review of the Dick Higgins edited "Something Else Reader"

review of

the Dick Higgins edited "Something Else Reader"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

2313. "review of the Dick Higgins edited "A Something Else Reader<""

- complete version

- credited to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE -

- uploaded to my Critic website March 8, 2025

- http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticSomethingElse.html

review of

the Dick Higgins edited "Something Else Reader"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 8, 2025

The complete review is here:

http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticSomethingElse.html

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7185930566

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83113427-a-something-else-reader

Reviews that're too long to post on Goodreads go, eventually, to my "Critic" website: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Critic.html . Alas, I'm getting slower & slower to create the relevant webpage - largely b/c I just don't enjoy it. Still, if you wait for a wk or 2 after this truncated review is posted & if you then go to the Critic link & search for "A Something Else Reader" you might find a review much longer than this.

Sometimes I think my favorite publishers are/were Something Else Press, Station Hill Press, mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press, Dalkey Press, David Tighe, & myself. That's a woefully incomplete list given that it doesn't include any Sci-Fi publishers &, in fact, doesn't include hundreds of publishers that continue to please & amaze me. Still, it puts Something Else into perspective somewhat & explains why I'd love reading this Reader so much. As I've mentioned many times, I had the honor of meeting Something Else's publisher, Dick Higgins, when he gave a reading to a small audience at my friend Marshall Reese's apartment in Baltimore in 1978 or thereabouts. Lardy! How I wish I cd revisit that experience!! Then he gave me his new catalog for the press that replaced Something Else at an Avant Garde Festival in NYC. Finally, he was in the same audience as me in 1982 for an event honoring Jackson Mac Low's 60th birthday. Higgins, alas, died at the ripe young age of 60 on October 25, 1998. He is missed, by me, &, I'm sure, many others. I had the honor of meeting Alison Knowles too, whose inadvertent comment lead to Something Else's being named as such. She's still going at age 91, thank goodness. The point being that I've crossed paths w/ a few people associatd w/ FLUXUS, to my delight b/c I LOVE Fluxus & delight in encountering things relevant. This Reader isn't entirely a Fluxus one but it's close enuf for me. When I lived in BalTimOre (roughly 1953 to 1994), Something Else Press bks were fairly easy to find so I accumulated quite a few. One I'll forever regret not picking up was Bern Porter's Found Poetry, something that I'm sure was available cheap for awhile. Many of the bks & pamphlets excerpted from are in my collection but I don't mind repeated readings from them b/c I enjoy encountering them in the greater context. Dick Higgins provided this Intro:

"Late one night in December 1963, I founded the Something Else Press by mistake. I was a writer using unorthodox forms. A composer by training (I had studied with John Cage and Henry Cowell), my instinct had led me into theater, where I had been among the very first to do Happenings (the form, not the pop term) in the late 1950s." - p 9

A part of what interests me about the above is Higgins's mention of his being a "composer by training". I'm currently reading a memoir by Emmett Williams called "My Life in Flux" in wch he stresses the musical aspect of the early Fluxus days. I think one of the reasons why I love Fluxus so much is b/c of its musical innovativeness - despite this, I have the impression that it's mostly thought of as an ART mvmt, the music is still too radical to find acceptance even today, over 60 yrs later. I've been primarily associated w/ a mvmt called Neoism. I find most Neoist musicians, who strive to be popular, to be dismally ignorant of music theory. At any rate, w/ the exception of myself (pause to imagine me patting myself on the back), I don't think there're (m)any Neoists who've broken any new ground - whereas almost everyone in Fluxus did. Then again, there are at least 2 Neoists other than myself who've done interesting work w/ sound & Monty Cantsin (Istvan Kantor)'s excursions into open-pop-star-hood deserve far more acclaim than they seem to get.

""We've founded a press," muddily.

"She, blasé: "Oh really, what's it called?" Unbelieving.

""Shirtsleeves Press." Good proletarian instincts.

""That's not good," she said. Call it 'Something Else.'"

"Which I did and which I've never regretted, even though it looks odd on our new nature books and science titles. Because it perfectly defined our editorial purposes." - p 11

"So the first year we did Ray Johnson's "The Paper Snake", which was the first surfacing of mail art, as it's now known. And we worked on Al Hansen's "A Primer of Happenings & Time/Space Art". And I worked up the idea of intermedia (my term). It was an attempt to systematize this apparently confused body of materials which were so basic to the arts, yet which simply didn't fit categories. The concept is basically this: work which falls conceptually between media is intermedial in it nature." - p 12

I have a copy of both of those bks. I had a brief correspondence w/ Johnson before he, alas, committed suicide. I haven't read Johnson's bk yet but I will soon. I HAVE read Hansen's bk & it's one of my favorites, chock-full of stimulating ideas.

