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Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age
Can techniques traditionally thought to be outside the scope of literature, including word processing, databasing, identity ciphering, and intensive programming, inspire the reinvention of writing? The Internet and the digital environment present writers with new challenges and opportunities to reconceive creativity, authorship, and their relationship to language. Confronted with an unprecedented amount of texts and language, writers have the opportunity to move beyond the creation of new texts and manage, parse, appropriate, and reconstruct those that already exist.
In addition to explaining his concept of uncreative writing, which is also the name of his popular course at the University of Pennsylvania, Goldsmith reads the work of writers who have taken up this challenge. Examining a wide range of texts and techniques, including the use of Google searches to create poetry, the appropriation of courtroom testimony, and the possibility of robo-poetics, Goldsmith joins this recent work to practices that date back to the early twentieth century. Writers and artists such as Walter Benjamin, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Andy Warhol embodied an ethos in which the construction or conception of a text was just as important as the resultant text itself. By extending this tradition into the digital realm, uncreative writing offers new ways of thinking about identity and the making of meaning.
In addition to explaining his concept of uncreative writing, which is also the name of his popular course at the University of Pennsylvania, Goldsmith reads the work of writers who have taken up this challenge. Examining a wide range of texts and techniques, including the use of Google searches to create poetry, the appropriation of courtroom testimony, and the possibility of robo-poetics, Goldsmith joins this recent work to practices that date back to the early twentieth century. Writers and artists such as Walter Benjamin, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Andy Warhol embodied an ethos in which the construction or conception of a text was just as important as the resultant text itself. By extending this tradition into the digital realm, uncreative writing offers new ways of thinking about identity and the making of meaning.
272 pages, Paperback
First published July 15, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
April 9, 2015
Two words in response to this text: “NO DUH!” This text is way behind the times. After Barthes killed the (already long-dead) author, after Borges swarmed aspiring academics and writers in an labyrinthine sea of infinite information, after Duchamp turned art into readymades and then Levine appropriated those readymades, blah, blah, blah...this book seems to rub in my face what I already know. To make matters worse, the author blames it on the Internet, as if this hackneyed conception of the “end” of originality is completely new, thanks to the Internet, and then paints it as if authors have not yet realized that the Internet is revolutionary (not true at all). Enough already! I get it. We don’t need more books telling us the same thing over again. Much less do we need to use the adjective “uncreative” as a descriptor for this purportedly “new” way of thinking and writing (it’s just a different kind of creativity—praising it as “uncreative” only makes it look radical and anger those who hold “creativity” in high esteem). Maybe the author is just living his practice of writing without aspiring for originality, by writing about a topic that is completely unoriginal? Good for him, please let’s move on. Professors, I urge you not to assign this book unless you’re teaching a Freshmen or Sophomore-level writing class.
March 15, 2018
Goldsmith proposes that the literature of the digital age should not really be written to be read, but rather not read, just thought about. Perhaps he intended this book to function as an illustration - and that's why it has so many spelling and editing mistakes!
Structurally, the book seems to be constantly confusing, I don't know if deliberately or not, three distinct levels of analysis: prediction, prescription, and description. When Goldsmith announces "the future of literature will be increasingly mechanical" (p. 158) he seems to operate on the level of prediction, what he believes will be, based on his assessment of technological advances. Of course, he conveniently ignores advances like e-readers or the Gutenberg project which have made traditional literary forms more accessible than ever before. But he often strikes a prescriptive, even imperative, tone instead, for example when he urges writers to adopt the ethos of conceptual visual art to avoid writer's block. At this level, there is scant justification for why a writer who is happy to go on struggling to pen readable novels or poems should shift instead to writing unreadable, even "asemic" literature composed of lines or blanks.
Finally, at the level of description, Goldsmith explains various projects of "uncreative writing", "illegibility", and texts made to be "parsed" or thought about rather than read linearly - of which there are certainly examples, as this book shows. In this third level, I suppose the book is a useful documentation of such projects, including Modernist experiments such as Stein's poetry all the way to contemporary expressions like a dude trying to get bacteria to write poems through their gene sequence. The problem persists, however, that a lot of these expressions are highly marginal, unappealing to anyone who isn't a conceptual artist or po-mo academic, and in that sense simply don't seem very valuable or worthwhile to me. Crucially, just because technology enables certain forms of text-creation does not mean, in any way, that contemporary writers or readers should or will embrace these innovations as literature - and Goldsmith does not do enough to bridge this divide between the descriptive and prescriptive/predictive parts of his argument.
