Did everyone already see how in an article in the Guardian, Jonathan Safran Foer disparages "conceptual work" and "exercises" and "concrete poetry?" Seems incredible he could do this and still, at the same time, he publishes a cut-up version of The Street of Crocodiles. Sorry, but how is this sleight of hand possible? He says:
I had thought of trying the technique with the dictionary, the encyclopedia, the phone book, various works of fiction and non-fiction, and with my own novels. But any of those options would have merely spoken to the process. The resulting book would have been a conceptual work at best, and at worst an exercise. I was in search of a text whose erasure would somehow be a continuation of its creation.
His qualification of "conceptual work" and "exercises" as somehow low or negative is really unfortunate at best and disingenuous at worst (to steal his phrasing). I find both conceptual writing processes and exercises to be productive and generative. And I think the "process" is deeply important, at least on an equal level with "product." Despite his assertion to the contrary, most of the texts I've seen that use erasure (e.g. Nets, Humument, Anti-Humbolt, Darkness) are clearly a continuation of the original's creation. He goes on:
My first several drafts read more like concrete poetry, and I hated them.
Wow, so evidently Safran Foer hated these drafts because they simply resembled "concrete poetry."
In conclusion, Safran Foer publishes a conceptual work that involves erasure as an exercise to structure a process that produces a book object with text that resembles visual poetry. And then just as quickly writes an essay excoriating all of the techniques, strategies and concepts from which he drew.
Argh.
The review at HTMLGiant puts it best:
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