John Cage, 'Writing for the Second Time through Finnegans Wake'
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Marjorie Perloff, Danny Snelson, and Nancy Perloff convened with Al Filreis at Marjorie Perloff’s home in Los Angeles to discuss John Cage’s mesostic abridgement of James Joyce, “Writing for a Second Time through Finnegans Wake.” Nothwithstanding its status as an intense selection or condensation of the original text, the resulting “writing through” is too long for PoemTalk’s signature “close but not too close reading,” so the group focuses on the opening pages of the Cage text. “Writing for a Second Time,” including the methodological preface, has been published in Empty Words; the pages we discuss (37–42) have been made available through PennSound here.
April 17, 2019
How can media archeology inform literary studies?
It may seem obvious that media changes how an author writes, but what else does it change? What they write? Where literature appears? What literature is? How might understanding the complex and nuanced history of media help us better understand what we read? Special thanks to Orchid Tierney for requesting a post on this important topic. —Katie L. Price