OuLiPo – Michigan Quarterly Review

OuLiPo

The Riches of Erasure: An Interview with Jenni B. Baker

“David Foster Wallace isn’t going to create any more things, so I have to take my energy in a new direction and create my own work. Like anyone who experiences a loss, I work with what’s left — one of Wallace’s texts. Working via erasure allows me to commune with the original text and author in a way that work that was simply inspired by or dedicated to wouldn’t. I repeatedly handle the physical book as I create a digital scan of the text. I then work with one page at a time, interacting with the words on the page and slowly erasing text until what remains is part me, part Wallace. The process is one of remembering and reflecting; the final product, a memento.”

The Riches of Erasure: An Interview with Jenni B. Baker Read More »

“David Foster Wallace isn’t going to create any more things, so I have to take my energy in a new direction and create my own work. Like anyone who experiences a loss, I work with what’s left — one of Wallace’s texts. Working via erasure allows me to commune with the original text and author in a way that work that was simply inspired by or dedicated to wouldn’t. I repeatedly handle the physical book as I create a digital scan of the text. I then work with one page at a time, interacting with the words on the page and slowly erasing text until what remains is part me, part Wallace. The process is one of remembering and reflecting; the final product, a memento.”

Oulipo at Queneau's home

Why I Have Not Written Any of My OuLiPo Blog Posts

* Eric McDowell *
So maybe I too could make something essential of my own incidental struggle to parse the OuLiPo, take that which I could—probably—have hidden (would you have thought I could read French? understand calculus?) and, instead, hide behind it, looking through.

Why I Have Not Written Any of My OuLiPo Blog Posts Read More »

* Eric McDowell *
So maybe I too could make something essential of my own incidental struggle to parse the OuLiPo, take that which I could—probably—have hidden (would you have thought I could read French? understand calculus?) and, instead, hide behind it, looking through.

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