writing under constraint

William O'Rourke on the beat of the Clinton beat

Brian Lennon considers the aesthetic that Retallack has evolved out of a cybernetic sensibility - a formalism that does not impose authoritarian codes or repressive orders, but rather hacks a pattern out of the sheer data of everyday life: directories, menus, phone books, indexes, encyclopedias, and archives.

Jan Baetens reviews the Raymond Federman Recyclopedia, a book whose humour - and evident bad taste - raise it above its own formidable constraints.

Paul Harris rediscovers the senior American member of Oulipo on the occasion of three new reprints from The Dalkey Archive Press.

Phillippe Bootz gives an account of the longest standing web-based literary journal in France.
Translation by James Stevens

Stacey Levine on the occasion of Dalkey Archive's reprinting of The Age of Wire and String