Books Written by Davis

[Lori]

Place your questions, comments, and discussion points regarding any of Davis's books (Drain: A Novel, SIC , Blank, Multifesto: A Henri D'Mescan Remix, etc) here.

[Dimitri]

Dr. Schneiderman,
Though I have seen the book I haven't read it (my copy is ordered, awaiting), I'd like to ask you ahead of time to imagine yourself as "me," as someone who doesn't know "you," how would you "read" it, or if not "read" it, "see" it?
The description alone of SIC is tantalizing, and my eye moves immediately from genetic codes (and their possible replications/deteriorations) to the idea of the human pathogen in Andi Olsen's photos. That may be my "in" to the book, BUT while an "IN" is a Burroughs-method for reading, I sense that it may be too analytical or interpretive for SIC. That's both a statement and a question.

[Davis]

I often imagine myself as other people, only to find that project hopelessly unimaginative. I run into dead ends, also when imagining myself.

The only IN one needs to read [SIC] is to hep the jive of copying. Since we are none of us born speaking, everything we say is a copy of what may have been said before.

The best way to read [SIC] is not to read [SIC] at all in the conventional sense. Pass your eyes over what pleased you. Dismiss what does not. This the way we read _50 Shades of Gray_, and Faulkner, so I expect nothing different except the wry smile, for some, of recognition.

[SIC] makes explicit, or tries to, the guilty pleasure of theft, and the delight of the bacillus traipsing about the Parisian cityscape, and neither of these.

Why read? And how? These are life projects. But look how many lives have been ruined by reading.

What do you think?

[Lori]

[SIC] deals with some very interesting conceptual and experimental topics, such as plagiarism, copyright and public domain, and the influence that digital technology has had on the way we read and digest literature.

Why did you decide to to handle these topics in the way that you did with this book?

[Davis]

The decision of [SIC] is based on _what_ to plagiarize. I started in the first third with Old English ("Caedmon's Hymn") and worked my way forward to _Ulysses_.

The last third is all post-1923 work, from the period of copyright. There, I either took work in the public domain, such as a WWII-era recipe, or used Fair Use to manipulate a text ("The First 30 Tweets"), etc.

In both cases, I am often asked if I have violated copyright. I have not, but such questions shows the pervasiveness of this wrong-headed idea: that all work is owned by somebody, and that we lack the right to respond to our culture with the works of our culture.

This couldn't be further from the truth.

In the second section, a Borges auto-translation on Google, I do deliberately grey the question. I present a transformative work to a work still under copyright. Borges' "Pierre Menard" is fertile ground for this sort of investigation.