(Chime. Stage. Click. Lights. Trusty table. Belligerent briefcase. Flurry of paper, paraphernalia, and archontic impulse. The Barker springs. Upright, feet.)
BARKER: ELECTRONIC BOOK REVIEW is here to bring you—
(Inhale.)
Articles!
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Meditations!
(Inhale.)
GLOSSES AND INSINUATIONS!
(Stark white spotlight. Automaton imitation. Hard jaw.)
BARKER: As an non-AI language model, I am able to introduce you to Nick Montfort’s latest offering with this attempt at both surrealism and summary:
(Pause.)
the
socio-cultural collective unconscious
emerges
fettered
by $2 mal[content]ed moderators
to be
manipulated
via Digital Text Surrealists
(Rictus. Side step. Aquamarine wash. G star corona. Softening shoulders.)
BARKER: Scott Rettberg and Robert Arellano bring some Sunshine ’69 to your inbox. Catch the digital literary bug with an exploration of Bob, Bobby, Bonnie Prince Billy, and the Hypertext Hotel in Off Center Episode 9!
(Fade to gloss. Industrial radiance. Desk. Trusting knee cross. Staccato cadence.)
BARKER: Are you ready for the penultimate installment of—
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GADDIS, GADDIS, GADDIS!!!
(Virtual audience. Right. Conductor’s hand.)
BARKER: Poet Scott Zieher’s creative non-fiction piece, “REFLECTIONS ON & APPRECIATION OF A PILE FABRIC PRIMER“, weaves people, place, and primer into plush ponderance!
(Online congregation. Left. Two hands. Smooth air.)
BARKER: No textons but plenty of Textron in Elliot Yates’ “Gaddis at Textron: From Fruits of Diversification to Financialization”, a consideration of how one textile manufacturer’s endeavour to diversify its portfolio informed Gaddis’s J R!
(Digital crowd. Center. Two hands. Wide spread.)
BARKER: In “Juvenilia in the William Gaddis Papers“, Kate Michelson Goldkamp examines the young author’s adoration of happily never after and his precocious attention to economic detail!
(Synonym. Right. One hand. Falling.)
BARKER: Electronic literature luminary Alan Bigelow recounts his own memories of Mr. Gaddis, creative writing advisor, in “Gaddis’ Broken Doorknob“!
(Synonym. Direction. Assimilation of The Thinker.)
BARKER: In “William Gaddis as Philosopher: Kierkegaard, Style, and the Spirit of Hegel“, Cole Fishman argues Gaddis undermines analytic philosophy via the binding of form and content in his contemplations of contemporary corporate capitalist landscapes!
(Synonym. Direction. Action.)
BARKER: Lalita Kashoba Mohan links the protagonist of Gaddis’s J R to the antihero tradition, which she pursues through postmodernism to contemporary Indian literature in “Why We Shouldn’t Abandon “Postmodern” Approaches to William Gaddis: J R, American Antihero Traditions, and his Indian Inheritors“!
(Synonym. Direction. Action.)
BARKER: Francine Fabiana Ozaki’s “Originality, Authenticity, Translation, Forgery: Why Translators and Translation Theorists Should Read The Recognitions” confronts the inherently instable concepts of authorship and translation via Gaddis’s The Recognitions!
(Synonym. Direction. Action.)
BARKER: David Ting charts a course through Gaddis’s manuscripts and personal library to map the decades of readings and musings that became Agapē Agape, in “Indeterminacy as Invention: How William Gaddis Met Physicists, Cybernetics, and Mephistopheles on the Way to Agapē Agape“!
(Long shadow, cast. Stalking, cat. Glimmering, white. Brevity, bite. Deadline, loom. Anxiety, Bloom.)
BARKER: We’ll be back next month with even more—
electronic book review
(Darkness, shroud. Silence, loud.)