"I thought about a series of pamphlets, nice fresh things with good stuff in them. Each of them like a one-shot magazine, maybe (little did I know how little stores would like them-covers fray, they get stolen easily, etc.), yes, a pamphlet series , I said, pouring myself a cup of water. And so the Great Bear Pamphlets were born. There were twenty-Happenings scenarios, new music, manifestos (including one by the proto-communist W. E. B. Du Bois Club), concrete poetry, chance-methodology by George Brecht (inclded in this book)." - p 14

I'm happy to report that I have many of these pamphlets, it's amazing to me that I managed to pick them up! They are, indeed, GREAT, some of my favorite reading material.

Higgins reports on a problem that's also been very common in my life:

"So whatever you did which was new, establishment types from the Village Voice and the like would say, "It's been done before," or, in exasperation, "It's Dada." Nonsense. Fluxus and Happenings had some parallels with Dada and Futurism, but nothing direct or very relevant." - p 14

Ha ha! 1st, I love that he lists "the Village Voice" as a voice for "establishment types"; 2nd, this problem of anything that's outside the mainstream being automatically dismissed as dada is one that was still ongoing when I lived in BalTimOre in the 1980s. People who knew next-to-nothing about art history (or much of anything else) were all-too-prone to refer to the only thing they did, at least, know the name of: "dada". This dismissal was a way of writing off anything outside of what they cd 'understand': viz: the stupidest LCD crap out there, the 'culture' where they took shelter from everything different that they feared.

Higgins's Intro was written on January 11, 1973. I was 19 yrs old at the time. I'd been writing significantly innovative work by then but my 1st bk didn't come out until 1977. Was this the time of the changing of the (avant) garde?

The 1st piece after Higgins's Intro is his "A Something Else Manifesto" from wch I quote the 1st paragraph, In Higgins's presentation of it there's no left, center, or right justification. He presumably wrote using a typewriter where such things were easier to accomplish.

"When asked what one is doing, one can only explain it as "something else. Now one does something big, now one does something small, now another big thing, now another little thing. Always it is something else." - p 21

Just like the justification is "something else" other than those standards I listed.

From Higgins's "Postface":

"There was the Yam Festival, the dance concerts at the Judson Memorial Church, Yvonne Rainer's great dance recital, various Philip Corner activities, the Pocket Follies, the goings-on at Hansen's Third Rail Gallery by Hansen, Vostell and others. It was the only year I have ever experienced that had no summer. The performances at the Grammercy Arts Theater, the Pocket Theater, and Judson Hall kept on taking place." - p 23

The next paragraph begins: "I wonder, will there be so much activity in Europe?" In Emmett Williams's "My Life in Flux - - and Vice Versa" (wch I'm currently reading) he relates a history of Fluxus activities (mostly his own) starting in 1962. His opinion was that, in these early days, Fluxus was mostly a European thing since that's where George Maciunas was living & organizing. Here's a (well, sortof) relevant quote:

"Like all historical accounts written by Fkuxus artists, this one, too, will prove to be incomplete and partial; but inlike most of them, it describes this "American invention" as a largely European phenomenon and experience - amost unorthodox approach, and a heretical one, too, in the eyes of many of my colleagues in the United States, who brush away the European contribution to Fluxus with pre-histories that begin long, long ago on the banks of the Hudson River." - p 27, Emmett Williams's "My Life in Flux - - and Vice Versa"

Now that I'vve muddied the waters, I shd calm them & clarify that in what I quoted from Higgins he's not necessarily even talking about Fluxus, just about the cultural innovations around him that were influential on the birth of Something Else. WTF, I just wanted to quote Williams.

From Bengt af Klintberg:

"Party Event

"Send invitations to all your friends-except one- with the following:

"green party green clothes

"And to one person:

"red party red clothes

"(Done in April, 1967 by Hans af Klintberg and Beatrice Heybroek)" - p 36

Gotta love it. This is exactly the sort of thing that interests me. It's an 'intrusion' into 'real life' that's likely to be harmless & exciting.

Allan Kaprow is someone whose work I unabashedly love. Here's an excerpt from the score to his "RAINING":

"Sheets of writing spread over a field:

"An elderly woman might sit by herself and watch her old love latters wash away; a painter might spread out his worst drawings and laugh in the drizzle. These papers should be personal in any case." - p 40

From Al Hansen:

"Car Bibbe

Car One

(no lights on)

1. Enter car.

2. Toot horn 1x.

3. Count to forty."

[..]

"Car Two

(no lights on)

1. Knock on hood 2x.

2. Enter car.

3. Toot horn 3x." - p 43

"Car Three

1. Enter car.

2. Drive 100 yards away and face car towards main group.

3. Blink lights 1x."

[..]

