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Notes on Conceptualisms
Literary Nonfiction. Poetics. "In NOTES ON CONCEPTUALISMS, Place and Fitterman erect the first critical framework toward the understanding of conceptual writing, an emergent early twenty-first century literary movement. Elegantly parsed and carefully dissected, this work fleshes out many of the missing details proposed thus far regarding the methodologies and strategies of...more
80 pages
Published
May 1st 2009
by Ugly Duckling
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Was considering assigning this for a class I'm putting together, but though there are moments that are very interesting, as a whole the book fell short of my hopes. The Fitterman section seemed a little too enamored of its own brilliance, as evidenced by the reliance on fairly obtuse language and a lot of the kind of name-dropping reference that is fine for notational purposes but I think is really a kind of self-satisfied flouting of ones' own library. Though I had read most (not all) of the au...more
I reviewed this a bit in comments on Place's "Dies: A Sentence."[return][return]This book is a wreck. It has all the worst qualities of a grad-student theory manifesto: a collage of sources, willful contradictions, inadvertent contradictions, overdetermined graphics, leaps of argument, supposedly evocative breaks between aphoristic paragraphs.[return][return]Here are four possibilities for reading such a text:[return][return]1. As a piece of conceptual writing. In this case the claims would not...more
- First - as is Ugly Duckling Presse's habit - this is a beautiful little book, physically; Place and Fitteman's short essays are well-considered and provide useful prompts for those of us working out poetic goals.
- Like Kenneth Goldsmith's "Uncreative Writing", "Notes on Conceptualisms" is affirming, supportive of complex language experiments that fit the fractal notions of calculus, with generative power and recursive depths.
- While I'll continue to find pastiche, collage and recontextualizati...more
- Like Kenneth Goldsmith's "Uncreative Writing", "Notes on Conceptualisms" is affirming, supportive of complex language experiments that fit the fractal notions of calculus, with generative power and recursive depths.
- While I'll continue to find pastiche, collage and recontextualizati...more
Jul 21, 2009
Joe
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Newspaper "readers"
Recommended to Joe by:
J Spahr, et al.
In moving through various issues of conceptual art and their correlations to the written word this book enables authors to navigate through their work with so many specific and distanced points of light. In a way one could make each of these notes a prompt for a daily exercise or spend a lifetime focused on a single sentence. Either way it should be in every writers library or repertoire if they consider themselves contemporary; to be unfamiliar with this text is now archaic. Indeed one of the m...more
I am, perhaps, mostly still in the dark with what exactly was going on here, but it is something, and I know it is important, and it seems like I have a better idea of "writing" and what it can do when it really is "writing" and not just a story, and it is something that is incredible. A small light book holding heavy ideas and not to be taken lightly, when I return it will be lensed under microscope with more attention to detail, there is a code I must crack.
Reading this alongside Adrienne Rich, _Poetry & Commitment_. An entirely different "take" on the problem of the political and the aesthetic.
*
Just don't know how to take this manifesto (if that's what it is). . . If it's serious, which I think it is, then I have real reservations . . . which can be summed up with the bizarre proposition of the "sobject" of conceptual poetics . . . On the other hand, if this is just meant to be funny, a good laugh, then I did at times giggle. If it's both--som...more
*
Just don't know how to take this manifesto (if that's what it is). . . If it's serious, which I think it is, then I have real reservations . . . which can be summed up with the bizarre proposition of the "sobject" of conceptual poetics . . . On the other hand, if this is just meant to be funny, a good laugh, then I did at times giggle. If it's both--som...more
Vanessa Place is angry.
Angry, Vanessa Place constructs a baseball bat from words
And uses it to smash the words that have been leftover
The words are angry.
Angry words formulate a response:
"What is Vanessa's place?"
Angry, Vanessa Place constructs a baseball bat from words
And uses it to smash the words that have been leftover
The words are angry.
Angry words formulate a response:
"What is Vanessa's place?"
So far, sheer torture...
I have a list of 66 questions (unfamiliar vocabulary and theory jargon) and I'm only on page 33. That's 2 questions a page. I would have given up long ago but I have to write an essay/ give a presentation on this book.
I have a list of 66 questions (unfamiliar vocabulary and theory jargon) and I'm only on page 33. That's 2 questions a page. I would have given up long ago but I have to write an essay/ give a presentation on this book.
a good book for making up lists of books to read.
Jun 10, 2009
Matt Walker
marked it as to-read
how bout i just not read it and say i did
theory in your pocket.
thesis: conceptual writing is allegorical writing.
among other things. notes. some overblown but there is a sense of humor here.
still chewing.
my 6th grade phys ed teacher said we should chew each bite forty times before swallowing. should you lose count, try a kami kami sensor.
among other things. notes. some overblown but there is a sense of humor here.
still chewing.
my 6th grade phys ed teacher said we should chew each bite forty times before swallowing. should you lose count, try a kami kami sensor.
Jul 04, 2009
Kaplan
added it
Interesting the part about Courbet, James, & radical mimesis.
need to read again and again. didn't totally understand. love having a tiny cute blue book, though.
Not exactly groundbreaking, but a good reminder that there are people like us out there, trying to figure out what the hell it is we're doing exactly. Fits in your pocket, and will cause you to exclaim "Exactly!" from time to time, and "Uh, duh." from time to time, and yes, even "I'm not really buying that" on occasion. Worth picking up.
Jun 05, 2013
Soonha
marked it as to-read
May 07, 2013
belle-lettrist
marked it as to-read
Feb 12, 2013
Michelle
marked it as to-read
Jan 28, 2013
M
marked it as to-read
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Vanessa Place is a writer, a lawyer, and co-director of Les Figues Press. She is author of Dies: A Sentence (Les Figues Press, 2006), La Medusa (Fiction Collective 2, 2008), and Notes on Conceptualisms, co-authored with Robert Fitterman (Ugly Duckling Press, 2009). Her nonfiction book, The Guilt Project: Rape, Morality and Law is forthcoming from Other Press/Random House. Information As Material w...more
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