2006. footnotes
March 31, 2016E.V. note: The above is the way the cover was designed. The book went out-of-print around early 2011 because the printer claimed that it was 'impossible' to print the cover as I'd designed it - despite the fact that they HAD printed it that way prior to this claim. Even though I'd explained WHY I'd designed the cover that way & even though both I & the publisher had told the printer explicitly that they were NOT to redesign the cover, the printer DID redesign the cover so that it was 'right-side-up' & distributed those. THEREFORE, some of the very few people who own this book have copies with the printer's redesigned cover.
review of
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's footnotes
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - Feburary 16, 2009
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2349153.footnotes
This bk is a compendium & partial rewrite/expansion of my 1st 9 bks. If you like creativity that thinks outside the box but still fits in a bk, then this one's for you. But, then, that's only if you like that sort of thing, wch, in my experience, most people don't. If you buy a copy of it, let me know so I can lament over my lack of royalties a little further.
Eddie Watkins rated it
it was amazing
Shelves: pushing-limits
5 stars for exhausting exhaustiveness, chutzpah, and immaterial mind stimulation.
This book is somewhat inaccurately described by tENT himself as a gathering/expansion of his first 9 books. I say inaccurately because though 7 of them might be previous books of his 2 are most definitely new books riffing on previous books.
1 of these 2 books is Reactionary Muddle America, in which tENT EXHAUSTIVELY critiques student responses to a performance of his with some friends at Johns Hopkins in maybe 1991. Reading through this was VERY trying but ultimately rewarding. Rewarding not necessarily because of the reactionary anger it aroused in tENT but because of the sheer stamina and perserverence it required of tENT to even read all the crappy papers and comment on them. Is this a convenient place to offer a theory of mine? Don't care.
This theory of mine is that the apparent subject and physical manifestation of products of people's minds (poetry, music, theory, paintings, etc.) are not necessarily where the "meaning" resides. Instead these "mind products" are mere vehicles for the immaterial mind to manifest itself, and that this manifestation happens most thoroughly and accurately under conditions of extreme concentration during the production of the products. This extreme concentration can come about in many ways. Some people focus on "narrative content", some on the materials themselves, some can essentially focus on nothing, while others develop elaborate systems to generate their products.
Further explanation available upon request.
But this is just to say that in Reactionary Muddle America the bulk of the "meaning" I gathered from it was due to tENT's extreme concentration and stamina during the apparently marathon production of this book. The book itself was a transparent window into tENT's immaterial mind. And I'm not talking psychologically.
In other books, namely his first book, the "meaning", aka "immaterial mind manifestation", was generated through elaborate structural systems. And now I will move on to my "review" of his riff on this first book of his.
tENT asked me to specifically review the first book in this collection, which is a riff on his first book which I previously reviewed here
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
In reading this riff I discovered that he indirectly describes me as empty-headed because I didn't discern the arcane structures and coding in the book. To wit, in tENT's own words,
"in one ear/eye & out the other happens easiest when there're no brains between to get in the way"
Thanks tENT! and I thought we were friends. At least GR friends, which obviously signifies nada. But I have an arcane rebuttal/excuse of my own, for within tENT's very coding I found an explanation for my own ignorance. You see... but let me explain a little.
The first section of this book is a thorough explanation of a "dating" system he employed in his first book, the review of which I linked to above. This dating system is an attempt to free himself (and maybe others) from linear time by creating an interlocking backwards/forwards/spiral time frame. He does this by manipulation via letter substitution and ellipses of a dating "formula":
"the even root of a - # &/or 5 &/or the only-present-when?"
I will not explain this letter substitution system, because said explanation is one of the main pleasures of reading the book; but I would like to point out the number "5" in this formula. "5" is a primary numerical basis for this system, signifying for tENT "ignorance as open set ambiguity", which I don't completely understand, but that's OK because "5" is the basis for my own rebuttal/excuse for my alleged brainlessness as regards my reading of his first book.
You see, "5" happens to be a talismanic # for me, and has been for decades. This is based on nothing more than the fact that the first letter of my name "E" is the 5th letter of the alphabet, that my name "Eddie" has 5 letters, and that I was born in May, the 5th month of the year, (also on the 30th day which is a multiple of 5). This simple coincidence of 5's has always given that number special significance for me, the meaning of which significance I have never tried to interpret even to myself, and conveniently explains my ignorance/brainlessness as regards tENT's writing because in tENT's world "5" signifies ignorance. As Sun Ra said - There's far more that we don't know in the universe so it's better to be ignorant than to know (or something like that). I usually side with ignorance.
As far as I'm concerned this justifies my brainless review of tENT's other book with the argument that it doesn't matter that I missed all his coding and structures because through my own concentration on the text that was a product of his intense concentration I perceived directly tENT's immaterial mind (as I in fact mentioned, in so many words, in that review) which is where the meaning resides anyway, and which is the point of all this human production anyway, and it gives me full justification to at the same time plead ignorance and bring this review to an end.
idioideo at verizon dot net
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