"Car Four

1. Sit atop car.

2. Rap on roof with palm.

3. Enter car." - p 44

"Car Five

1. Drive around others 4x.

2. Position yourself with other cars.

3. Slam glove compartment 2x."

[..]

"Car Six

1. Enter car.

2. Open windows.

3. Yell loudly." - p 45

"Car Seven

1. Enter car through window.

2. Toot horn 2x.

3. Count to sixty."

[..]

"Car Eight

1. Enter car.

2. Blink lights 2x.

3. Toot horn 1x."

[..]

"8. Keep sharp lookout and if one car runs into another, enter your car and ram him.

9. If the driver attempts to escape, run him down." - p 46

"Car Nine

1. Circle a car 3x, and enter your car.

2. Blink lights 3x.

3. Slam door 1x." - p 47

The last instruction for "Car Four" is:

"17. Set fire to you car." - p 44

& the last instruction for "Car Five" is:

"14. Drive suddenly up over the dunes and into the sea." - p 45

It seems that Hansen is at least somewhat inspired by Demolition Derbies. It also seems unlikely that he expects "8. Keep sharp lookout and if one car runs into another, enter your car and ram him. 9. If the driver attempts to escape, run him down.", "17. Set fire to you car.", & "14. Drive suddenly up over the dunes and into the sea." to be executed. Instead, I think of these instructions as thought experiments of sorts intended to amuse & titilate the performers. There are many such dangerous instructions in the scores of other people's that follow in this bk.

Wolf Vostell's "skeleton" includes these instructions:

"16-people sit in chains in an exclusive restaurant

17-all christians wear cloth crosses sewn to their lapels

18-an express train has cattle cars

19-people are standing in front of a bank saying no" - p 50

These aren't exactly in the "dangerous" category mentioned above but they have a similar 'reality'-challenging quality. Vostell's put a tiger in your tank dé-coll / age erasure as happening for h. c. artmann is similarly chellenging:

"to be performed for 12 hours at night

without interruption

by h. c. artmann

standing

alone and naked in his kitchen

the floow of which is covered to a height of 6 inches with honey

"a 500-watt bulb

"it takes 1 second to work the light switch

"in 12 hours this will amount to 44 200 times

"notation for the first minute

light out light on light out light on light out light out" - p 58

That might considered a rite a passage, an initiation. I've encountered Vostell's term "dé-coll/ age" many times & been interested in it as an alternate, more presonal, term for happening - but I usually forget whatever definition(s) I've run across.

"unpaste, tear off, the take-off of an airplane selected by wolf vostell in 1954 from langenschiedt's french-german dictionary (1952 edition) as the name for his form of expression his first performances were called dé-coll/age demonstrations his form of happening developed from these" - p 60

This reader is jam-packed w/ work by people that I think are major innovators & who I frespect as such. Nam June Paik's an excellent example - w/ his "Utopian Laser TV Station":

"Very very very high-frequency oscillation of laser will enable us to afford thousands of large and small TV stations. This will ffee us from the monopoly of a few commercial TV channels. I am video-taping the following TV programs to be telecast March 1, 1996 A.D.

"7 a.m. Chess lesson by Marcel Duchamp

8 a.m. Meet the Press. Guest: John Cage

9 a.m. Morning gymnastics: Merce Cunningham, Carolyn Brown

10 a.m. Something Else University: collection of unnecessary and unimportant knowledge (Indian incense, Chinese cockroaches, etc.) by David Tudor." - p 64

To me, this is all of extraordinary interest. More Allan Kaprow is certainly welcome:

"Paper

"(A Happening prepared for the University of California at Berkeley, March 1964)

"Setting

Street level of a three-tiered parking lot opposite residence halls. (During the two days before the performance, each participant crumples sheets of newspaper and strews it over the eastern half of the lot.) A record player is near the center and ten metal barrels are placed in line along the western end.

"Events

1---- Twist gal arrives, puts on rock and roll record, dances.

2 ---- Sweepers (25, male) with brooms arrive, sweep paper mechanically in a line towards western end." - p 67

Ah.. & then we reach Alison Knowles.. given that she's still alive, it'd be nice to collaborate w/ her one day.. I quote the places where some of her work was performed in the 1960s:

"Premiered August 1963 at National Association of Chemists and Performers in New York at the Advertiser's Club."

[..]

"Premiered October 21st, 1962 at Institute for Contemporary Arts in London." - p 71

"Premiered November 9th, 1964 at Café au Go Go in New York."

[..]

"Premiered November 25th, 1962 at Alle Scenen Theater, Copenhagen, at Fluxus Festival." - p 72

Next, more Higgins. Note how open the instructions are.