The type of shoddy argumentation in this book might become clearer with an example. Goldsmith recognizes the lack of interest in this type of work: he mentions the low website traffic that Simon Morris's re-typing of Kerouac garnered (p. 155). Curiously, he uses this indifferent reception as an argument in favor of it as a work of art, because it is "functionless and aestheticized". This is faulty reasoning, implicitly assuming that the lack of function of an object makes it an artistic object. Anything useless, in that view, is a work of art: the bike I bought but never use is an 'aesthetic object', by this conception. Certainly, the condition of something as "art" is often associated with the fact that it does not fulfil a strictly utilitarian function: reading a novel brings me emotional enjoyment and reflection, but it's unlikely to increase my productivity at work. However, this does not mean that anything useless is therefore a work of art, as Goldsmith's association is implying.
While some of Goldsmith's examples of "unoriginal genius" are, paradoxically, creative - the lawyer who publishes her legal briefs as poetry, for example - most of them would not make for enjoyable reading, as he himself admits. No one wants to read Soliloquy, a text composed of 600 pages of every word Goldsmith spoke for a week, and yet Goldsmith is for some reason saying these sort of exercises are worthwhile, worth at least thinking about if not reading. I never understood why. He says that writing "must" account for the constant shifts in the link between language and image, the new slipperiness of language (p. 71), for example - but never explains why. And so I found myself, throughout the whole book, asking simply WHY. And I never did get that answer. The closest thing to it was the idea that all these experimental texts raised certain questions about certain aspects of language, but this feels like empty acrobatics to me. I suppose it's fine that these manifestations exist, I'm not saying "burn these meaningless texts!" - they just don't seem very interesting or justified to me, personally, as good literature.
The only reason I'm giving this 2 stars instead of 1 is that at least it made me think, feel enraged, and realize that perhaps I'm a highly conservative person in the eyes of some people. I don't consider myself intellectually conservative about literature - I like my Kindle, I embrace the possibility of downloading cheap or free digital texts that I would have trouble accessing physically, I like new forms of literature outside the boundaries of the usual respectable canon. And yet, the proposals of this book for "uncreative writing" as the way literature should respond to technological advances and the accompanying excess of information, text, and language seemed completely ridiculous to me. Am I really to believe that a re-typing, on a blog, of Jack Kerouac's On The Road is somehow a literary accomplishment, something worth discussing? Am I really to believe that the future of literature lies in NOT-reading, in inane re-typings of an entire edition of the New York Times, in just "thinking about" a completely unreadable scrawling of lines as an "interesting concept"? If you want to persuade me of these things, you will need very good arguments for it. Which this book does not offer.
Perhaps this review just reveals that I'm too conservative for this kind of literature. I like literature that pushes boundaries, sure, but I like it to do so in a way that is meaningful, readable, with content. I want literature to enrich language and resist its dehumanization, rather than assuming that because new technologies have made it over-abundant and often machine-generated, we just have to meekly accept that language has become debased.
Structurally, the book seems to be constantly confusing, I don't know if deliberately or not, three distinct levels of analysis: prediction, prescription, and description. When Goldsmith announces "the future of literature will be increasingly mechanical" (p. 158) he seems to operate on the level of prediction, what he believes will be, based on his assessment of technological advances. Of course, he conveniently ignores advances like e-readers or the Gutenberg project which have made traditional literary forms more accessible than ever before. But he often strikes a prescriptive, even imperative, tone instead, for example when he urges writers to adopt the ethos of conceptual visual art to avoid writer's block. At this level, there is scant justification for why a writer who is happy to go on struggling to pen readable novels or poems should shift instead to writing unreadable, even "asemic" literature composed of lines or blanks.
Finally, at the level of description, Goldsmith explains various projects of "uncreative writing", "illegibility", and texts made to be "parsed" or thought about rather than read linearly - of which there are certainly examples, as this book shows. In this third level, I suppose the book is a useful documentation of such projects, including Modernist experiments such as Stein's poetry all the way to contemporary expressions like a dude trying to get bacteria to write poems through their gene sequence. The problem persists, however, that a lot of these expressions are highly marginal, unappealing to anyone who isn't a conceptual artist or po-mo academic, and in that sense simply don't seem very valuable or worthwhile to me. Crucially, just because technology enables certain forms of text-creation does not mean, in any way, that contemporary writers or readers should or will embrace these innovations as literature - and Goldsmith does not do enough to bridge this divide between the descriptive and prescriptive/predictive parts of his argument.
