, how aural his texts are. Before I break my no-lit-crit rule, let me get down to business. In the effluent Q&A that followed, he held uncreative writing (his own term for what he does and possibly the answer to Chris Stroffolino's question of what an non-poetry M.F.A . would be like) to be the only truly contemporary practice. As he argues, several hundred news papers, each of which could qualify as the greatest novel ever written, are printed daily, and that is probably now only a fraction of the text generated online- so much text that it is absolutely foolish to create anymore. We all are (or is he really saying we all ought to be) only "managing information".
Here's the question I was too polite to hound him with at the after-party: If I'm only managing information when I "write" and don't know it, and you're managing information when you "write" and do know it, what difference is there in the literature we produce? It's probably the case that a google search could find every word I used in this post printed in newspapers printed today, but that knowledge isn't part of my writing practice. Could the difference between what I do and what Kenneth does really consist only in that notion being in ,or not being in, either of our heads? If so, I think Kenny G alone has resurrected the importance of intentionality from the jaws of modernism (I really hope that sentence actually exists, verbatim, somewhere in today's papers).
Also, I'm writing this under the assumption that he has a good answer to this challenge, should it ever get presented to him.
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Actually, I found the most surprising thing about Kenny Goldsmith is how well dressed he is. Though, I'll admit that the recordings of his readings I've found online have been nearly as surprising and impressive.
It's kind of tragic that we tend to suspect the more conceptual of artists (especially poets) of being less charismatic or articulate.
I've yet to see Goldsmith live, but I am patiently working my way through all of the audio and video recordings of him online (pensound is overflowing with his singing the texts of theorists and philosophers of the 20th Century). There is also a recording, roughly half an hour in length, of him presenting his essay "Being Boring." From what I can tell, based on your comments of the live performance, and other material online, this essay is basically Kenneth Goldsmith 101, an introduction to what he does and how he does it. This kind of conteztualizing seems especially neccessary in regard to his writings.
Getting back to your post, I wish you'd been a little less polite at the after-party, as I've been curious along similar lines. There is something strikingly 'oldschool' avant-garde about him, and it's not just his less than subtle sartorial aesthetic. Your question of intentionality is very similar to critiques of Duchamp's readymades. Yet, I suppose Duchamp (along with some of his contemporaries), were more interested in sensationalizing the everyday object, rather than simply "managing" it. Still, my reading so far suggests to me that Goldsmith is far more influenced by musicians/ performers and visual artists from the early to mid-late century: Satie, Duchamp, Cage, Mac Low, Warhol, et al.
I think you already implied much of this with the simple use of "G(oldsmith)."
According to him, if the answer to your question exists, it (can? will? should?) exist on the internet.
I'd like to continue this. I hope some others who attended the reading, or who have any kind of exposure to Kenneth Goldsmith, chime in.
Remy: Three words.
BRIGHT PINK TIE.
(Kenny at the Mills reading. You would have loved it).
It seems my interview with KG will be uploaded in a few weeks. Although I didn't address the question of authorial intentionality, we do briefly discuss the idea of the intentionality of technology itself (in this case language and systems of distribution). As far as Duchamp's urinal, I'm interested with what it “expressed” about the systems and institutions of framing of its time (in this case the Art world) not the intentionality of the individual artist. Framing is part of KG's rhetoric, but again more as an individual choice rather than an attention to systems and institutions of framing (i.e., the inherited technologies that become our tools).
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