"Next the performer assigns all the thirty speeches given below to situations, with the option of assigning a speech to more than one situation but never of assigning more than one speech to a given situation. The performers now may begin to rehearse together." - p 76

The genius just keeps on coming, this time w/ Robert Filliou:

"(The poet sits on a chair. Behind him, a lecturer introduces him soberly to the audience, and reads as follows:-)

"Part One-The Adult Male Poet

"The body of the adult poet stands at an average height of 5' 5" and, on the average, weighs approximately 145 pounds.

"It is covered with and protected by a thin and elastic membrane, the skin, consisting of the epidermis and the dermis of the poet. The hair and nails of the poet are mere derivatives of his skin. The surface area of the skin covers about 1.8 square meters (17.2 square feet) of the body of the average poet." - p 83

& then there's "The Bloof of the Poet":

"When you sever a poet's jugular vein, blood does not stop running from the wound until the poet is dead. But if you saw up a poet whom you have just strangled to death, his body does not bleed." - p 84

One thing most, or all, of these contributors to the Reader have in common is a sense of humor. Big Time.

But what about Tomas Schmit?, you ask. Is he in there? To wch I reply: But, of course! But instead of quoting him I direct you to:

191. "typewriter poem - tomas schmit - march 63"

- directed & shot by Party Teen on Couch #2

- "typewriter poem" performance realized by etta cetera

- 8mm vaudeo

- 2:58

- march '98

- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/XprYK4V5ZhQ

But in Schmit's section in the Reader it says: "the first realization of a 'questionaire' was dick higgins' lecture on unemployment in april '64 in new york city, where he employed the audience to answer various questions on unemployment" (p 113)

Who cd forget Philip Corner?:

"Pedal Player: crouches underneath to control the pedals, or manipulates dampers by hand." - p 117

Daniel Spoerri:

"(g) Metal stencils

of prime numbersÝÝÝÝ up to 12, of which the 1 is missing, used to number the review material.ÝÝÝÝÝ (There were four numbers: 1,2,3 and 5.) These title-numbers were used for the following reason: just as a prime number can be divided only by 1 or by itself, so the contents of my review could be understood only through the contents itself, and not through comparisons or interpretations.

"Author's Additional Note

"ÝÝÝÝ Jan. 30, 1962, Robert Filliou heard on the radio that the prime Amerian primer number had been discovered with the aid of an electronic brain at the University of California:

"(22442 - 1)" - p 134

George Brecht and Robert Filliou:

"from The Cedilla Cookbook

"cédillic:

6 pounds of zebra

18 pounds of dolphin

4 pounds of lynx

9 tame dormic

2 owls

5 liters of whale oil

dandelion root

willow leaves

"herbs

garam masala

powdered fresh coffee

palm tree kernels

cactus hearts

ocean water

river water"

[..]

"Serves:

2 Vostells

39 Brechts

1000 Maciunases

8 Dick Higginses

1 Emmett Williams" - p 143

Does it only serve "1" Emmett Williams b/c he has a much larger appetite than the rest?

"Games at the Cedilla, or, The Cedilla Takes Off" by George Brecht and Robert Filliou was one the 1st Fluxus / Something Else Press bks I read - probably thanks to a loan from Charlie Brohawn, who was always exposing me to interesting things in the arts. It's a major thing missing from my personal library. I liked it very much.

Richard Meltzer, "The Aesthetics of Rock":

"A-well-a bird bird bird

The bird's the word

A-well-a don't you know about the bird?

Well everybody's talking about the bird!

A-well-a bird bird

The bird the bird

Well-a bird

Surfer birrrrrrrrrrd (prolonged sound of vomiting) . . . . . . . . aaah" - p 152

"-"Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen

Words and music by Al Frazie, Carl White, John Earl Harris and Turner Wilson.

"Part-whole articulateness has always been implicit in everything: in rock it is (for the first time ever-if that matters) the real-magical concrete-abstract explicit focal point of the explicitly explicit. Rock is the only possible future for philosophy and art (and finally philosophy and art are historically interchangeable). Warhol philosopherism and Warhol artiness have been the only major adjustments in terms of these fields proper, but rock is prior to (and more or less extensive than) Warhol within rock anyway." - pp156-157

One thing that's interesting about the layout of this reader is the way the pagination changes from section to section. Sometimes the numbers are on top, sometimes on the bottom, sometimes they're not there at all, the fonts change.

Dieter Roth:

"I am a mystic

yeah?

"the opposite of the cannibal, he who look at the skin of his surroundings as his own skin" - p 175

It's probably pertinent to point out at this point that this Reader is filled w/ more than text. There're drawings. In this case, the word "skin" is circled w/ 2 arrow-headed lines emanating from it touching lines of the exterior/interior of a not-quite-hermaphrodite & w/ "own skin" also encircled w/ 2 lines emanating from it that go to the same arrow-heads.

