Suggest a reading strategy for Saratori's nonexistence?
"The reptillian=Hub_modem that crashed a chemical=anthropoid=paradise apparatus
of the human body pill cruel emulator that covered cardiac and compressed the acidHUMANIX..."
Ex. Is this a poem? Should we look to James Joyce's Ulysses as a model? Was this book even meant to be read by humans?
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I spoke to Professor Godzich about this and what he suggested influenced me a bit, but I will try and relate my first approach to it and my current approach in light of what Wlad has told me. My first approach at nonexistence was one of decipherment. I felt as though I was given the task of a computer programmer to untangle the meaning in a jumble of code. My hieroglyphics learning had some influence in this. Trying to break up the words and figure where one thought ended and another began. I was especially puzzled by the equals signs. Should I read and understand them as just that or should another approach be taken. In this view, I did not see the Siratori as poetry (though certainly still noticing it categorized as such with the BlazeVOX logo). Instead, I thought of it as something akin to Lem’s Bitic Literature. Perhaps this is the first attempt that a computer has attempted to write a text for a human. Or perhaps a human has undertaken to write as a computer who wrties for humans. This tells me that, yes, this should be read by humans. In light of what Wlad said, I approach it now keeping the ideas of pattern recognition in mind. I’ve perhaps merged my original approach with a new approach. I find myself “cataloging” repeated word-phrases/word-patterns and trying to put onto them a solid meaning. I am cautious of this approach though because I feel it could lead me astray from what may really be going on.
ReplyDeleteI believe that a great deal of how we are supposed to read "nonexistence" is made clear before we even start the piece. When one turns to the Acknowledgments page, all they find are the words "To be placed here". This could be seen as a sign of incompleteness, of a work in progress. I see it as an indicator that this text relies a great deal on the reader's interpretation of the book. As mentioned above by "A", the text is comprised of many repeated word patterns, each changed in its own way to create a new setting, a new focal point. We are constantly having to revise our opinion of the last sentence, as it is being repeated in some fashion or other.
ReplyDeleteThe endless equal symbols drew me to the idea of computing value between the sentences. = would more commmonly function as a symbol of equal values, and here that meaning is being toyed with. Does "The reptilian" equal "HUB_modem that crashed a chemical"? Or rather are we to designate one half as more powerful than the other? Is this merely a cultural tic, such as using <> as quotations in French writing, or -- as in Scottish writing?
It seems to me that the very design of the text is more important than the content. We are forced to read even closer thanks to the pale pale pale font and the seemingly wingdingy nature of the writing. Perhaps as one moves through the entire book a deeper message within will be made clear. Currently, however, my thought is that we are examining a style of writing rather than the substance.
There is a clear repetition of words and phrases in different pages that the way they're written leads to a pattern. Parts of the opening sentence/phrase on the first page are repeated on the second page, from the word "reptilian" to "cardiac and." Repetition resumes from “of the soul…” to "retro Adam" and again from "insanity medium…" to “ HIV scanners." In the first few pages (and it is likely the same is true with the rest of the book), we find the same patterns but the sequence or order of those patterns is not the same. This is an indication of a deviation from a normal pattern. As a result, we may be looking at the repetitions and tend to forget the parts in between. Are we to consider these (unrepeated) parts unnecessary to the whole story or is it the repetitions that prove to be unessential? Anomalies to the pattern may be the sequence of the parts that are repeated, in which case, the author may be telling us to be more concerned with what appear to be similar although in fact the similarity is broken. These are parts that cannot be perceived at a glance because they can be mistaken as the same. The author may be trying to convey that the twists or deviations from the normal are the key to understanding whatever changes that occur.
ReplyDeleteMost of the words used seem to belong to the medical field and to the computer world. At this point, however, in the absence of a grasp of the real meaning of the text, I fail to see any clear meaning of the equal symbols, asterisks, dashes, and other signs.