Steve,

----- Original Message -----
From: "steve duffy" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "british-poets" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 18 April 2000 15:50
Subject: Re: ideoxody / accepted opinions


You claim privilege for mass production and consumption in reply to a
paragraph of mine; but there is no sign in your message that you have
actually *read the paragraph so I'll leave it here for you.

| >> Of course there are problems with access and distribution, and
| >> that has been raised; but that seems to me a claim to privilege on
| >> the part of mass production and consumption, an enslaving tyranny
| >> masquerading as a liberating democratising process and finding many
| >> gullible believers, the fastest growing religion

| while i agree with many of your remarks on the book as object i wonder
| how the making of a singlar book [artobject] could possibly be
| considered by the writer to be the publishing of _poetry_.

Firstly, I think that it has already established here that an artists book
is not necessarily a one off. If I have imagined that, then let me say it
now: artists books may be but need not be one offs.

& I have said elsewhere that many WF books have some of the attributes one
associates with artists books - he participates in the Arts Book Book Fair.
It is no more difficult to get WF publications than it is to get the
products of many small presses. There is nothing inherent in the concept  of
the writers / artists book which precludes mass production.

However, in some cases limited availability is inherent in the making
process...

Secondly, I think it is *you who has brought in the element of publishing. I
am talking about *making poetry. (However, it's fine if I have mentioned
publishing as such; that isn't, to me, really the point.)

You raise the question of making a painting yourself. Is the painter who is
more interested in people seeing his actual paintings than in seeing them in
reproduction rejecting the methods of mass production? Mass reproduction can
not give the same experience.

[Do you reject homemade food? More fool you if so. When the fishvan from
Hastings comes tomorrow I'll be in the queue. But the meal I shall make
would not easily be mass produced and those who live further south will not
be able to get to the van. Is my meal elitist? A few days ago I walked from
St Ives Harbour to Zennor Church across country. It was peaceful. It
wouldn't be peaceful if lot of people made the walk at the same time. Does
that make the walk elitist.]

It may well be the dream of the big media corporations that anything not
mass produced be outlawed; but it is surprising to see such an idea
incipient upon this list.

Mass production and mass distribution are very limited processes. They
exclude a great deal.

You speak of "an artform which seems to be "privilege" itself"; but it
doesn't privilege itself. Perhaps it does to you, but you *seem to be
assuming that mass production is good. You are, as I said in what you
purport to be answering, privileging mass production.

And your "the singular book which is so precious that the text would need to
be
| wrest from it in order to make it accessible to more than a handful of
| "connoisseurs"

is entirely of your own creation. No one said anything like that.

What I and others have spoken of is a text and a production which are as
fully as possible integrated with each other. You *seem to have ignored
that. Some web art attains the same integration and it lends itself to mass
distribution. One works within the limits of one's materials.

"is the singular book a sensible option if the writer wants to be read?"

Steve, we are talking here about poems which cannot exist except as book
objects. There is no option.

A version of my poem "house" is available on the net and anyone with web
access can see it. Another version , effectively a collaboration between me
and the publisher, exists in a pamphlet in a short run hand made book. I
have put an image of the pages on the web too but I accompany them with an
article which argues that all I have done is to create another version
because the web technology does not let me get near giving you the
experience of the book in your hands... I value that version. I regret it is
not widely available, but I still value it; and I find the idea that I am
being elitist because I have chosen to make something which cannot be
mass-produced very simplistic. You might have a point if one were choosing
to restrict access for the sake of it; but that is not what has been
proposed in this thread.

| (does the writer want to be read - or just read by those who matter?)

is a non-sequitur and a near return to an assertion which I *thought we had
put behind us

| would seem to be more a way of restricting access, unless the writer has
| very strange notions as to what might constitute an audience.

I think it is the critic who has strange notions. Do you accuse the painter
of restricting access because she has only made one copy of a painting? Must
everything be in multiples?

 what could
| such a book possibly be saying that it required such a "richness" as to
| make it's concomitant inefficiency irrelevant.

I had not that thought to see the bankers' word "inefficiency" here. Long
live inefficiency. Nor do I accept the inherent either / or in your
question.

| is the tendency towards the book as artobject not a last resort.

what you call a tendency predates the mass produced book.

Are you familiar with the Douglas Adams' story of the inhabitants of Krikket
who, upon seeing the multitude of stars for the first time, say "It's got to
go" because it doesn't fit their limited preconceptions?

does it
| not represent a rejection of the technology of mass culture

well, the tendency is not a tendency as I have said...

then "technology of mass culture"... let me think... oh yes... bollocks to
mass culture

nor is the untendency a rejection of the technology of mass production; it's
just another way of working

There's a limit on the number of people who can enter a poetry reading. Hire
the albert hall and you change the experience (although, unfortunately,
kazoos and carrier bags appear to survive the transmogrification). Is a
poetry reading a rejection of communication?

 in favour of
| a traditional technology which "targets" readers?

no... well when one is using what you call traditional technology then one
is using it; but, as you would know if had actually looked at writers /
artists books, many of them employ the latest technologies

 does it not constitute
| a retreat into an enclave of "high" culture?

been there. done that. haven't you got any other conspiracy theories? you
are the only one who used the phrase "high culture"

& what cris said too

L



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