Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 01:31:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: arc.hive@anart.no
Subject: Reviews of Two Works: Lanny Quarles / Alan Sondheim 


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Reviews of Two Works: Lanny Quarles / Alan Sondheim


Lanny Quarles (solipsis) has created/written/produced/configured Nihon
Zettels; he was kind enough to send me a copy to read. The review is my
own idea.

I think for anyone interested in the literature of this (not _that_)
century, this book is essential. I'm fascinated by the palimpsest or
palimcestual organization / organicism of the whole - but I'm also
fascinated on its deep reading of medieval and pre-medieval Japan and
gaijin phenomenology - both in relation to the eternal. For it's eternity,
I think, that's at stake here. There are various languages within it as
well as languagings, and what I consider to be stele-texts, matched in
format by the book - texts which begin and end and open up kabbalah-worlds
and words in the midst of others.

There are positionings of male and female, demiurge and Noh, classifica-
tions and lists, broken syntactics, shattered and reassembled mythologies.
The text is astute, almost schizzed at times, but its open worlds are the
poetics of infinity; Bachelard would have loved it.

I worry constantly that works of this quality - and I'd include other work
here - Joel Weishaus' or mez' absolutely brilliant web/write\rite/lit for
example - will be lost, ignored, bypassed in terms of critical or even
canonic acceptance. The world - and the world of distribution - are both
becoming increasingly porous - it's easier than ever to find these works
and absorb them, offline and online, self-published and universally
published.

Get this book!

The Blurb:

Titled after Arno Schmidt's magnum opus _Zettels Traum_ (Notes Dream),
Lanny Quarles' Nihon Zettels Traum is a samizdat email-list series carried
out on Wryting-L transfered to paper. Including all and some repeats of
the original series of emails written after the author had returned from
Japan. The author sought to re-immerse himself in the wonder and
strangeness of his first visit to japan via the internet. Interspersed
with bits of sampled literatures both of web and non-web origin, the
author freely improvised and remixed to create a perplexing and
"informatic free jazz" interpretation of his journey to and back from the
land of Nihon.

Price $25.00 for color copy cover and velo binding
and $12.00 for a simple paper cover with hand drawn noiseglyph and signature

Lanny Quarles
3236 SE 52nd Avenue
Portland Oregon,
97206

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Sampler

I've been putting my work on a DVD+ sampler. Please note this is DVD+ -
which plays on almost all computers, but probably not on a standard DVD
player. The work as usual is within a directory; click on a piece to view
it. Because of the format, I've been able to include a large number of
full-frame videowork. Much of the material is related to choreography,
codework, thinking through body/language/sexuality/'the political/etc.

You can also buy this for $25; apologies for the cost, but a lot of
equipment went into the production/technology of the disk.

Order from

Alan Sondheim (sondheim@panix.com)
432 Dean Street
Brooklyn, NY, 11217

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Other reviews in a 'standard edition' will follow within a week or so.


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