The type of shoddy argumentation in this book might become clearer with an example. Goldsmith recognizes the lack of interest in this type of work: he mentions the low website traffic that Simon Morris's re-typing of Kerouac garnered (p. 155). Curiously, he uses this indifferent reception as an argument in favor of it as a work of art, because it is "functionless and aestheticized". This is faulty reasoning, implicitly assuming that the lack of function of an object makes it an artistic object. Anything useless, in that view, is a work of art: the bike I bought but never use is an 'aesthetic object', by this conception. Certainly, the condition of something as "art" is often associated with the fact that it does not fulfil a strictly utilitarian function: reading a novel brings me emotional enjoyment and reflection, but it's unlikely to increase my productivity at work. However, this does not mean that anything useless is therefore a work of art, as Goldsmith's association is implying.
While some of Goldsmith's examples of "unoriginal genius" are, paradoxically, creative - the lawyer who publishes her legal briefs as poetry, for example - most of them would not make for enjoyable reading, as he himself admits. No one wants to read Soliloquy, a text composed of 600 pages of every word Goldsmith spoke for a week, and yet Goldsmith is for some reason saying these sort of exercises are worthwhile, worth at least thinking about if not reading. I never understood why. He says that writing "must" account for the constant shifts in the link between language and image, the new slipperiness of language (p. 71), for example - but never explains why. And so I found myself, throughout the whole book, asking simply WHY. And I never did get that answer. The closest thing to it was the idea that all these experimental texts raised certain questions about certain aspects of language, but this feels like empty acrobatics to me. I suppose it's fine that these manifestations exist, I'm not saying "burn these meaningless texts!" - they just don't seem very interesting or justified to me, personally, as good literature.
The only reason I'm giving this 2 stars instead of 1 is that at least it made me think, feel enraged, and realize that perhaps I'm a highly conservative person in the eyes of some people. I don't consider myself intellectually conservative about literature - I like my Kindle, I embrace the possibility of downloading cheap or free digital texts that I would have trouble accessing physically, I like new forms of literature outside the boundaries of the usual respectable canon. And yet, the proposals of this book for "uncreative writing" as the way literature should respond to technological advances and the accompanying excess of information, text, and language seemed completely ridiculous to me. Am I really to believe that a re-typing, on a blog, of Jack Kerouac's On The Road is somehow a literary accomplishment, something worth discussing? Am I really to believe that the future of literature lies in NOT-reading, in inane re-typings of an entire edition of the New York Times, in just "thinking about" a completely unreadable scrawling of lines as an "interesting concept"? If you want to persuade me of these things, you will need very good arguments for it. Which this book does not offer.
Perhaps this review just reveals that I'm too conservative for this kind of literature. I like literature that pushes boundaries, sure, but I like it to do so in a way that is meaningful, readable, with content. I want literature to enrich language and resist its dehumanization, rather than assuming that because new technologies have made it over-abundant and often machine-generated, we just have to meekly accept that language has become debased.
May 11, 2013
I preferred Goldsmith's book to Marcus Boon's In Praise of Copying. I am now eager to read Marge Perloff's Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century. I'm still partial to Hillel Schwartz's overwhelming The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles, but I appreciated Goldsmith's connecting interesting writing ideas to the visual arts in his book, and enjoyed a number of his case studies. At the end of the day, I think we become ourselves through copying in a way, and Goldsmith makes a case for this idea form time to time in the book, but some times seems a little smug. While we may be up to our eyeballs in existing writing, that doesn't preclude the possibility that new writing could (or should) happen...I quibble; well worth your time...
May 15, 2022
The analysis gets a little repetitive essay to essay, but the case studies are neat. Essentially Goldsmith briefly sets up and reiterates his philosophy the same way each time, but then presents you with a bunch of new and cool rabbit holes to fall down. There's also a solid index at the back for when you vaguely remember some conceptual project he wrote about and you want to run back and get a quick refresher. Really I just read this because I was procrastinating on something else. But I did enjoy it.