Claes Oldenburg, another artist whose work I highly respect:

"Ray-Gun is both a form of deception (to everyone, incl. oneself) and a form of play. so important play is. ie. only the comic is serious. only the offhand is effective etc.

Therefore, Ray-Gun is a series of contradictions, paradoxes. A form of dialectic." - p 179

This was typewritten, some letters less legible than others, some things scratched out, some things xed out. It gives a good feeling of the humanness of work-in-progress.

Starting on p 184 is the "Notations" section, excerpts from the bk compiled by John Cage & otherwise worked on by Alison Knowles. This is one of my favorite bks, listed on my "Top 100 Books" website here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Top100Books.html . "Notations" presents an astonishing selection of the possibilities, forever inspiring. I tend to use different notation in every piece I score, notation that strikes me as the most appropriate to the piece. This practice is STILL not widely accepted, 56 yrs later.

Here're 2 examples of my own work:

436. "RonDodo"

- Shot at rehearsals at the Who Unit? & CMU & at the premier at The Space Upstairs (November 8, 2015)

- featuring: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: (d) composer, cameras, conducting, sampler; Brian Riordan: conducting, percussion; Calder Dudgeon: conducting; David Bernabo: keyboards; Matt Aelmore: French Horn; Jason Belcher: valve trombone; Roger Dannenberg: trumpet; Ben Opie: alto sax; Kenny Haney: clarinet; Julian Krishnamurti: violin

- 25:12

- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/CzsoiM8z1wk

435. "Tex-Mix (Giddyup Americana)"

- shot November 1, 5 (rehearsals), & 8 (gig at Babyland), 2015

- text from review of OPEN SPACE 15/16

- using 11 audio samples of simulated horse hooves & of instruments

- also using 50 audio samples from these 6 Tex Ritter movies:

"Song of the Gringo" (1936)

"Arizona Days" (1937)

"Sing, Cowboy, Sing" (1937)

"Mystery of the Hooded Horsemen" (1937)

"Tex Rides with the Boy Scouts" (1937)

"Rollin' Plains" (1938)

- edit finished December 2, 2015

- 14:02

- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/yVZPa4gCdAU

Then, starting on p 190, are the excerpts from the Richard Kostelanetz edited">Breakthrough Fictioneers", another bk I have a copy of it but one I haven't read yet. Starting on p 195 there's an underground-comic-styled story by Charles Platt. It begins w/ an explanation that states:

"This is a programmed comic strip. Start at frame one. You have the choice of going from there to frame two or frame three. If you choose three, go straight to it, omitting frame two altogether

"You have a new choice, in each frame. Every time you choose a number, go straight to it, omitting others in between.

"There are four endings. In three of them, Norman loses his struggle against America. But in one of them, Norman succeeds.

"Your aim is to make choices which you think will be most likely to lead Norman throug to the happy ending.

"In all, there are 67 different paths through the comic. They vary in length from five to nine frames. Of all the 67, only 16 lead to success, riches and happiness for Norman." - p 195

That's from no later than 1973, when the bk was published. I'm reminded of Julio Cortazar's "HopScotch", certainly another favorite bk, from a mere decade before. This was another text w/ navigational options for the reader, not published in English until 1966.

P 200 features computer graphics by Manfred Mohr wch strike me as spectacular for their time.

On p 203 there's a poem called "SEND TRACKS BENT TAPES" by Clark Coolidge, one of my favorite poets. Here's a sample stanza:

"sensitize it, flam, fill it up, hank it, stocks

filigree semblance, ex trunk in freezer, bank

lumber, mastiffs"

Coolidge is also a drummer & I like thinking of the above as instructions for extended technique.

Kostelanetz's "Parallel Intervalic Sets" in next on p 304. There're 2 grids of numbers. The leftmost one has "0" in its upper left corner. There's a diagonal line of "0"s proceeding downward to the lower right corner. In the rightmost grid "5" is the number in the upper left corner. "5"s follow the same diagonal trajectory as the "0"s in the left grid, ending in the lower right. Of course, my descriptive language is misleading & based on traditional reading practices of left-to-right, top-to-bottom. What patterns there are w/ # placement otherwise is undetectable to me. Then top line of the left grid is: "0 4 5 7 1 2 8 9 3 6". Going downward from the initial "0" yields: "0 6 5 3 9 8 2 1 7 4".

The next section is from the bk "Fantastic Architecture", one of the Something Else bks I have & another bk I love. SE's FA is from 1970. It's still available online for a not-unreasonable price. Perhaps it was printed in a big edition. There's another bk called "Fantastic Architecture" that I also have, from 1980, that's even more fantastic insofar as its full of photographs, sometimes in color, of outsider architect work. The SE FA is of proposed bldgs rather than ones actually built. Wolf Vostell's contribution is a collage of the Cathedral of Aachen w/ a steam iron for its top.

