Monday, March 9, 2009

CAGE M






From my consolidated archive of Cage-authored/compiled publications, a look at a rare copy of M Writings '67-'72. (I have been collecting his publications for more than 15 years). Cage's 'books' have no narrative structure; they're not a collection of aesthetic or philosophical manifestos or anything of that sort. They're typically a disjointed array of chance-determined lectures on mycology or D.T. Suzuki; mesostic poems reflecting on Thoreau or Joyce; or excerpts from various journals/diaries. The beauty of these is that the reader can simply pick a page at random and read it out of 'sequence'. And often times, the physical layout of the pages/paragraph structure/typography is also chance-determined, making it that much more complex (or distracting, depending on your point of view).


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