I kid you not….
“The old type of creativity really isn’t very interesting,” Goldsmith said. “So by being uncreative, you form a new type of creativity.”
[…]
[Kenneth] Goldsmith is the author of 10 books of poetry. His most recent work is unofficially titled American Trilogy. It consists of “The Weather, Traffic and Sports,” which are respective transcriptions of a year’s worth of radio weather reports, a 24-hour traffic cycle and the radio broadcast of a Yankees game with the ads included.
[…]
Uncreative Writing, a book of Goldsmith’s own critical essays, is due from Columbia University Press [emphasis mine—JH] later this year.
This man is a “Lecturer B” in the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. In the photograph of Goldsmith accompanying the article excerpted above, the wall behind him bears the words “WORLD CON”. Are you surprised?
Full interview here.
Ah, yes–the UBiquitous wordsmith Goldsmith(that’s Smith, not Smythe)smitten and besotted with his own silver-lined image–were any of his ancestors blacksmiths?
If I were Mr. Goldsmith I couldn’t manage to look myself in the mirror. And yet I imagine he’s well acquainted with the image he finds there, and likes it.
Mr. Goldsmith, though, in believing nothing new can be made in the traditional way, claims that all we are left with are things to manage; and a manager he is. I couldn’t manage what he manages.