I haven't generally had as much enthusiastic appreciation for Bern Porter as other people I know but in the case of his inclusion here I liked him more than usual:

"I pulled over my head the standard sleeveless undershirt, tucked it under my shorts and buttoned the top two buttons. Men who are smarter than I amput the shirt on first and draw the shorts up over it." - p 229

Porter's enginerring design is visionary:

"SCIARCH :

"Air directed under pressure in moving columns, sheets and walls define and enclose areas. Transparent, such contrictions restrict no views, passing sunlight freely in all directions. Insulated, it retains its own temperatures, excluding all others. It is snow and rain proof: repellant to insects and animals. The air may be heated for winter, cooled for summer, or colored for privacy.

"Light, natural and colored, proected in columns, sheets and walls define and enclose areas. Transparent and semi-opaque such constrictions restrict views, allowing free passage in all directions. Ultraviolet and other radiation types provide treating, cooking, vitamin forming, restoring, healing and curing interiors." - p 234

Then, on p 243, Porter provides a word puzzle that consist of a grid of letters w/ no info otherwise. Looking at it, I found:

SAID

AUREVOIR

SPAGHETTI

TOUJOURS

LAMOUR

SEMPERFIDELIS

TEA

MADEMOISELLE

CHILICONCARNE

NINE

SIX

BIG

JOHN

SAYONARA

TOOL

WIENERSCHNITZEL

RUM

CAFE

AULDLANGSYNE

PRONTO

& those are just horizontal. I found LONG in the verticals. That was fun. A reprint of an older bk by William Brisbane Dick of home entertainments is fun too. The 1st one is a "Nondescript, or Flexible Giant" something that I'm tempted to try to make.

Then there's a Gertrude Stein section starting on p 258. After reading her "The Making of Americans" I've found her to be extremely repulsive. However, reading this retored my interest in her again. The bk that this is an except from ("G. M. P. AND TWO SHORTER STORIES") had been languishing on the shelves for many yrs at my local favorite used bkstore so I went there to get it & found that it was finally gone. Dagnabbit all to HECK!

Charles McIlvaine and Robert K. Macadam provide a mycology section:

"O. umbellifera is known the world over. It is very variable in size and color. With us it is seldom over 3/4 in. broad. Stem 1/21 line thick. It grows on decaying wood and ground full of decaying material. There are several varieties. All are edible, but not worth describing. This description is given that the student may recognize one of our common plants, and eat if, if very hungry." - p 282

W/ George Brecht, we reach the Great Bear pamphlets, viz his "Chance-Imagery". I have 10 of these pamphlets in my personal library, several them w/ ground-in boot dirt on them from firefighters walking on my bks when an arsonist set fire o my apartment in BalTimOre in 1985. The ones I have are:

"by Alison Knowles" (1965)

"Some Recent Happenings" by Allan Kaprow (1966)

"Manifestos" by Ay-o, Philip Corner, W. E. B. DuBois Clubs, Oyvind Fahlström, Robert Filiou, John Girno, Al Hansen, Dick Higgins, Allam Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Nam June Pik, Diter Rot, Jerome Rothenberg, Wolf Vostell, Robert Watts, Emmett Williams (1966)

"The Twin Plays: Port-au-Prince & Adams County Illinois" by Jackson Mac Low (1966)

"Diary: How to Improve the World (You will only make Matters Worse0 Continued Part Three" by John Cage (1967)

"The Art of Noise" by Luigi Russolo (1967)

"Popular Entertainments" by Philip Corner (1967)

"A Filiou Sampler" by Robert Filiou (1967)

"Untitled Essay and other works" by Allan Kaprow (1967)

"more by Alison Knowles" (1979) - This is actually published by Higgins's Printed Editions, the successor to Something Else & it's not a Great Bear Pamphlet but its aesthetic is the same & it's a sequel to "by Alison Knowles" so I include it here.

From Brecht:

"Art unites us with the whole; words only permit us to handle a unified reality by maneuvering arbitraily excised chunks.

"With this aplogy for juggling words at all, let us indicate how we intend to approach an infinitely broad and complex subject, chance and its relation to the arts. ("Arts" here is taken in a broadly historical, but actually no longer appropriate, sense.)

"First, a working definition (Chance).

Some background (Dada and Surrealism)

A focal point in development (Jackson Pollock)

Some parallel developments in our culture (Historical Concrrences: Statistics, Science and Philosophy)

Randomness.

Some methodology (Ways of Invoking Chance)

Coda." - p 286

Brion Gyson & William S. Burroughs (esp the latter) always get credit for inventing the cut-up technique - why not the more accurately credited Tristan Tzara (& Bob Cobbing)?