February 26, 2020
Extremely dense and full of inspiration. At the same time, it feels challenging but also way too complex for an ignorant on the subject. It sure changed my way to view writing but I'll need some time to reflect upon the choices it offers.
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August 15, 2013808.00285 G6242 2011
November 21, 2011
But the callow merlin found it very difficult to enlist his liberty in the cause for which he had chosen obscurity. Self-hooded---caged, most of the time, by his own will---through starving for prey and dreaming of empyreal conquest, he brooded over the unending desire that diverted his imagination to visions urged upon it by the foremost pules of his body. Or else he lay pinioned by the demon of sloth who slipped in through the open door when he was all prepared for an annunciation muse to reward him for chastity. Stagnant air filled the birdy tubes of his bones and the inert hollows of his breast. He strove for the motive to breathe deeply and slowly, to exhale every last atom of blood-carbon before admitting pure air to the channels of ventilation that fed his spiritual fire, the scarcely smoldering combustion that nothing seemed to set ablaze. By devious experiments he found annoying mystery and despair in the pursuit of intellectual beauty.
By devious experiments he found annoying mystery and despair in the pursuit of intellectual beauty. He strove for the motive to breathe deeply and slowly, to exhale every last atom of blood-carbon before admitting pure air to the channels of ventilation that fed his spiritual fire, the scarcely smoldering combustion that nothing seemed to set ablaze. Stagnant air filled the birdy tubes of his bones and the inert hollows of his breast. Or else he lay pinioned by the demon of sloth who slipped in through the open door when he was all prepared for an annunciation muse to reward him for chastity.Self-hooded---caged, most of the time, by his own will---through starving for prey and dreaming of empyreal conquest, he brooded over the unending desire that diverted his imagination to visions urged upon it by the foremost pules of his body. But the callow merlin found it very difficult to enlist his liberty in the cause for which he had chosen obscurity.
By devious experiments he found annoying mystery and despair in the pursuit of intellectual beauty. He strove for the motive to breathe deeply and slowly, to exhale every last atom of blood-carbon before admitting pure air to the channels of ventilation that fed his spiritual fire, the scarcely smoldering combustion that nothing seemed to set ablaze. Stagnant air filled the birdy tubes of his bones and the inert hollows of his breast. Or else he lay pinioned by the demon of sloth who slipped in through the open door when he was all prepared for an annunciation muse to reward him for chastity.Self-hooded---caged, most of the time, by his own will---through starving for prey and dreaming of empyreal conquest, he brooded over the unending desire that diverted his imagination to visions urged upon it by the foremost pules of his body. But the callow merlin found it very difficult to enlist his liberty in the cause for which he had chosen obscurity.
November 7, 2014
I despise textbooks. For me, they capture the anti-intellectual 'dumbed down' imperative of higher education. Generic, standardized, low-level 'knowledge' masquerading as scholarship. But Kenneth Goldsmith's _Uncreative Writing_ is the only book I would use to 'teach' writing. Indeed, if I was teaching writing, I would demand that students read this book _before_ entering the course.
Goldsmith understands digitization, the internet, the proliferation of information, plagiarism, remixing and appropriation. He explores the impact of these terms, platforms, concepts and practices on writing.
While Goldsmith's rendering of 'quality writing' in the early stages of the book does not capture the consequences of post-poststructuralism, this book offers a proliferation of ideas and strategies for those of us who think about writing. While the latter stages of this small book are repetitive, there are enough ideas here to satisfy the most demanding reader.
Goldsmith understands digitization, the internet, the proliferation of information, plagiarism, remixing and appropriation. He explores the impact of these terms, platforms, concepts and practices on writing.
While Goldsmith's rendering of 'quality writing' in the early stages of the book does not capture the consequences of post-poststructuralism, this book offers a proliferation of ideas and strategies for those of us who think about writing. While the latter stages of this small book are repetitive, there are enough ideas here to satisfy the most demanding reader.
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April 24, 2024Interesante de leer pero estoy bastante en desacuerdo con varios de los planteos del libro, sobre todo porque me parecen contradictorios.
Las máquinas al mover datos y generar caracteres alfa-numéricos no están creando literatura sino materia cruda. La función de ese movimiento y esa generación de datos no es conmover. Para que el objetivo sea conmover, como bien ejemplifica una y otra vez el libro en cada uno de los ensayos, hace falta un operador humano que tome una decisión con ese material crudo (importando poco si el ejecutor es humano o un algoritmo) transformando eso en arte, de la misma manera que un pomo de acrílico o un mingitorio necesitan de la intervención humana para volverse un mensaje. El libro sostiene este punto varias veces para después negarlo en el epílogo.
