I agree with the post’s that have commented on this week’s readings in regards to seeing the authors experimenting with how their content is being delivered. Although Cage’s “Diary” at first seems to be a fractured mess, you can see strands of text looping back on themselves throughout the work. One of the strands that I picked up on and most interested me concerned how content is delivered and digested by reader and author. Although haphazard in appearance at first, Cage put great thought into how this piece was put together, the snippets of text he chose, the fonts, sizes, etc. He also alludes to the importance of form several times throughout diary. He references Joyce and Finnegan’s Wake (as does Hassan) repeatedly, which I have not read, but is known for its difficult syntax and structure. Cage writes on 208 “TO RAISE LANGUAGE’S TEMPERATURE WE NOT ONLY REMOVE SYNTAX: WE GIVE EACH LETTER UNDIVIDED ATTENTION, SETTING IT IN UNIQUE FACE AND SIZE; to read BECOMES THE VERB to sing”. Cage’s use of different fonts, sizes and grammatical structure is meant to keep the reader on their toes, so that they give each letter undivided attention, which gives the words themselves and their structure as much meaning as any overarching idea that the work is presenting. Cage also writes about how reading should be enjoyable, and that enjoyment can come out of the artifact itself as much as its content: “Paper should be edible, nutritious. Inks used for printing or writing should have delicious flavors. Magazine’s or newspapers read at breakfast should be eaten for lunch. Instead of throwing one’s mail and in the waste-basket, it should be saved for the dinner guests”. I also think that Cage is trying to replicate what he admired in the ancient chinese language, that it was free of syntax and”floated in no-mind space.” Cage is rebelling against modern ways of delivering language that he feels have become “arthritic.” I personally enjoyed the Cage piece and thought it was similar to the mash-ups we were listening to in class when exploring postmodernism, many disparate parts being brought together to add up to something that is more than the sum of its parts, while at the same time making you appreciate each of those parts that you are experiencing in a new context.
The Jonathan Safran Foer piece also explores new ways of delivering language, although in a much more personal way. I thought his piece was about how the traditional forms of communication, or writing about communication fail to really capture the essence of what is being said/felt. Foer sees gaps in languages that cannot be filled by the traditional methods of writing and seeks to fill in those gaps with his new symbols. However, in the end it is futile as those new symbols will leave new, smaller gaps, and any attempts to fill those gaps will create newer, smaller gaps, and so on. I think Foer just wants the reader to step back and re-examine language and communication. We take language for granted and assume that words have a fixed meaning, but really they are just signifiers and each of us have our own perception, based on what we have learned/experienced, on just what those signifiers mean.