"Tzara composed poems by drawing words from a hat. ("To make a dadaist poem/ Take a newspaper./ Take a pair of scissors./ Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem./ Cut out the article./ Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and ut them in a bag./ Shke it gently./ Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag./ Copy conscientiously./ The poem will be like you./ And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar."" - p 289

"We now wish to trace a concurrent thread of events in physics, specifically in the kinetic theor of gases. In 1661 (two years before Cadano's Liber de Ludo Aleae finally appeared in print) Robert Boyle had described the relationship between the volume of a gas and the pressure exerted by it on a closed vessel, and tried to account for this behavior by comparing the gas particles to little springs lying on each other, which coil and uncoil. Tweny years later Robert Hook suggested that the pressure of a gas was due to the impingement of hard, rapidly moving particles on the walls of the containing vessel, and this work was followed, in1738, by the explanation of David Bernoulli that Boyle's Law would be true if the particles of a gas were considered to be infinitesimal in size."

[..]

"Maxwell's conclusion was that the distribution of speeds of the molecules was described by the normal law, brought into scientific considerations by Gauss. That is, the macroscopic behavior of a gaseous mass (as exhibited, for example, by its temperature) was to be described by the average of the speeds of the individual molecules. The phenomenon of the temperature as an effect, measured, for example, of the expansion of mercury in a thermometer, was therefore attributable not to a cause, but to a very large number of independent causes, the magnitude of which were due to chance." - p 292

A sample stanza from Dick Higgins's "Canto Three":

"If you are straight, you must decide,

But if you have a beak, must you crucify?

A deputy's hall-mark,

His cashbook,

But where is the ought?

Can we indemnify a bulb?

And could she be advisedly a dictator?" - p 305

Beats me. Bext, Jackson Mac Low. I have a signed copy of his Asymmetries 1-260. Its one of my prized possessions. Jackson gave it to me. I took this as a sign of respect for my intellect. Then again, he was probably just generous & I was there in the right place at the right time. The inscription is:

"For Michael (Tolson)

with best wishes

(Keep yer chinup!

er . . .)

Jackson (Mac Low)

Balto. 3/30/81"

The "Asymmetries" are intended to be performed aloud rather than read silently. I took this seriously so I only made it to "Asymmetry 5" before I stopped. It was too challenging for me. Now, I hope to read all 260 in tne near future. Maybe I'll make a movie of me reading them aloud. In the Reader, there's a piece called "First Asymmetry for Iris" - that's Iris Lezak. I got out my copy of "Asymmetries 1-260" to see whether this "First Asymmetry for Iris" is one of the 260. If it is, I didn't find it. In the Reader there are no performance instructions. This Asymmetry begins:

"Seven. Evidence Vajra- Dhara extrémité nationality" - p 316

Where will it go from there?!

Hugh Fox:

"4.

Dada antidates WW 1. WW 1 merely confirmsthe already fully developed occidental sense of non-sense, the cosmic dissolution of Graeco-Scholastic "order." The war re-Europeanizes the Americans, immerses the proletariat sons of immigrants in the intellectual life of a Europe their fathers never could have participated in in Europe. Faulkner, Dos Passos, Stein, Aiken, Gillespie, Eliot, Poundwaver between elitist obscurantism and a successful amalgam of elitist ambiguity and democratic pablum.

"5.

1929 ends U.S. experimentalism and the socialist realism of the 1930's re-arranges the derangements of Cubism, Surrealism, Abstractionism, Dada, etc. in the service of survival. Then, after survival is assured, the experimental impulse is lost in the total conversion of communication into marketplace.

"6.

In the U.S. "Underground" comes to mean Anti-Marketplace content but formwise a very close shadowing of marketplace techniques. A hard sell (message) predominates; in a sense the Beat-Yippie tradition is an extension of 1930's anti-experimental Social Realism. Art at the service of the revolution; and the revolution remains political, not metaphysical . . . which is the base of the true avant-garde.

"7.

Something Else Press is the source of most metaphysical-revolutionary literature in the U.S. today, a lineal descendent of the European fin de siecle Stein-Dada-Surrealism-Chance Structuring Anti-Kunst trajectory which finds it most vigorous expression in the so-called "Happening Generation": Kaprow, Oldenburg, Higgins (the head of S.E.) himself. The ballet (Cunningham), music (Cage) and poetry, concrete of otherwise (E. Williams, Jackson Mac Low) "reported on" by Something Else is all "happenings" in that anti-structure predominates over structure, purposeful chaos over teleology, diversified, mixed media over "pure form." Anti-Kunst "happens"; its only plan is to anti-plan." - p 323

By the by, the typos are in the original, this reviewer didn't add them. Fox presents himself as the person who's given deep thought to the challenges provided by Something Else & who, therefore, provides deep analysis. I don't really find myself agreeing w/ him but I still it find what he's doing interesting. I do have to wonder what Fox is accomplishing - while he may be providing philosophical generalities I have to wonder whether the people published are more trying to escape the box - including Fox's box.