Confundir la materia cruda, o la ejecución de la artesanía, con el arte, es negarle su esencia.
Donde el autor predice una literatura que se generará por IAS autosuficientes, yo veo la necesidad inminente de un desvío y un cambio de paradigma que nos va a llevar a revalorizar la presencia de la creatividad humana en el origen del mensaje. El ensayo no para de dar ejemplos de esto, y sin embargo se contradice por completo, creo yo, en su entusiasmo desmesurado por abrazar a las inteligencias artificiales.
Más allá de esto centrar tanta atención en una sola forma de creatividad es un poco obtuso. Existe, y puede ser válida, pero no es tan interesante (también queda claro en el libro) ni novedosa.
Por otro lado me quedé con muchísimas ganas de que desarrollara el concepto de genio- no original en relación a la literatura más clásica.
Las máquinas al mover datos y generar caracteres alfa-numéricos no están creando literatura sino materia cruda. La función de ese movimiento y esa generación de datos no es conmover. Para que el objetivo sea conmover, como bien ejemplifica una y otra vez el libro en cada uno de los ensayos, hace falta un operador humano que tome una decisión con ese material crudo (importando poco si el ejecutor es humano o un algoritmo) transformando eso en arte, de la misma manera que un pomo de acrílico o un mingitorio necesitan de la intervención humana para volverse un mensaje. El libro sostiene este punto varias veces para después negarlo en el epílogo.
Confundir la materia cruda, o la ejecución de la artesanía, con el arte, es negarle su esencia.
Donde el autor predice una literatura que se generará por IAS autosuficientes, yo veo la necesidad inminente de un desvío y un cambio de paradigma que nos va a llevar a revalorizar la presencia de la creatividad humana en el origen del mensaje. El ensayo no para de dar ejemplos de esto, y sin embargo se contradice por completo, creo yo, en su entusiasmo desmesurado por abrazar a las inteligencias artificiales.
Más allá de esto centrar tanta atención en una sola forma de creatividad es un poco obtuso. Existe, y puede ser válida, pero no es tan interesante (también queda claro en el libro) ni novedosa.
Por otro lado me quedé con muchísimas ganas de que desarrollara el concepto de genio- no original en relación a la literatura más clásica.
December 24, 2024
Recuerdo una cena durante unas vacaciones con mi primo, un abogado muy brillante y lleno de curiosidad, pero a quien le aburre mucho su trabajo. Se quejaba de lo monótono que era tener que escribir todos los días, y de manera constante, aburridos memorándums. Para provocarlo le comenté: "¿Por qué no piensas en lo que haces como arte? Si recontextualizas esos documentos, no están tan lejos de algunos documentos de arte conceptual que he visto. De hecho, una de las prácticas de ciertos artistas como Christo es incluir todos los memorándums legales que hay que presentar para, por ejemplo, erigir una valla que cruce kilómetros de naturaleza en California. Existe una cierta fascinación con la documentación y con el tono de autoridad del lenguaje legal que atraviesa mucho de la escritura y del arte conceptual. Tú podrías ser parte de esa tradición”, le sugerí. Y le podría haber contado de la obra de Vanessa Place. Mi primo, aunque intrigado, lo desestimó y continuó con su aburrimiento por muchos años más.
😉🤪
😉🤪
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 1, 2024
(3.5)
está re interesante. la cagada es q estaba leyendo para algo de la facultad y descubrí q no me servía jajan't
está re interesante. la cagada es q estaba leyendo para algo de la facultad y descubrí q no me servía jajan't
January 10, 2015
Check out Conrad Aiken's "Inscriptions in Sundry Places," just as a jumping off point, to begin to get an idea of how not-revolutionary the basic ideas in this text are in literary terms. The revolutionary aspect is, of course, that now, with our modern information glut, anyone can sit at home & produce massive texts of such banality that they cannot be read! Machines are writing for other machines! (so what?)
