This week’s reading presents two differential texts that are written by the same author. Though the first appear as if prose, yet it is divided into acts which somehow gives the reader a sense of reading a play or better yet a cut script an actor must rehearse before the play is played in front of an audience. With Soliloquy, Goldsmith records his every word over a period of a week. He records every syllable he utters; everything from ordering food at a deli to a conversation with a cab driver. In this record, we can only see his part of the story only, for his side only is what is included. Personally speaking, the post-script sums it up «if every word spoken in new york city daily were somehow to materialize as a snowflake, each day there would be a blizzard.» That is absolutely true. If each and every word we utter is to transform and materialize into any other form, drops of water per say, we would surely be drowning.
On Goldsmith’s
Whereas Soliloquy keeps a record of its author’s conversations for a week, Traffic, on the other hand, keeps a record of a two day holiday’s traffic. Having read the two works, I now feel like that I have missed a lot by not paying attention to the tiniest little details that I come across each passing day. If all those details are to be recorded and put into consideration our heads would explode. This week’s reading though boring at certain points and confusing at others, yet allowed me to see how much our minds go through in as short a duration as 10 minutes for example !
Though I’m not sure if I read it appropriately or not, those were interesting reads.
I, too, was interested by that post-script. I wonder how to take Goldsmith’s feelings about his work. At some points, he seems to be saying that it is too much language for the human mind to understand, and that language should be a treat, so to speak, something special and unique that doesn’t happen all of the time. In his theoretical writings, though, he seems to enjoy this information overload since it is the raw material with which he creates his art. It is the blizzard of words that allow him to create ice sculptures and snowmen.
Jed, I’m tempted to take a Zen approach — and ask whether it matters what the author’s feeling about the blizzard of language is. After all, the blizzard occurs, whether we’re in the mood or not. And then we begin to shovel, or make snow men.
Nouf, I was like “wow!” and had the same thought while reading Soliloguy. Millions of thoughts are crossing our minds everyday and only hundrends or thousands are turned into words and sentences. The text is the transcribed version of the thoughts but what would happen if there was a screen and our thoughts were projected there? I think it would be a mess. Some questions popped up while reading. Where is the literary quality? Is there something that I have missed? Is it a diary, memoir, personal narrative or just fiction since we do not know if the things were actually happened?
Nouf, I got the same feeling again when I was reading these texts; I felt that I am reading a rehearsal for a play even not the play itself after revision. That sense reminds me of many questions in the previous classes about determining the genre of the presented texts. Therefore, it is hard to say that this a play, also it is hard to say it is a poetry because the text mixes some of the characteristics of some literary genres and that mixture makes it problematic to decide the genre of the text.
Nouf, I agree with you that this week’s readings are boring in terms of their contents and styles. Yet, I think creativity resides in the idea of making such texts in this way. You might agree with me that both texts create the curiosity to know where are they leading us, the readers, regardless of the monotonous structure! I’m so excited to discuses these texts in the class.
Nouf – this is a very interesting comment! “I now feel like that I have missed a lot by not paying attention to the tiniest little details that I come across each passing day.”