"My own experience is that the list of Something Else Press is the single most impressive and significant list of any twentieth century publisher, small press, large press, over- or under-ground, or avant garde.

"High Fox

Michigan State University" - p 324

"In the cause of explaining himself and his work, Higgins the people pros and cons of his world, his human reference points. He is mainly boed with the Going Thing Style, like the sound-centric poetry of Ginsberg (Whom he compares to Christopher Smart), Olson, etc. He is pro-Jackson Mac Low, Gysin, Filliou, Emmett Williams, Bengt af Kintberg, in fact most of the pro people of the 1964 JEFFERSON'S BIRTHDAY later become Something Else volumes. He is identifying his tribe, aligning himself against tradition and for experiment.

"There is a great deal on Kaprow, Dine, Oldenburg and Happenings in general. About Oldenburg: "I haven't any idea what he's up to but I'm all for it."" - p 325

Fox reviews most or all of the Something Else publications of the time. I like this as a way of ending the Reader.

"1965

Ray Johnson, THE PAPER SNAKE, 27 x 22 mm.

"Mainly made up of mock-dadaistic "poems" like "Last night it was raining in Chinatownand Albert M. Fine threw Judith Malina's shoes in the gutter," Johnson's THE PAPER SNAKE is one of the few duds in the Something Else stables. Johnson lacks that feather-quilted of inanity/insanityneeded by the true avant-gardist. I feel that lots of Johnson is worked at, everydayness souped up into an attempt at the exotic" - p 326

Whew! I wasn't expecting that! I have a reissue of THE PAPER SNAKE & I'll be reading it soon, regardless of Fox's opinion. I doubt that I'll agree w/ Fox's negativity.

"THE MAKING OF AMERICANS is a familial ("dynastic") novel about three generations of Jews beginning as immigrants and ending as "assimilated" Americans, which for Stein meant zero, galloping dullness.

"The portraits of those being-Americanized Americans as told from the inside-out. They are floating psychological self-portraits." - p 329

While I'm glad to agree w/ Fox's more subdued negativity here, I'll point out 2 important things: 1. the SE edition of this is about 400pp less than the full bk, it's an abridgement; 2. I seriously doubt that Fox actually read this entire thing, I HAVE read the entire thing & I can spot skim-reading takes on it. It's academically the norm to only read a few paragraphs or pages of this.

"Wolf Vostell, DE-COLLAGE HAPPENINGS, trans. Laura P. Williams, 1966. Wooden box with glass top, 38 mm. x 23 mm." - p 329

That's one I'd love to see, read, & have in my aRCHIVE. I wonder what size edition is was.

"These are all stage-directions turned into art-works. The originals are hanging all over the walls of Higgins' place in Vermont." - p 330

SE published posters too! & a record. Fox lists them. Then there's a "Special Project":

"Alison Knowles, THE BIG BOOK, 1968-9, eight pages, eight feet high, four feet wide, the pages supported on castors and "bound" into a 2' galvanized spine.

"The Big Book wasn't strictly a book at all but a Schwitters-like "environment." It was a thing you walked through that contained - among other things - a bed, mattress, chair, tables, electric fan, books and magazines, a horplate, coffee, cigarettes, headache remedies, etc. There was a nature environment (with an illuminated grass tunnel), a gallery, a kitchen, an exercise page with a chair and exercise bar - and two guides on every page: 1. An Exercising Man, abd 2. A goat looking at you over its shoulder." - p 347

A. MAZE. ING. I'd have to see it (one? Was there more than one?!).

The bk concludes w/ an "Editor's Note" from one of the people who finally enabled this originally unpublished Reader to reach the general public, Alice Centamore:

"A Something Else Reader is a selection of poetry, prose, manifestos, musical scores, art, and graphic notations taken from sixty-four titles that Dick Higgins's Something Else Press published between its founding in 1963 and 1973. This material represents a cross section of the press's books, the Great Bear Pamhlet series, and one of its seven deluxe artist's editions. This selection showcases Higgins's commitment to publishing work that epitomized the new artistic tendencies of the 1960s and to illustrating the foundations of contemporary practices by republishing titles from the historical avant-gardes. All the works included in this reader were pulished by Something Else Press, with the exception of Hugh Fox's "An Analytical Checklist of Books from Something Else Press," which was published in the magazine Small Press Review in March 1974." - p 350

All in all, highly recommended. Get it while you can, it's all too easy to take things for granted as if they'll be w/ us forever. They won't.

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