It is not that this text does not contain good ideas or that appropriation cannot be employed in myriad literary/art projects to produce beautiful & creative (or socio-political) results; or that systematic approaches for doing just that cannot be gleaned from this book. It is not even that there is not a place, in terms of socio-political theory/discussion, for the type of writing Goldsmith advocates, but its place is exactly that. Unfortunately, you will need to prepare yourself to tolerate Goldsmith's apparent reactionary approach to language, as well as his odd readings of the work of other writers (interpretation is always subjective) to support his program of anti-intellectual non-creativity & his supposition that this is the future of writing.
Manifestos come & go as mainstream writing plods along in willful ignorance; & the reality is that most poets loosely associated with "a" conceptual movement have simply added these ideas to their repertoire of tools to be accessed creatively & moved on; so why am I so irritated by Goldsmith? His books are barely noticed & his ideas are nearly unknown outside academia.
My problem is that I think that Goldsmith is essentially right: that creativity is dying (that art & literature particularly are floundering & becoming more banal) & that this is the direction in which we are headed – into a controlled anti-intellectual stasis which Goldsmith is naively promoting.
Control in a "Democratic" society depends on language. One uses language to divide the opposition, to teach the populace their opinions & then to enable individuals to pressure peers toward conformity. There are a number of methods used: nationalism/patriotism, propaganda, control of information outlets etc. – & since the age of television, entertainment/information glut. If you can keep a population distracted & entertained, you can control simply by filling time with innocuous activity. Is it too much to hope that rather than promoting the dumbing-down of language & creativity, high profile professors might encourage education & intellectual development?
I read this book in the hope that I was misinterpreting Goldsmith– that he was not literally promoting non-creativity, & frankly, I'm still not entirely sure. Most of his examples do not support the advocation of the kind of extreme non-creative stenography found in much of his own writing. Maybe he isn't serious. Maybe Goldsmith's entire project is meant to provoke exactly this sort of thinking- to personify all that is wrong with the dumbing down of language & education. But my take on this book is that he is serious, & irresponsibly promoting a reactionary, reductionist approach to language.
It is not that this text does not contain good ideas or that appropriation cannot be employed in myriad literary/art projects to produce beautiful & creative (or socio-political) results; or that systematic approaches for doing just that cannot be gleaned from this book. It is not even that there is not a place, in terms of socio-political theory/discussion, for the type of writing Goldsmith advocates, but its place is exactly that. Unfortunately, you will need to prepare yourself to tolerate Goldsmith's apparent reactionary approach to language, as well as his odd readings of the work of other writers (interpretation is always subjective) to support his program of anti-intellectual non-creativity & his supposition that this is the future of writing.
Manifestos come & go as mainstream writing plods along in willful ignorance; & the reality is that most poets loosely associated with "a" conceptual movement have simply added these ideas to their repertoire of tools to be accessed creatively & moved on; so why am I so irritated by Goldsmith? His books are barely noticed & his ideas are nearly unknown outside academia.
My problem is that I think that Goldsmith is essentially right: that creativity is dying (that art & literature particularly are floundering & becoming more banal) & that this is the direction in which we are headed – into a controlled anti-intellectual stasis which Goldsmith is naively promoting.
Control in a "Democratic" society depends on language. One uses language to divide the opposition, to teach the populace their opinions & then to enable individuals to pressure peers toward conformity. There are a number of methods used: nationalism/patriotism, propaganda, control of information outlets etc. – & since the age of television, entertainment/information glut. If you can keep a population distracted & entertained, you can control simply by filling time with innocuous activity. Is it too much to hope that rather than promoting the dumbing-down of language & creativity, high profile professors might encourage education & intellectual development?
I read this book in the hope that I was misinterpreting Goldsmith– that he was not literally promoting non-creativity, & frankly, I'm still not entirely sure. Most of his examples do not support the advocation of the kind of extreme non-creative stenography found in much of his own writing. Maybe he isn't serious. Maybe Goldsmith's entire project is meant to provoke exactly this sort of thinking- to personify all that is wrong with the dumbing down of language & education. But my take on this book is that he is serious, & irresponsibly promoting a reactionary, reductionist approach to language.
June 16, 2013
Context versus content, Goldsmith is arguing strongly in favor of context. Writers don't need to be original, writing can be art when it is framed the right way (pun intended).
I like reading about literary movements, so I enjoyed this. Maybe not a lot here for someone who is already familiar with ideas like flarf, but having it in one place and getting to spend some time with these ideas was worth it for me.
I like reading about literary movements, so I enjoyed this. Maybe not a lot here for someone who is already familiar with ideas like flarf, but having it in one place and getting to spend some time with these ideas was worth it for me.
