Comments on: PRESS RELEASE: “—– — —-” by Soffi Stiassni

By: Matt K

Matt K — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 06:31:01 +0000

Cool – I love Invisible Cities, amazing. I teach that to my creative writing students.

By: Matt K

Matt K — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 06:31:00 +0000

Cool – I love Invisible Cities, amazing. I teach that to my creative writing students.

By: ben

ben — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 06:18:15 +0000

well, i already mentioned these but w, odile, and great fire of london are all pretty great. perec’s species of spaces is neat.

roubaud’s ‘some thing black’ is also excellent i think. not so overlooked but so far not mentioned is ‘invisible cities’.

not technically by oulipo members but in the same vein: christian bok’s ‘eunoia’ and walter abish’s ‘alphabetical africa’. i liked both of those.

there are more, but those are what immediately come to mind.

By: ben

ben — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 06:18:00 +0000

well, i already mentioned these but w, odile, and great fire of london are all pretty great. perec’s species of spaces is neat.

roubaud’s ‘some thing black’ is also excellent i think. not so overlooked but so far not mentioned is ‘invisible cities’.

not technically by oulipo members but in the same vein: christian bok’s ‘eunoia’ and walter abish’s ‘alphabetical africa’. i liked both of those.

there are more, but those are what immediately come to mind.

By: Matt K

Matt K — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:54:52 +0000

So if you could recommend a couple of overlooked oulipan texts? It’s been a while since I’ve dipped my toes. I’ve been meaning to read Cigarettes for a while, but haven’t had time to read anything not assigned since coming back to school.

By: Matt K

Matt K — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:54:00 +0000

By: ben

ben — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:52:57 +0000

i agree that not all oulipo stuff is great and that some of it is cooler for existing than it is as work to read. i just wanted to defend some of the work that i think is really successful.

anyways. i think we are probably more or less in agreement here. thanks for clarifying

By: ben

ben — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:52:00 +0000

i agree that not all oulipo stuff is great and that some of it is cooler for existing than it is as work to read. i just wanted to defend some of the work that i think is really successful.

anyways. i think we are probably more or less in agreement here. thanks for clarifying

By: Matt K

Matt K — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:33:28 +0000

I realize, too, that I’m making it sound like a failed experiment is a bad thing – obviously the concept of experiment is that sometimes it doesn’t work, so I guess what I’m saying is the experiments don’t always succeed (at least to my reading). That’s not really a bad thing and isn’t intended to diminish oulipo – that’s part of the idea, right? To do new shit.

By: Matt K

Matt K — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:33:00 +0000