Craft Notes
Trash
What makes a work unpublishable? Ubu Web invites 50 authors to answer this question.
Read a conversation over stolen food by John Cotner and Andy Fitch, a handwritten letter to her father by a young Mary Jo Bang, Christian Bok’s proposal for nanoscopic poems,some language dissolutons that end in a review of Lou Reed by Alan Licht, and lots lots more.
The web is a perfect place to test the limits of unpublishability. With no printing, design or distribution costs, we are free to explore that which would never have been feasible, economically and aesthetically. While this exercise began as an exploration and provocation, the resultant texts are unusually rich; what we once considered to be our trash may, after all, turn out to be our greatest treasure.
Tags: andy fitch, ubu web
This one is very nice question – and ubu web proves itself as always as one of the best places on the net.
But… I’m personally bothering with another question though: what makes a work publishable…
This one is very nice question – and ubu web proves itself as always as one of the best places on the net.
But… I’m personally bothering with another question though: what makes a work publishable…
It seems like the answer to both questions hinges on a similar set of criteria. One can publish whatever on the net and yet it seems like that’s not entirely what is meant here by publishing.
There is the question of profitability: is your writing financially beneficial to the publisher? if there is no money changing hands does it build the “brand”?
These are the kind of sleazy questions people want to “I’m an artist” their way out of, but I think they are a good place to start.
What is the meaning of publishing the “unpublishable” by invitation only? What criteria were involved in deciding whose unpublishable work was in fact publishable, if only as some kind of conversation starting provocation?
It seems like the answer to both questions hinges on a similar set of criteria. One can publish whatever on the net and yet it seems like that’s not entirely what is meant here by publishing.
There is the question of profitability: is your writing financially beneficial to the publisher? if there is no money changing hands does it build the “brand”?
These are the kind of sleazy questions people want to “I’m an artist” their way out of, but I think they are a good place to start.
What is the meaning of publishing the “unpublishable” by invitation only? What criteria were involved in deciding whose unpublishable work was in fact publishable, if only as some kind of conversation starting provocation?