June 3, 2019
It is my opinion that meaning is forged not in the creation or originality of work, but in the emotional response it forms within the reader. So maybe “uncreative writing” is the way to go for some, sometimes it opens up the arena and allows for rules to be broken and the hybridity and evolution of literature to go on. Maybe it isn’t. But meaning, above all else, cannot be derived from form alone.
For more visit: www.ampspoetry.com
For more visit: www.ampspoetry.com
February 20, 2021
I don't know that I agree with everything Goldsmith says, but his ideas are provocative and there is much here of worth to writers and writing teachers. There are controversial things to discuss and also to try with composition classes as well as creative writing. This is a charming and useful book.
April 3, 2019
Me sorprendió, aunque no estoy encantada con lo que dice, admito que la literatura se resiste inútilmente las tendencias que avasallan al arte contemporáneo. Probablemente la literatura actual se está escribiendo en la red y no en los libros
Read
December 10, 2011this book was full of typos and subject-verb disagreements. but other than those distractions, the book was fascinating.
April 2, 2024
No puedo decir que sea *en partes iguales* brillante y estúpido. Es más brillante de lo que es estúpido. Cumple con lo que se plantea desde premisas tecno-utopistas con las que podemos —usualmente debemos— estar en desacuerdo. Pero es imposible negar que conforme cambian los medios, también las herramientas para escribir y pensar la realidad.
Uno de los mayores problemas, pienso, es que Goldsmith *no entiende* qué le gusta a la gente de los libros. Se aproxima al problema desde la perspectiva de un artista conceptual, y pocas veces intuye que la gente disfruta el contenido de sus lectures y no solamente la forma. Nos presenta la historia de artefactos y obras literarias sin duda provocadoras, a veces buenas, a veces malas, a veces brillantes y también a veces un tanto absurdas. No tengo la intención de demeritar sus intereses, pero por lo menos, podemos tener claro que no son las únicas formas de literatura aún viables.
Hay mucho que sacar del libro. En los años que han transcurrido desde que se publicó, más todavía. Fue una gran lectura que me abrió los ojos a un campo de posibilidades... pero... parte de mí sabe que una versión actualizada, dado algunos de los focos del autor, resultaría mucho peor. Salió en el momento correcto.
Uno de los mayores problemas, pienso, es que Goldsmith *no entiende* qué le gusta a la gente de los libros. Se aproxima al problema desde la perspectiva de un artista conceptual, y pocas veces intuye que la gente disfruta el contenido de sus lectures y no solamente la forma. Nos presenta la historia de artefactos y obras literarias sin duda provocadoras, a veces buenas, a veces malas, a veces brillantes y también a veces un tanto absurdas. No tengo la intención de demeritar sus intereses, pero por lo menos, podemos tener claro que no son las únicas formas de literatura aún viables.
Hay mucho que sacar del libro. En los años que han transcurrido desde que se publicó, más todavía. Fue una gran lectura que me abrió los ojos a un campo de posibilidades... pero... parte de mí sabe que una versión actualizada, dado algunos de los focos del autor, resultaría mucho peor. Salió en el momento correcto.
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January 31, 2022Sicuramente non è una lettura per chi studia arti visive e se ha già letto altre decine di testi e libri che trattano dell’essere DJ degli oggetti comuni. Una sorta di postproduction di Bourriaud applicato ai testi con un risultato non troppo rivelante se letto adesso e con altre letture alle spalle. Un testo che è sicuramente interessante per i neofiti ma che non porta nulla di così nuovo nel tavolo… Per essere pubblicato nel 2019 è molto indietro, ho apprezzato molto la traduzione e la scrittura molto più dinamica dell’ultimo capitolo e gli accenni interessanti fatti nella post fazione ma per il resto resta datato o fermo.
È comunque una lettura che consiglio a chi non ha alle spalle testi sull’argomento copia perché è ricco di spunti ed esempi.
È comunque una lettura che consiglio a chi non ha alle spalle testi sull’argomento copia perché è ricco di spunti ed esempi.
May 7, 2025
*Perhaps a 2.5/5?
In Uncreative Writing, Goldsmith starts off strong, but his argument quickly loses momentum as the book continues. His assertions become increasingly circular and more questionably supported. Maybe I just don't "get" conceptual writing. I find Goldsmith's ideas interesting, but he doesn't succeed in convincing readers that "uncreative writing" results in any sort of compelling or impactful poetry. Goldsmith is probably best known for his saying, "I don't have a readership, I have a thinkership"; yet, I'm not sure that the appropriative poetry he promotes does effectively change our collective way of thinking. Still, Goldsmith's book presents a unique perspective on writing in the digital age, and I think we can all learn from his open-mindedness.
In Uncreative Writing, Goldsmith starts off strong, but his argument quickly loses momentum as the book continues. His assertions become increasingly circular and more questionably supported. Maybe I just don't "get" conceptual writing. I find Goldsmith's ideas interesting, but he doesn't succeed in convincing readers that "uncreative writing" results in any sort of compelling or impactful poetry. Goldsmith is probably best known for his saying, "I don't have a readership, I have a thinkership"; yet, I'm not sure that the appropriative poetry he promotes does effectively change our collective way of thinking. Still, Goldsmith's book presents a unique perspective on writing in the digital age, and I think we can all learn from his open-mindedness.
March 6, 2022
I read this book a number of years after it was published, but there's nothing new since then.
It makes me wonder if this isn't responsible for a deadening of what would be called the avant-garde; when you write about the edge, it's no longer the edge. Actions taken to try to cataloge it only end up appropriating it. Doubly true in this case, where the meta-works of analysis have to come after other works have preceded it to collect into a distilled piece.
Plus the intervening decade and some since writing this, the author seems to have not changed.
It makes me wonder if this isn't responsible for a deadening of what would be called the avant-garde; when you write about the edge, it's no longer the edge. Actions taken to try to cataloge it only end up appropriating it. Doubly true in this case, where the meta-works of analysis have to come after other works have preceded it to collect into a distilled piece.
Plus the intervening decade and some since writing this, the author seems to have not changed.
December 7, 2024
Simplemente, sí. Dentro de este libro hay textos que podrán ser recordados, fácilmente, durante años.
En físico es una experiencia teológica. Solo es un friki que sabe que es inteligente, más que la media, escribe muy bien y quiere hacerte reflexionar sobre las cualidades del lenguaje.
Yo pensaba que el problema, y mi problema en el arte, era Babel, el el lenguaje. Ahora creo que solo es un malentendido, una nueva frontera, como él mismo dice.
recomendable
En físico es una experiencia teológica. Solo es un friki que sabe que es inteligente, más que la media, escribe muy bien y quiere hacerte reflexionar sobre las cualidades del lenguaje.
Yo pensaba que el problema, y mi problema en el arte, era Babel, el el lenguaje. Ahora creo que solo es un malentendido, una nueva frontera, como él mismo dice.
recomendable
January 12, 2021
A bit dated but has some really liberating idea for those trying to begin or expand their writing practice. I don't really like a lot of the experimental literature he cites in the book but I think the exercises he recommends are interesting and helpful. Does a good job exploring (and contracting) the space between consuming words, and putting your own together.
March 23, 2024
Una mezcla de enciclopedia de la vanguardia y el modernismo en literatura y de reescritura de la obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica aplicada al surgimiento del internet. Con la típica tendencia en la academia y el arte conceptual a la deconstrucción obsesiva y a confundir la acción política con el gesto, pero más allá de eso, un librazo.
December 20, 2021
Penso che mi manchino delle conoscenze in campo artistico necessarie per comprendere alcuni passaggi del testo, ma l'idea dietro il saggio l'ho trovata interessante e divertente, e in generale il libro mi è stato d'ispirazione. Vorrei partecipare a un corso di scrittura non creativa.
April 24, 2025
Goldsmith is cray cray - in all seriousness, postmodern art is excellent in theory, and downright stupid in execution. Much to learn from it, not worth wasting time putting it into practice. Apologies to big G
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May 29, 2019Made me rethink writing, reading, literature, language, creativity… it'll break your eye open.
September 27, 2019
That was a very interesting take on writing. i highly recommend this book
December 1, 2020
Makes excellent points
Theoretical more than practical. Interesting and valid discussions. I would like to have seen examples and more specifics. An interesting read.
Theoretical more than practical. Interesting and valid discussions. I would like to have seen examples and more specifics. An interesting read.
did-not-finish
January 13, 2023There's some useful stuff in here, but I bet there's someone out there engaging with it much more thoughtfully than Goldsmith.
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